I've added this to my process essay (which I should declare "done" some time soon really). It's too long and too bitter. Your help is most welcomed.
* Prescriptive when it should be a guideline
** A lot of people think making things hard policy means people will actually follow them. This means editorial guidelines get phrased as didactic policy. This results in stupidity such as WP:RS (a guideline) being used by apparently insane robots as a reason to gut articles of content. ** Policy is harsh stuff, and there's a limit to how much people will hold in their heads. Everything that can be a guideline should be, because clueless editors won't understand it and bad faith editors won't care.
to expand:
There is no point being didactic on editorial guidance pages even if you REALLY REALLY think people REALLY REALLY need to do this. Because it doesn't work. It doesn't stop clueless editors, because they won't understand it. It doesn't stop malicious editors, because they don't care. It provides a new way for apparently insane robots to inappropriately misapply process without understanding why it's there. And it pisses off the good clueful editors who go "what, MORE policy?"
Now. The above bullet points are from the perspective of me, who hates this stuff. What's a phrasing that would get through to someone who thinks being didactic on editorial guideline pages is a necessary idea? This is the school of thought that removes all blog or Usenet references because they don't like them, then the apparently insane robots move in.
- d.
Interesting and well said.
2006/9/20, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
I've added this to my process essay (which I should declare "done" some time soon really). It's too long and too bitter. Your help is most welcomed.
Link?
/habj
On 24/09/06, habj sweetadelaide@gmail.com wrote:
2006/9/20, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
I've added this to my process essay (which I should declare "done" some time soon really). It's too long and too bitter. Your help is most welcomed.
Interesting and well said. Link?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_essay
- d.
d. the Gerard wrote:
** A lot of people think making things hard policy means peoplewill actually follow them. This means editorial guidelines get phrased as didactic policy. ** Policy is harsh stuff, and there's a limit to how much people will hold in their heads.
Here's another slant:
It's easy to imagine we need lots of reasonably hard rules, because everyone knows that people are imperfect, and that asking them to "be reasonable" or to "follow the spirit of the guidelines" doesn't always work. So the goal is to remove imperfect, subjective human judgement from the equation, and replace it with a complete, cohesive, consistent set of nicely objective rules, which will ensure magnificently coordinated, correct behavior.
And that might work, *if* the rules were in fact complete, cohesive, and consistent.
But they rarely are, even in a real society where there are armies of paid legislators and civil servants poring over the legalese. In an ad-hoc project where anyone can edit anything (including the guidelines and policy documents), it's a virtual certainty that the rules will never be complete, cohesive, or consistent.
But when the rules are incomplete or inconsistent, fallible human judgment is right back in the center of the equation again, as various people (both on the doing-things side and the enforcing- or cleaning-up-things side) try valiantly to decide *which* rule ought to apply in each situation.
In the worst case, you end up with a lose-lose situation, in which the rules exact all the costs that rules often do (in terms of stifling initiative or creativity, taking on a life of their own, and requiring significant resources to maintain, thus parasitizing the rest of the enterprise), while delivering none of the benefits, meaning that the costs of living without rules -- the dependency on fallible human judgement, and the eventual chaotic anarchy that may result when people do what they want and fight over whether they're allowed to -- are also borne.
As always, it's important to take a step back and assess whether a system -- in this case, a set of rules at a given level of attempted completeness -- is actually achieving its goals, and is doing so commensurate with its costs.
On 24/09/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
It's easy to imagine we need lots of reasonably hard rules, because everyone knows that people are imperfect, and that asking them to "be reasonable" or to "follow the spirit of the guidelines" doesn't always work. So the goal is to remove imperfect, subjective human judgement from the equation, and replace it with a complete, cohesive, consistent set of nicely objective rules, which will ensure magnificently coordinated, correct behavior. And that might work, *if* the rules were in fact complete, cohesive, and consistent.
Thank you! I forgot the "grand unified process for everything" factor when you get a bunch of aspergic geeks with an allergy for grey areas in one place. Here's my version of that:
The grand unified process for everything!
Occasionally people come along who think it should be possible to proceduralise and hence automate as much of Wikipedia process as possible. Human judgement is flawed, imperfect and subject to bias. The flaws here are:
1. The core policies imply human judgement. You can't Taylorise clue. 2. The rules are not complete, coherent or consistent; they cannot be made so without a complete rewrite, which is profoundly unlikely to achieve consensus. 3. Humans are not robots. * No-one reads the whole Manual of Style before editing. Or after. I haven't and neither have you. * The more hard rules, the harder it is for people to follow them. So they won't. 4. Grey areas are what make human interaction interesting. Attempting to remove them will make for (a) a lot of arbitrary decisions on black versus white (b) a lot of frustrated people who leave. 5. The real world contains politics. Everyone with an agenda to push will seek to have their bias encoded. Especially those working in the best interests of all.
In the worst case, you end up with a lose-lose situation: the rules exact their cost (stifling initiative or creativity, taking on a life of their own requiring significant resources to maintain, parasitizing the rest of the enterprise), while delivering none of the benefits. You then also bear the costs of no rules: fallible human judgement and the anarchy of people doing what they want and fighting over whether they're allowed to.
As WP:POINT starts: Wikipedia is inconsistent, and Wikipedia permits things it does not condone.
- d.