Habj (sweetadelaide at gmail.com) wrote:

How do you do it on the other wikipedias? Do people just think to themselves "this is a good page, we need it, people should have this in mind" and then label it "guideline" to see if someone reverts? Are there formal procedures? Input from as many 'pedias as possible would be appreciated.

At some stage I will be going through as many as possible of the guidelines on en: and rewriting them for clarity - and I encourage others to do so (taking due care with talk page discussion, ascertaining consensus, not getting radical, etc).

The basic notion I'm using is: guidelines require editorial judgement, which is something you can't legislate. So you should aim guidelines at clueful editors of good will, because editors of bad will won't care, and editors who are clueless wouldn't understand them anyway.

As far as I can tell, one of the greatest sources of [[m:instruction creep]] in guidelines on en: is when people put in sentences to try to hit bad editors over the head with. This makes the guidelines so bloated the good editors don't even look at them, and the bad ones keep ignoring them anyway.

(A notable example is the Manual of Style on en: - it's so long and detailed that the only use it gets is (a) editors who can't tolerate any ambiguity or inconsistency writing to it; (b) editors quoting it to try to battle other editors they disagree with. No-one actually uses it as a reference because it's not possible.)

So. Guidelines: helpful guides for sensible editors of good will, because no-one else cares. Policy: things that have to be a certain way for things to work at all. That's a VERY small set. NPOV, No Original Research, No Personal Attacks ... 3RR on en: ....

How does that sound to you?

- d.