On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure I totally understand the contention that a policy is only worth having if you can be blocked for violating it. How many blocks are issued for violating AGF or NPOV? A policy or a guideline - but not an essay. Personally I'd prefer a policy, because it has the weight of consensus behind it and thus amounts to stronger encouragement than a simple essay from someone few have ever heard of.
I know of plenty of blocks that have been placed for violations of CIVIL, which AGF is arguably an extension of. I'm sure someone rampantly assuming bad faith would be blocked pretty quickly, even if some other policy is cited for the block.
Policy generally describes how things are supposed to be done, and in some cases explicitly states what happens if it's not followed. For behavioral policies like CIVIL and AGF the obvious consequence is a block. For NPOV it's removal/refactoring of the contribution.
I'm not exactly sure what the obvious implication of breaching this new policy would be. I'm not even sure how it could be determined that a breach took place. If some remedy cannot be taken to "fix" a policy breach then what is the policy even doing? It's advising people on what *should* be done. Which sounds more like a guideline to me.
As far as a separate noticeboard - I think we have noticeboard proliferationitis as it is. Someone mentioned RSN yesterday and an admin had no idea what it was, so I think that demonstrates the limited utility of yet another reports noticeboard.
I'm an administrator and I have no clue what half of the noticeboards out there are, largely because I'm not active in those areas. Which is why it's nice to not cram all this stuff on ANI. People who know how to approach threats would monitor the page. The rest of us could ignore it with little consequence.