The amount of traffic on wikipedia-l and wikien-l is getting way out of hand, and so I'd like to propose the following voluntary guidelines. By 'voluntary' I mean that I'm not about to start moderating the lists or kicking people off for failing this, but I do ask that everyone have consideration for others and try to remember these.

(And, I should say up front: I've been bad about this myself, and I admit it, so don't call me a hypocrite!)

1. Wikipedia-l should be used for *policy* discussions that have *global* implications, stuff about the general theory of NPOV, stuff about how the software impacts our actual practices, etc. There will often be overlap with topics on wikien-l, but we should still try to keep wikipedia-l global in scope.

2. Wikien-l should be used for *policy* discussions that have implications primarily on en.wikipedia.org. This includes limited discussion of individual articles, discussion of particular disputes, discussion of policies and practices that have arisen solely on en rather than globally. Discussions of actual _content_ of articles is fine, but should be tied as much as possible to a discussion of general principles -- the place to talk about articles is the article talk pages!

3. The distinction between wikipedia-l and wikien-l is sometimes fuzzy, so let's cut people some slack if they don't do it precisely the way we would do it.

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For *both* lists, check twice before sending -- could your message be better sent to just one or two people? Is it just a joke? If it is just a joke, it is so funny that you have to crack it to everyone? (Sometimes this is fine, I'm just saying let's keep ourselves under control.)

Is your post likely to hurt feelings? Is it likely to make a bad situation worse? Is there a way to rephrase a few words to be kinder, and to have a better chance of swaying good people to your point of view? Are you simply antagonizing a jerk? Are you simply being a jerk?

The main thing is: let's keep the lists focussed on our mission, and keep extraneous junk to a bare minimum.

--Jimbo