On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 23:59, Toby Bartels wrote:
My understanding is that policy is to be decided (or defined if you will) by discussion on talk pages and the mailing list (and in theory meta). People have said as much here before without confrontation. Once that has been done, the policy page should reflect the decision; that much should be obvious.
This is where you're wrong. In general, policy is decided by editing the policy pages. If there's contention, then it moves to the talk pages. Only in the rare case where this is somehow "dangerous" (because the policy has sweeping and immediate consequence) or the process breaks down horribly does it need to go to the mailing list.
This is how it's worked historically, and how it should work in the future. The alternative is entirely too hierarchical and bureaucratic.
<snip>
Right. But editing the policy page is not the way to decide the issue. I hope that you agree.
Nope! I hope you'll be able to understand why editing policy pages is (as a general rule of thumb) the way to decide the issue.
In general, policy pages benefit from direct editing in the same way as article pages do; where the cumulative edits on articles influence them towards comprehensiveness and objectivity, the cumulative edits on the policy pages influence them toward robustness and fairness.