On Monday 30 September 2002 09:33 pm, you wrote:
Well, *I* certainly don't think that they need to be locked down. I don't think that even [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]] needs to be locked down -- it's on my watch list, I'll fix it. We just need to remember to be vigilant for suspicious edits, like anonymous IDs, new users that we don't recognise, and you (that is, people that may not know to discuss policy changes). That should be easy enough; ensure accuracy and NPOV on these pages just as on encyclopædia articles.
-- Toby
But they are /not/ encyclopedia articles, or even talk pages for that matter. Therefore normal rules of editing do not really apply.
At the very least there needs to be boilerplate on those pages mentioning that they are policy/guidelines/conventions/style guides/rules to consider etc. and also have statements indicating how each page type should be edited; policy of course can't be changed by fiat; neither can conventions (although there should be a bit more wiggle-room here), style guides are somewhat open to unilateral change (although you should expect protests and reverts) and of course rules to consider can be edited fairly liberally.
Just some thoughts.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 01:48, Daniel Mayer wrote:
But they are /not/ encyclopedia articles, or even talk pages for that matter. Therefore normal rules of editing do not really apply.
At the very least there needs to be boilerplate on those pages mentioning that they are policy/guidelines/conventions/style guides/rules to consider etc. and also have statements indicating how each page type should be edited; policy of course can't be changed by fiat; neither can conventions (although there should be a bit more wiggle-room here), style guides are somewhat open to unilateral change (although you should expect protests and reverts) and of course rules to consider can be edited fairly liberally.
These ideas represent exactly the kind of stultification and bureaucratization I fear.
To be less vaguely disapproving, I'll say that the fewer rules there are, the better. And the fewer rules about the rules, even better.
It is *crucial* to recognize that by comparison to the number of Wikipedians in the future, the collective number of participants on this mailing list is effectively equivalent to a single person. So policies that are hashed out on the mailing list right now are little better than ones done "unilaterally" or "by fiat". And in reality, all policies at Wikipedia derive from policy decisions made "by fiat" by Jimbo. "By fiat" isn't a) inherently evil and b) inherently the province of single editors.
Decisions made by committees aren't much better than decisions made by trustworthy individuals. In fact, they're often worse.
If you find that reasonable, then the question of trustworthiness arises, which is another interesting and fruitful discussion.
At 02:21 AM 10/1/02 -0400, you wrote:
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 01:48, Daniel Mayer wrote:
But they are /not/ encyclopedia articles, or even talk pages for that
matter.
Therefore normal rules of editing do not really apply.
At the very least there needs to be boilerplate on those pages mentioning that they are policy/guidelines/conventions/style guides/rules to consider etc. and also have statements indicating how each page type should be
edited;
policy of course can't be changed by fiat; neither can conventions
(although
there should be a bit more wiggle-room here), style guides are somewhat
open
to unilateral change (although you should expect protests and reverts)
and of
course rules to consider can be edited fairly liberally.
These ideas represent exactly the kind of stultification and bureaucratization I fear.
To be less vaguely disapproving, I'll say that the fewer rules there are, the better. And the fewer rules about the rules, even better.
It is *crucial* to recognize that by comparison to the number of Wikipedians in the future, the collective number of participants on this mailing list is effectively equivalent to a single person. So policies that are hashed out on the mailing list right now are little better than ones done "unilaterally" or "by fiat".
No. It's open to anyone who wants to be here, and if people use informative subject lines, someone can choose to read only the policy-related messages.
Can you really not see the difference between something one person does, and something a few dozen discuss?
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 09:32, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
At 02:21 AM 10/1/02 -0400, you wrote:
It is *crucial* to recognize that by comparison to the number of Wikipedians in the future, the collective number of participants on this mailing list is effectively equivalent to a single person. So policies that are hashed out on the mailing list right now are little better than ones done "unilaterally" or "by fiat".
No. It's open to anyone who wants to be here, and if people use informative subject lines, someone can choose to read only the policy-related messages.
Can you really not see the difference between something one person does, and something a few dozen discuss?
Of course I can. But can you see my point, too? Can you see how decisions made by a few dozen people is not much different from decisions made by one person, in comparison to a population of, say, one million, or even ten thousand?
The Cunctator wrote:
Of course I can. But can you see my point, too? Can you see how decisions made by a few dozen people is not much different from decisions made by one person, in comparison to a population of, say, one million, or even ten thousand?
In the abstract, I can see your point. But, right now, we have only a few dozen people who care about policy, and we need to make sure to reach all of them. When we are ten thousand policy-interested people in the future, well, we will have to find a mechanism in the future to accomodate that growth.
Certainly, random bold updating of policy pages is not likely to be an effective mechanism at that point for the communication of policy changes. Nor is talking about it casually in email.
Fortunately, though, we don't have those problems today. Today, as we are doing here and now, we talk about policy primarily on the mailing list. This has proven to be better, all round, than the alternatives.
--Jimbo
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 11:37, Jimmy Wales wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Of course I can. But can you see my point, too? Can you see how decisions made by a few dozen people is not much different from decisions made by one person, in comparison to a population of, say, one million, or even ten thousand?
Fortunately, though, we don't have those problems today. Today, as we are doing here and now, we talk about policy primarily on the mailing list. This has proven to be better, all round, than the alternatives.
The are many variations in action; the WikiProject pages are an alternative that works well; STG's reformulation of the FAQ pages (which he announced on the mailing list, but the discussion is on the Talk page) is a good alternative, etc.
A meta-policy of flexibility is what I'm going for. If it seems I've been arguing for hiding things from the mailing list, I apologize. That's not the case.
Maveric149 wrote in first part:
Toby Bartels wrote:
That should be easy enough; ensure accuracy and NPOV on these pages just as on encyclop?dia articles.
But they are /not/ encyclopedia articles, or even talk pages for that matter. Therefore normal rules of editing do not really apply.
To clarify: I didn't mean to imply that we should assure accuracy and NPOV on policy pages *because* we do so on encyclop?dia articles. I do however think that we should assure accuracy and NPOV on them; referring to encyclop?dia articles is only for reference.
-- Toby
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