charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote
I do not support your apparent view that Wikipedia's exponential growth is somehow justification for an exponential growth in the corpus of its policies and guidelines.
That is not my view. I have scarcely had anything to do with policy/guideline pages, since arriving in 2003. You might note that [[Wikipedia:Spam]], which logically is only a subsection in the 'conflict of interest' area, is by itself a page of perhaps comparable length. The logic is to get the right high-level pages set up, so that the basic principles are put forward in a few places, and detailed material hangs off those. (I have actually also argued for a handbook approach, since it seems to me utopian to think Wikipedia in its current state is not easily comprehensible. I could have wished for more support on that front.)
I apologize if my previous comment was somewhat trollish. If you have not been dealing with policy pages before this, welcome to the wonderful world of wiki policy. ;-) Now you can understand why I mostly avoid it.
I absolutely agree with well-framed high-level policy pages. There is also great merit to the handbook approach, though I think we differ in just how much should be hanging from the chandelier of basic principles before it gets so weighed down that it crashes to the floor. I prefer a strong element of concision in rules. The essentials of the ten commandments are simple, and that is important for their acceptance among Christians. One of the key values implicit in the US Constitution is its relative simplicity; it still gives rise to a lot of argument and debate about its meaning, but would the Europeans have been better off to accept the constitution that was proposed to them.
The essentials of basic principles are probably already there in the five pillars. The other important need is a coherent process for altering rules that does not allow the system to become a victim of the whims of whoever happens to be interested in a particular rule at a particular time. I have a throretical interest in what happens to Conflict of Interest, but it has no immediacy in relation to the things that I am doing now. It may include much that conflicts with my sense of justice, but is it a worthwhile allocation of my time? The rules need to be broadly acceptable, but there needs to be a mechanism to make changes when the community feels that it needs to happen. A small committee of highly trusted people is probably needed to lead the process. Their role would not be to make the decisions themselves, but to organize and present them.
Ec