Some years ago the IRS decided that it needed to simplify instructions by putting everything at the 10th grade reading level. One effect was to make the tax guide thicker because thaey had to use smaller words.. For people who already knew how to read this stuff it meant weading through long-winded paraphrases which many or may not have meant the same thing that they said before. Those who could not read it before were not exactly encouraged by the prospect of reading an even longer guide.
Another of the US Government wonders was the Paperwork Reduction Act. In some instances it involved adding a separate slip to documents expressing how much they were commited to reducing paperwork.
These are cute examples, but they're not fair analogies. I'm proposing replacing a long document which says "Read all these subdocuments. Some of them are relevant, some of them aren't. Some have been voted on, some haven't. Oh, and here are a couple of old ones that we're preserving for "historical interest"", with, Here are the rules: *[[WP:3RR]] If you revert a single page more than three times in 24 hours, you may be blocked. ...
Here are the general guidelines we'd like you to follow here: *[[wikipedia:Edit summary]]: Always type at least a brief summary of the change that you made in the Edit Summary box. Avoid misleading summaries. ...
Here's are some tips on how to behave and have a good time here: *[[wikipedia:Harassment]]: Don't make life miserable for other users, such as by wiki-stalking them, or you may be blocked. ...
Ie: You don't even need to read the subdocuments to get a pretty fair idea of what's expected of you here. Obviously you *should* read the actual policy documents, but most people don't. And this is a hell of a lot better than nothing.
Can anyone here claim to have read every item on [[Category:Wikipedia official policy]] (41 articles) and [[Category:Wikipedia guidelines]] (67 articles, 5 subcategories)? What if you only had to read one page, that succinctly summarised each of them? Would you consider it?
Steve