G'day Sam,
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
it's not as if *all* process is bad. It often really does serve a purpose. Maybe people need to think about the ramifications of not following any given process. If the ramifications are not bad, then the process could be scrapped, or downgraded to "howto" or something.
This is absolutely key. Policy is normally right. It has to be. Otherwise it is bad policy. If a policy *normally* gives the wrong result, it is bad policy. If it *sometimes* gives the bad result, it is fallible policy. And fallible, dear friends, is the best we're going to get.
Policy and process are sticks; the policy one is for hitting people with. NPA, CIVIL, AGF, etc. all exist because we sometimes need to hit someone over the head when they refuse to conform to "don't be a dick". NOR, CITE are there because "don't make shit up" isn't obvious enough and sometimes need to be accompanied by a whack to the noggin as well. Similar, but less obvious whacking has occurred in support of "we're an encyclopaedia" and "we're neutral". Funnily enough (or perhaps not), nobody's felt the need to create policies which help shore up "ignore all rules". Perhaps there's hope yet? The point, regardless, is this: policy is a stick for hitting people because they're too damn stupid to do the Right Thing. If you're already doing (or striving to do) the Right Thing, then policy doesn't have to apply to you.
Process, meanwhile, is a crutch. It's there to help editors through complicated actions. The AfD process, for example, theoretically attempts to help editors get bad articles deleted while making sure they don't delete stuff that ought not to be deleted (you might liken it to a crutch for Gulliver, and if he didn't have it he'd fall and collapse a row of Lilliputian houses). Just as with policy we have editors who don't need to be hit over the head, there are times when Wikipedians don't *need* a crutch.
We must always be careful not to confuse these two ... er ... metaphors (ahem). Policy is not a crutch, and leaning on it when you don't have to can lead to absurdity. Process is not a stick to hit people with, and giving someone a fair and unnecessary wallop behind the ears is not likely to improve their humour (unless they're a member of CVU, but that's another post entirely).
We must be very careful to avoid process/policy is evil.
I don't think it hurts, frankly. Policy is only as strong as the reasons behind it. The point of not following policy for its own sake is that you end up doing what a good policy would dictate even if that policy didn't exist ... and you ignore bad policies, whether they exist or not.