On 11/11/06, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Any ordinary person reading this in a straightforward way would take an instruction to "avoid" doing something as a statement that it is not allowed.
"Avoid" is pretty clear language in any case.
Wikipedia has a social environment which is different from many other places.
Generally you can even do things which are forbidden so long as everyone who cares agrees that doing so was good. This, of course, happens elsewhere too.. but it's quite common on Wikipedia. I've previously argued in detail that this is the natural result of working in an environment where almost everything can be totally undone with less effort than it took to do.
So the language we've used is just a reflection of reality: Your ability to get away with such edits is conditional on the approval of all the established Wikipedians who are watching. We can't tell people they are permitted to do something but then yell when they do something unacceptable, nor is it fair to give a firm no but later ignore the rule when they've done something everyone agrees on.
If we were to try to write a rule which explained the conditions we'd find that it would need to become nearly as long as the entire body of meta-discussion on Wikipedia before it did a good job at helping the reader tell if their action would be accepted or not ... even long standing and respected users sometimes have a hard time guessing how the community will react.
Telling users to avoid doing something and then saying that that doesn't prevent legitimate uses because it isn't a ban, is expecting everyone who reads the policies to be a Wikilawyer. This is absurd. Policies need to be comprehensible by ordinary people.
No. It's a hope that no one is a wikilawyer.
The rules are to help people quickly understand what is generally accepted and expected. A suggestion to avoid does exactly that... and only a wikilaywer wants rules to be more than that.
If the rule says you should avoid, but you do it, and the community does not agree.. This isn't time for you to start arguing rules.. this is the time for you to realize that it's the communities position which is actually binding.