On 5 December 2011 22:08, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
<snip> > > I can quite see why people do think Wikipedia "Byzantine", which is the > basic message of what we are talking about. Probably trainee medics curse > the immune system as unreasonably complicated. The metaphor doesn't seem to > me either too defensive or too stretched. I think we should bear in mind > that more and better written "manual pages" would only work better if > people had the basic humility to read instructions, at least in the context > of complex systems they don't understand. > > Charles
You're making the argument that some complex systems (bureaucracy) are necessary and intrinsic to the success of the project. I think most people would agree. People are not challenging the existence of any bureaucracy; they're saying there is too much, that it's too difficult for the average person, and that we hallow bureaucracy and its mastery above more important considerations.
"Bureaucracy" may have a neutral meaning, but most people take it as a pejorative for "complex system of administration". They assume the literary models that spring to mind (the Circumlocution Office in "Little Dorrit", Kafka, Catch-22). They assume also analogies with complaints procedures or form-filling applications that we all meet from time to time.
The fairest comparison in the case in hand is the Circumlocution Office. I'm saying it's not too fair: there is a dedicated forum for "deletion review", and it isn't impossibly hard to navigate to it. Compared to being able to ask the deleting admin to think again, it is bureaucratic, and possibly process-bound. But it is also more likely to get to the real point of such requests, I think: outcomes that are better documented. We could tweak this or any other aspect of the system as a whole, but as of right now I don't see any proposals to fold separate pages into a more centralised place.
Charles