On 11/3/06, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
What policies/procedures/guidelines on en:wp strike you as just awful? Please list and elaborate.
This could be in any of purpose, current wording, ineffectuality or just being a completely bad idea. Or anything else that makes it just awful.
A7 and G11 continue to chap my behind. They go against what we'd normally use for a CSD, and the high number of poor uses (yes, I know it generally works the way it's allegedly supposed to, but too many other things get caught in the crossfire) make it more of a pain than anything else. And that's not even getting into the WP:BITE considerations.
Once upon a time there was a vote about "criteria for speedy deletion". I thought it was needlessly bureaucratic, and best to be ignored. Since then, a whole language has developed "A7", "G11" and the criteria have multipled like crazy. Once upon a time I ignored it because I thought it was needless bureaucracy - now I ignore it because it is impenetrable bureaucracy, and quite frankly, if I wanted to deal with crap like that I would have gone to law school.
WP:IAR should really be historical at this point. Did it have use back in
the day? Maybe so, but we have enough admins and useful policies and guidelines at this point where there really isn't ever a need to do so anymore, and is really just trotted out by people who know better these days.
While IAR is often abused as a reason to be disruptive, the truth is that it's the last defense against insanity in many cases, specifically becausewe have too many useless guidelines and policies. When we have too many people who don't understand the difference between guidelines and policies, and who wikilawyer guidelines into "absolute truths"... we have a problem.
IAR is good, but when done intentionally.
I don't think the off-wiki personal attack addition was a bad one in
retrospect, but it would sure be nice to see some consistent application of it.
Yep - to begin with, in IRC
Ian