[WikiEN-l] *spork*

[David Gerard]

On 02/10/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:

> I think this is probably something cyclical:
>   1) IAR starts short and simple;
>   2) IAR gets expanded by people trying to be helpful;
>   3) IAR gets further expanded by people adding exceptions and
>      corollories to the previous additions;
>   4) IAR becomes a hideous monstrosity;
>   5) someone sane comes along and makes it short and simple again;
>   6) we have a big bunfight about what the role of IAR is, generally
>      vastly complicated by people who don't understand what the point
>      of it is and are resistant to having it explained to them;
>   7) see (1)
> The 'Brainstorming' page appears to be a rather more organised attempt
> at step (2), but I can't see that it has any realistic chance of
> breaking the cycle.
> Some Wikipedians always seem to want to artificially restrict IAR with
> examples, procedures and so on, because they are worried that 'IAR will
> be abused'. What I think we need to remind these people of frequently is
> that it really doesn't matter all that much if IAR *does* get 'abused'
> (whatever that is taken to mean), since this is still a Wiki and almost
> any change is trivially undoable.


Please do add this text to said talk page ;-)


- d.