MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly.
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to decalcify Wikipedia policy?
You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious amount of policy. If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have degenerated into flame wars with no way out. Newbies do face a steeper learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
Spoken like a true religious zealot! It's characteristic of straw man arguments to take a situation where there is a clear policy need, and extrapolate that to apply to all sorts of unrelated matters.
Saying that living person bios must be verifiable is a simple and straightforward statement of policy. How does one get from there to "a serious amount of policy"?
Ec