On 2/9/06, Phil Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
On 2/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
Exactly. I'm not really sure what my point is here, but perhaps we should make a token effort to impress upon people that there *are* policies, and as long as they edit in ignorance of such policies, they should not claim any particular rights or presume anything in particular about the project.
Step #1 - Make the policies readable and intelligible.
We should note that Steve has been working on just that, with the project to put a one-line description at the top of each policy or guideline.
Now we need to hack away at the guidelines removing everything that's aimed at the clueless or at bad-faith editors, because they're the two groups that don't or can't read the guidelines, and writing aimed at them is the #1 source of instruction creep.
Then we can get to work on making sense of badly-written policies ...
- d.
On 2/9/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
We should note that Steve has been working on just that, with the project to put a one-line description at the top of each policy or guideline.
Oh yeah, there's [[Wikipedia:List of policies]] now, which contains all those summaries. I was unable to convince the community at large (or, less politely, certain individuals rather protective o individual policy pages) of the benefit of having a one-line description at the top of every single policy page. However, about a quarter of them have such a thing, using {policy in a nutshell}.
I've also done what I can to chop some of the deadwood off some of our sillier policies, and merge a couple here and there. And tried to rework [[WP:POL]] a bit. But there's a lot of work left to do.
The next major thing to accomplish would be to come up with a definite "recommended reading order" of policies (as hinted at on WP:POL) and shove step #1 down newbie's throats. This should probably be a condensed version of [[Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes]]. Then we can start to educate them on the very very basic policies of V, OR, NPOV, copyvio etc.
Now we need to hack away at the guidelines removing everything that's aimed at the clueless or at bad-faith editors, because they're the two groups that don't or can't read the guidelines, and writing aimed at them is the #1 source of instruction creep.
Nicely put. Maybe we should have policies, guidelines, policies for bad faith editors, and guidelines for bad faith editors. Then we can keep shovelling the instruction creep into the latter two categories, so that they're there if someone really badly enough wants to beat someone over the head with policy.
Then we can get to work on making sense of badly-written policies ...
Most of them aren't that bad, I've concluded. Generally a bit wordy, but they're fairly meaningful, and mostly cover actual situations that arise, or so it seems. A firmer definition of exactly what a policy is, and how a policy comes to be would be nice though. Someone recently split a policy into three separate articles with no discussion before or afterwards. Someone else insisted that [[WP:ENC]] was policy. sigh.
Steve
The next major thing to accomplish would be to come up with a definite "recommended reading order" of policies (as hinted at on WP:POL) and shove step #1 down newbie's throats. This should probably be a condensed version of [[Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes]]. Then we can start to educate them on the very very basic policies of V, OR, NPOV, copyvio etc.
I think the first policy new editors need to be educated in is "allow your contributions to be edited mercilessly". I've always seen that as the flip side of IAR: if you're a new user or otherwise not inclined to pay much attention to learning the rules, *ignore them*, but let the rest of us massage your edits into a usable form. This is how my interpretation of IAR differs from most: I actually think that we're *supposed* to ignore NPOV much, if not most of the time. Contributing information and making sure that information is written from a NPOV are two separate tasks. Give us information in whatever form you're best able to and let other editors make sure it conforms to NPOV. (Writing polemics doesn't help us much, and neither does writing polemics but prefacing each point with "some say". On the other hand, if you write "the Spanish-American war was primarily caused by U.S. expansionism" and are able to give a source, we don't need to beat you over the head with a stick because we can rephrase it ourselves.)
On 2/10/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
but let the rest of us massage your edits into a usable form. This is how my interpretation of IAR differs from most: I actually think that we're *supposed* to ignore NPOV much, if not most of the time.
I agree with your interpretation. I recently wrote an intro for [[Freddie Mercury]], which basically focuses on his good points. I simply didn't have anything bad to add. I was presuming at the time I added it that someone else would take the shine off, if needed.
I'd generally rather see a slightly positively-biased addition than no addition at all. And probably the same for a slightly negative addition.
Maybe we need a list of priorities for edits. Number one priority: no copyvio Number two: no vandalism
etc etc
Is this feasible?
Steve
Contributing information and making sure that information is written from a NPOV are two separate tasks. Give us information in whatever form you're best able to and let other editors make sure it conforms to NPOV. (Writing polemics doesn't help us much, and neither does writing polemics but prefacing each point with "some say". On the other hand, if you write "the Spanish-American war was primarily caused by U.S. expansionism" and are able to give a source, we don't need to beat you over the head with a stick because we can rephrase it ourselves.)
-- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
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On 2/10/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe we need a list of priorities for edits. Number one priority: no copyvio Number two: no vandalism
Actually number two would be no libel, wouldn't it.
Steve