On 22/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
No, no we don't. We can decide on a case-by-case basis, by discussion and consensus among the editors of a given article, the same way we do for *every other editorial decision*...
We don't decide every decision on a case by case basis, we have policy to determine more decisions. The exact details of how to apply a policy to a given situation is determined on a case by case basis, but there is usually a policy to apply.
But we don't have a policy for everything. We can't have a policy for everything - we simply cannot reduce every editorial decision to a flowchart and a statute book.
We make our own case-specific decisions all the time, on a thousand different issues of content and layout and presentation, and there is nothing that will kill the encyclopedia if our editors start making a thousand and one sometimes.
I cannot think of a single time I've consulted a policy to decide how best to incorporate an image into an article, or whether I should; if it's then disputed, I talk to other editors and we work something out. All show/hide would become is another tool for incorporating an image to the best extent, another factor in the subtle editorial decision on how to construct the page.
It becomes a lot less threatening if we stop thinking of it as a once-off concession and consider it as an unusual special case, like - oh, I don't know, having text in columns. It'd look silly most of the time, but sometimes we find that functionality improves the article.
If you add show/hide tags to [[Muhammad]], how long do you think it will take for the edit war to start on [[Clitoris]]? I'd give it about 3 hours...
Let them, I say. Our editorial quality will not be ruined if articles are structured in such a way that you have to click a button to see a photograph of a clitoris on [[Clitoris]] - nor will it be ruined if you have to click a button to see a photograph of a jackdaw on [[Corvus monedula]], not that I can see anyone caring about that. (Made to look a little sillier, mind you, but then we do plenty of that already!)
Common sense will stop it being applied grossly inappropriately; I can trust our community on that.
Our fundamental guiding principle is that people can reach consensus on everything, can work together and produce a result, if we give them the encouragement to do so and a framework in which that's expected. Saying we don't trust people to reach consensus on applying a tool if we let them start using it... well, if we used that logic every time we allowed people to do things, we'd never have had a wiki. And if it all goes horribly wrong, well, we can get together and decide not to use it in future.
But say we do have such a tag on [[Clitoris]]. Why would this be inherently a bad thing? There are no shortage of perfectly legitimate reasons a sizable subset of readers (& editors) would not want an immediately visible image on the article, which have nothing to do with prurience or a desire for censorship!
Indeed, the reasons are a lot more justifiable to the general population than the Muhammad ones. The phrases "public computer rooms" and "embarrassment" should explain a lot of them...