Ian Woollard wrote:
On 18/07/2010, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
IAR isn't for a regular, predictable, situation where a generic agreed solution would be better, and not for a sourcing issue or "systematic problem" like this. More and more often there is a chance (small in any given case, large overall) that important information for an article may be blog published, so we do have a genuine issue here.
IAR is a rule that was written early-on in the Wikipedia because particularly then, the rules weren't very good, and this was intended to allow the Wikipedia to proceed before better rules could be drafted.
IAR is cool. Basically it encapsulates that wiki work is for people who can operate in free-form environments. I think your interpretation might be agreed by those many Wikipedians in 2010 who fundamentally think "rules" are a Good Thing. I have some problems with that approach, because it's a working environment where things do not need to be Fordist, and initiative and the guts to hold out for the right result are to be encouraged. The interaction with RS is certainly problematic, though. We know RS is not entirely respectable in detail, but at a nutshell level it does represent what we want to do. It allows us to proceed ... in other words it needs to be read in spirit rather than letter.
Charles