On 8/30/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know. Sometimes expanding upon a policy or making clear how it applies in certain cases can be clarifying. I find the current NPOV FAQ section to be very helpful in discussing NPOV with people new to it.
An alternative approach is to consider policy somewhat analogous to case law. Without stating that all decisions are prescriptive towards future decisions (I doubt anyone wants to pretend that Wikipedia decision-making is anywhere near as pretentious about its universality as the US court system pretends to be, though isn't), having a list of "here's one issue that was relatively important, and here's how it was satisfied to most people's satisfaction" might serve as a way of defusing future conflicts.
The problem is that once people think that a decision is going to result in a president they tend to bring up a load of annoying side issues.