Toby Bartels wrote:
*Every* iteration? Even this one by mav?: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&... That's not a request!
I overlooked that one! Well, Mav should not have written it that way.
Indeed he would, which is why it strikes me as especially odd in this case that mav was seeming to impose such a dramatic change like this. He explains that it's not dramatic -- just an extension of our long-standing policies of openness -- and that's a good argument.
Sure, and it's a good reason to have it as a soft guideline, i.e. 'please do this'.
I think that the point that Nicholas was trying to make is that /if/ mav's edit (cited above) were accepted as OK, /then/ en.Wikipedia would be making policy with no input. But mav's edit has been challenged and doesn't stand, so we're not actually in this position. You (and I) know that we don't in fact work this way, but a relatively new person might reasonably fear that mav's edit might end up being accepted as OK.
I think that's a fair assessment all around.
You probably aren't reading the same web pages; you in particular don't seem to have read the one cited above: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&...
That's right, I overlooked that one. All the versions I looked at (which was plenty, I thought!) didn't say that people MUST do anything.
If I can get philosophical for a moment, the only MUST we have around here is that people can't do things that would get them banned. But you have to really work to get yourself banned. Courteously failing to follow some guideline like this doesn't rise to that level.
To be sure, this is hardly getting anybody in trouble. But to a new user, that may not be so clear -- it helps to clarify.
That's right.
--Jimbo