On 20/08/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
More to the point - the policy does not exist "because there is a page on it". Wikipedia is not, as I believe a guideline says somewhere, a game of nomic; the existence of hard-and-fast policy is integral to the system, not just something we happened to write.
Policies are also descriptive, not prescriptive.
I'm sure that, in the early days, there were some "decrees from on high" from the likes Wales and a couple of others.
Ever since though policy has been more about a record of what happens, rather than an attempt to change it.
The "how to create policy" page makes a telling point - in the last two years, only about 5 out of 70 attempts to 'create policy' succeeded.
Dan