[WikiEN-l] *spork*

[Jason Potkanski]

On 10/2/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > Someone's trying to cure [[WP:IAR]] with instruction creep again.
> > They're already trying to tell people who think the change is
> > ridiculous not to intrude on the process. Pick today's process!
>
> 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.
>

As the creator of the brainstorming page, I must first apologize for
dare thinking about tinkering with the anarchist's prime directive.

The policy is a philosophical policy, not a literal one. I don't
expect the average wikipedia editor to understand philosophy. It is
much harder to explain than NPOV and NPOV goes to great lengths to
explain it.

Leaving IAR as a piece of scripture is unacceptable. When looking at
religious text, most people do not take the bible literally but
figuratively. We can not just say it has "deep and subtle meaning," we
must also offer a context that guides a reader to make their own
conclusions.

This isn't "instruction creep" ... it is basic education.

Save the holy verses for religious texts and rhetoric for dev/null .
On Wikipedia, sane consensus-built uniform policy pages please.

-jtp