Someone's trying to cure [[WP:IAR]] with instruction creep again. They're already trying to tell people who think the change is ridiculous not to intrude on the process. Pick today's process!
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Someone's trying to cure [[WP:IAR]] with instruction creep again. They're already trying to tell people who think the change is ridiculous not to intrude on the process. Pick today's process!
I think this is probably something cyclical:
1) IAR starts short and simple;
2) IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
3) IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and corollories to the previous additions;
4) IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity;
5) someone sane comes along and makes it short and simple again;
6) we have a big bunfight about what the role of IAR is, generally vastly complicated by people who don't understand what the point of it is and are resistant to having it explained to them;
7) see (1)
The 'Brainstorming' page appears to be a rather more organised attempt at step (2), but I can't see that it has any realistic chance of breaking the cycle.
Some Wikipedians always seem to want to artificially restrict IAR with examples, procedures and so on, because they are worried that 'IAR will be abused'. What I think we need to remind these people of frequently is that it really doesn't matter all that much if IAR *does* get 'abused' (whatever that is taken to mean), since this is still a Wiki and almost any change is trivially undoable.
Cheers,
N.
Nick Boalch wrote:
I think this is probably something cyclical:
- IAR starts short and simple;
- IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
- IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and corollories to the previous additions;
- IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity...
I've never paid much attention to IAR's convolutions or its talk page, so this may have been tried already, but I wonder if it would work if part of the capsule description were along the lines of, "Ignore any rule you can get away with." That is, rather than trying to prescriptively limn which rules can't be broken versus which ones can, and how (an approach which really does seem to demolish both the spirit and the letter of IAR, and especially that letter A), the notion would be that you can ignore any rule you want to when it's reasonable to do so and when it helps the project. How do you know whether it's truly reasonable and helps the project? If people thank you afterwards. What feedback mechanism is there to assist aspiring rule-ignorers who don't yet have decent intuition about what is and isn't reasonable, and are therefore liable to screw up and do something grossly unreasonable without realizing it? Why, the recriminations and flamewars that spring up whenever anyone does that, of course. Fearing those recriminations, a reasonable and conscientious editor will naturally and automatically shy away from dangerous rule-ignoring actions that they can't be sure would meet consensus.
Now, someone's going to say, "That's fine, but it only works for editors who *care* about not pissing people off, and who are interested in learning from their mistakes. It doesn't do anything to stop anarchic renegades." And that's true. But it's only the conscientious editors who would have read and tried to follow any detailed prescriptive rules and guidelines anyway -- the renegades would just ignore those, too.
(I realize I haven't said anything here that wasn't implicit -- or maybe even explicit -- in the IAR policy since day 1. I guess the point is to keep reminding ourselves, and the policy's critics, that yes, you really can ignore any rule when doing so helps the project, and yes, this is potentially a horribly dangerous policy which a determined rule-ignorer could really abuse, but no, that doesn't mean we're going to try to castrate the policy in order to prevent abuse; what we're going to rely on to prevent abuse is people's being reasonable, and the knowledge that most things can be undone. And it's true, people won't always be reasonable, but we'll deal with that as it happens, because trying to absolutely prevent it would cause more problems than it would solve.)
On 02/10/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
(I realize I haven't said anything here that wasn't implicit -- or maybe even explicit -- in the IAR policy since day 1.
Hence my suggestion of a "Commentaries on IAR" page.
- d.
On 02/10/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
I think this is probably something cyclical:
- IAR starts short and simple;
- IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
- IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and corollories to the previous additions;
- IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity;
- someone sane comes along and makes it short and simple again;
- we have a big bunfight about what the role of IAR is, generally vastly complicated by people who don't understand what the point of it is and are resistant to having it explained to them;
- see (1)
The 'Brainstorming' page appears to be a rather more organised attempt at step (2), but I can't see that it has any realistic chance of breaking the cycle. Some Wikipedians always seem to want to artificially restrict IAR with examples, procedures and so on, because they are worried that 'IAR will be abused'. What I think we need to remind these people of frequently is that it really doesn't matter all that much if IAR *does* get 'abused' (whatever that is taken to mean), since this is still a Wiki and almost any change is trivially undoable.
