On 3/21/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
When we were developing BLP, there was no committee, no poll, no seeking of specific authorization from Jimbo. It was clearly a good proposal, clearly needed in some form, and everyone who posted about it wanted it in broad terms. It was then just a question of filling in the details and making sure it was consistent with the other policies.
In the case of [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons]], Jimbo was very much behind it, and had a good head of steam on. Perhaps this was not visible to folks who were not a part of the arbitration committee, but that was the case. Thus you knew you had Jimbo behind you.
This can be contrasted with [[Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing enterprises]] which has languished without any serious attention, other than a Free Republic activist's. While I tried to interest Jimbo and Brad, I was unsuccessful with either of them.
Okay, but this leaves us with a real problem. We're not psychic, so we can't know who supports a policy or who objects unless they say something about it. Hundreds of editors contributed to the debate about ATT -- it wasn't a secret! -- and almost all (in fact, my recollection is all) were supportive of the merge, though people had different ideas about the details. But the merge of three untidy pages into one page was completely supported. We had exactly the same broad consensus that we had for BLP.
We can't have a situation where the ArbCom or Jimbo are determining policy in ways that aren't visible to the rest of us, because how are we meant to intuit what they want? We told them about ATT, no one got back with an objection, hundreds of editors (experienced and respected editors among them) explicitly agreed with the merge over a period of five months, and those editors started linking to and quoting from the new policy page *before it went live*, which is the best endorsement of all. In fact, that's *why* it went live, because people clearly, clearly liked it.
I can understand not wanting a situation where a large group of editors, maybe new editors or inexperienced ones, comes up with a new policy that blindsides people, and we need safeguards in place against that. So I completely understand that concern.
But where you have a group of experienced editors carefully merging two pages, making sure there are no changes, seeking input from other experienced editors, with hundreds of editors offering opinions over five months, that's a totally different situation, and the outcome of that process ought to be respected.
Sarah