On 02/10/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
I think this is probably something cyclical:
- IAR starts short and simple;
- IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
- IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and corollories to the previous additions;
- IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity;
- someone sane comes along and makes it short and simple again;
- we have a big bunfight about what the role of IAR is, generally vastly complicated by people who don't understand what the point of it is and are resistant to having it explained to them;
- see (1)
The 'Brainstorming' page appears to be a rather more organised attempt at step (2), but I can't see that it has any realistic chance of breaking the cycle. Some Wikipedians always seem to want to artificially restrict IAR with examples, procedures and so on, because they are worried that 'IAR will be abused'. What I think we need to remind these people of frequently is that it really doesn't matter all that much if IAR *does* get 'abused' (whatever that is taken to mean), since this is still a Wiki and almost any change is trivially undoable.
Please do add this text to said talk page ;-)
- d.