--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 00:08, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
Ok, I admit it. I'm confused. I'm trying to say
that
policy should be changed first, and then the description should be updated to reflect the
change.
You seem to be saying that the description should
be
changed first, and then discussed. Your argument doesn't make sense to me (or most other people, it seems).
A lot of it comes down to a definition of "policy". What is it? Is it what people do? Is it what it says on the pages? Is it an admixture of the two? Is it what the most active contributor to Wikipedia at the time does? Etc. etc.
I look at Wikipedia policy as an agreement made between Wikipedians on how to handle various issues.
What I'm saying is that most changes to policy don't need to be discussed.
An odd thing to say, if policy is an agreement made between people.
If that assertion is true, then the best meta-policy is to by default just change the policy.
Does that reduction make more sense?
Well, it confirms what I thought you were saying.
There are lots of ways to edit the policy pages without changing the policy they describe:
correcting
typos and grammar, linking, re-writing for
clarity.
None of those change the policy much (but they do change the policy--it's not a black and white thing)...
No, they change the pages that describe the policy. The pages don't *define* the policy, so making corrections and links to the *decription* doesn't change the policy.
Let's pretent you and I are making an agreement. The agreement is that I will borrow $20 from you now, and pay you back $30 at the end of the month. Now, we write this down so we'll remember:
"The Cunctator agrees to land Stephen Gilbert $20. On October 31, Stephen will pay him back $30."
Oops, there's a typo. You correct it; "land" becomes "lend". Has our agreement changed?
...except for "re-writing for clarity". One man's clarity is another man's pea soup.
We agree on this, at least. :)
Stephen G.
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