David Gerard wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
We can write guidelines and guidelines and
guidelines, and no-one will
care except the writers or someone looking for a stick to beat their
opponent on the wiki with - because you can't Taylorise clue.
(When was the last time you read the Manual of Style through? Me
neither.)
One could begin with Taylorizing the Taylorizations.
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? :-)
Ec