On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 00:08, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
How can one edit a policy page without changing the policy? (Barring pages like Votes for deletion that is a combination of policy-non-policy).
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.
What I'm saying is that most changes to policy don't need to be discussed.
If that assertion is true, then the best meta-policy is to by default just change the policy.
Does that reduction make more sense?
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) except for "re-writing for clarity". One man's clarity is another man's pea soup.