On 7/31/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. With the exception of core Wikipedia policies not subject to debate, you can't use policy to force things through without broad support.
It's both: Policy prescribes that everyone must follow what consensus has agreed on.
The use of diacritical marks in page names for people, when the name is fully recognisable even by those not familiar with the diacritics, and where appropriate redirects exist, does not (IMO) have that broad support. It may have a majority, but I doubt even that when it comes to (english-language) Wikipedia contributors as a whole. Straw polls and the like just show how many people are rabid about the issue.
Certainly I think that neither extreme point of view has a majority, and that it's hard to even find a point-in-the-middle that could gain overwhelming support.
One of the weaknesses with the Wikipedia model that is becoming more apparent. There are just some issues where consensus can never be gained, so a consistent policy can never be achieved. Which is a pity: It means our encyclopaedia will never have any kind of broad consistency, and will instead have different articles following different rules which reflect the local consensuses that have been achieved.
Steve