Please do add this text to said talk page ;-)
- d.
On 10/2/06, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Someone's trying to cure [[WP:IAR]] with instruction creep again. They're already trying to tell people who think the change is ridiculous not to intrude on the process. Pick today's process!
I think this is probably something cyclical:
IAR starts short and simple;
IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and corollories to the previous additions;
IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity;
someone sane comes along and makes it short and simple again;
we have a big bunfight about what the role of IAR is, generally vastly complicated by people who don't understand what the point of it is and are resistant to having it explained to them;
see (1)
The 'Brainstorming' page appears to be a rather more organised attempt at step (2), but I can't see that it has any realistic chance of breaking the cycle.
Some Wikipedians always seem to want to artificially restrict IAR with examples, procedures and so on, because they are worried that 'IAR will be abused'. What I think we need to remind these people of frequently is that it really doesn't matter all that much if IAR *does* get 'abused' (whatever that is taken to mean), since this is still a Wiki and almost any change is trivially undoable.
As the creator of the brainstorming page, I must first apologize for dare thinking about tinkering with the anarchist's prime directive.
The policy is a philosophical policy, not a literal one. I don't expect the average wikipedia editor to understand philosophy. It is much harder to explain than NPOV and NPOV goes to great lengths to explain it.
Leaving IAR as a piece of scripture is unacceptable. When looking at religious text, most people do not take the bible literally but figuratively. We can not just say it has "deep and subtle meaning," we must also offer a context that guides a reader to make their own conclusions.
This isn't "instruction creep" ... it is basic education.
Save the holy verses for religious texts and rhetoric for dev/null . On Wikipedia, sane consensus-built uniform policy pages please.
-jtp
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jason Potkanski stated for the record:
Save the holy verses for religious texts and rhetoric for dev/null . On Wikipedia, sane consensus-built uniform policy pages please.
-jtp
This message will serve as declaration of my intent to ignore with extreme prejudice all "sane consensus-built uniform policy pages" the moment they interfere with building an encyclopedia.
- -- Sean Barrett | Madness takes its toll. sean@epoptic.com | Please have exact change.
Jason Potkanski wrote:
As the creator of the brainstorming page, I must first apologize for dare thinking about tinkering with the anarchist's prime directive.
The policy is a philosophical policy, not a literal one. I don't expect the average wikipedia editor to understand philosophy. It is much harder to explain than NPOV and NPOV goes to great lengths to explain it.
Leaving IAR as a piece of scripture is unacceptable. When looking at religious text, most people do not take the bible literally but figuratively. We can not just say it has "deep and subtle meaning," we must also offer a context that guides a reader to make their own conclusions.
This isn't "instruction creep" ... it is basic education.
Save the holy verses for religious texts and rhetoric for dev/null . On Wikipedia, sane consensus-built uniform policy pages please.
I must commend the writer for confessing to his inability to understand philosophy.
"Ignore All Rules" is not a policy; it is a principle. This is not a matter of taking the WikiBible literally or figuratively. The most profound biblical principles or those of other religions are said in very simple words that get right to the point. To say that "we must also offer a context that guides a reader to make their own conclusions," creates a paradox, because by offering a guide to interpreting the principle we put the reader on the way to reaching the conclusions that we want him to reach. We do much better by stating a principle, guiding the reader by our actions, and being willing to adjust our views if the newbie presents a good idea.
Uniform policy pages impose stagnation, they make change with the times very difficult, and they insult the intelligence of those who may not yet have contributed to Wikipedia. In another context that kind of thing gave us the copyright laws that we all love so well.
Ec