Ray Saintonge wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Heh. I have started in a slow way tightening up some of our ridiculously bloated, opaquely-written and special-case-riddled guideline and policy pages; I look forward to the time to really go the hack on the MoS. I think it could be one-third the length without losing a single useful detail. Heck, someone might even want to read it for reasons other than querulousness.
I have tried similar things at Wiktionary, where I often trace a wide circle of "What links here" that ends up where I started. The problem is not just with the people writing imaginative new policies, but also with individuals who come along with a great plan to reorganize everything. They start with a lot of enthusiasm, but half way through their project they fall off the edge of the earth never to be seen again. Then at least two others develop contradictory policies on the same thing on two different pages; this entitles newbies to use whichever one they found first to justify whatever action they want to take. One never knows when one will be deleting someone's pet policy> Being bureaucrat and the most senior active editor in the project buys me a certain amount of sin points, but I would prefer to limit that kind of boldness to situations which really matter. Dear Abby, what would you do? :-)
Find people you can sanity-check with. Then start shooting. If you make a mistake, take it back and make good - this buys a lot of leeway. Interpret everything per goal, e.g. "We're here to write an encyclopedia".
- d.