On 2/9/06, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I can't imagine why someone would notice the
tagline "the free
encyclopedia that anyone can edit" but ignore 230 pages of dense rules.
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.
Analogy: You get hired to work as a programmer for Microsoft. On the
first day, you make a couple of major changes to the kernel. When your
CVS changes get reverted, you express surprise - "If they didn't want
me to edit code, why would they hire me?". The point is, you know
that there are rules for what code you should and shouldn't edit, even
if you aren't aware of what those rules are.
So, we should be happy for users to edit in blissful ignorance, but at
the very very least we should make them aware that there are rules,
and if they break them, we will politely let them know, and tell them
which one they broke.
Steve