On 4/7/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
But that's exactly my point. _What the policy says_ is (ie 'if this happens, in this way, then this is the consequence') _all_ that achieved consensus (and therefore all the is enforceable) - anything above and beyond that is not endorsed by the community (or, in the case of decrees, not endorsed by Jimbo unless he subsequently says so) and therefore is not policy. Taking your example, if there was community consensus to extending the 3RR to 25 hours then it would be amended as such.
Cynical
I would like to think that we are moving towards improving our standards. It wasn't so long ago that FAs could be unreferenced. It wasn't that long ago that no one was talking about WP:CITE. I wouldn't say that Wikipedia is broken, I'd say that it's becoming fixed. That change isn't going to come overnight, but the changes in that regard that have happened in the time I've been here (~19.5 months) are substantial. Some people have to be hit with a cluestick a bit harder than others, some people won't be able to adapt and will leave the project, but what's important is that we develop our standards and determine what constitute reliable and verifiable sources. In some cases that's going to change over time - the standard on blogs as sources, for example, is evolving as the nature of (some) blogs change. At the same time, it's unlikely for messageboards to be reliable sources (except as a primary source for what was said on the board)
Ian