A few more things need to be said about this:

(1) Most, if not all, of the most important policy decisions have already long since been (at least tentatively) settled upon and formulated.

(2) Most statements of policy, especially if they've been around for long, have been looked at again and again by Wikipedians new and old.

(3) Unlike the case in the first few months of the project, when a lot of the most basic policy was being decided on, there are now scores of people who are *very* familiar with the finer points of policy, and with their justification.

Each of these points individually implies that any significant change to a long-standing statement of policy *probably* demands some prior discussion. And such prior discussion probably should happen on the mailing list, mainly because that's where those who know and care about policy happen to expect policy decisions to be made. I can think of some exceptions; for example, if some (for whatever reason) clearly and uncontroversially defunct policy statement still hasn't been updated, it's just a public service that the policy be changed, and a talk: page comment is probably all that's needed.

Larry