[Foundation-l] Issues regarding admin(s?) on wikinews, effects: globally

[Jimmy Wales]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Some time ago someone acting
> in perfectly good faith managed to import the policy from Wikipedia.  He
> evidently was acting pro-actively to solve what he felt could be an
> eventual problem.  There was no current problem.  [There] might not be
> such a problem for a long time.

I'm happy to hear about all of this.  A good faith effort to improve by
adding a rule, a good faith community process to eliminate the rule
where is it not needed.

I think one of the clever or lucky innovations of our community is the
very early decision to not make up rules to solve problems that might
happen, but rather to wait until a problem is really here, and then
cautiously look for a way to fix it.  This has preserved the open
character of our community in a nice way.

> To be workable, rules must reflect a community, not the other way
> around. 

Yes!

> Wikipedia, as the senior project, has developed many rules
> which (presumably ;-) ) work there.  

I especially agree with the "presumably ;-)" parenthetical.  I think
most of the rules of en.wikipedia are fine, but some are better than
others, and all deserve to be studied again from time to time.

> There has to be an art to acting boldly.

This is beautiful.

--Jimbo