[WikiEN-l] WikiProjects overriding policy

[Kirill Lokshin]

On 2/1/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Here is another case of something I mentioned to this mailing list some
> time ago:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Timwi&diff=104821425&oldid=104820754
>
> In a nutshell, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Parliament
> constituencies]] wants to add the parenthesis "(UK Parliament
> constituency)" to all constituency articles, even those that don't have
> ambiguous names and would therefore -- under the general naming
> convention rules -- not have the parenthesis.
>
> These people feel they're completely in the right because they have a
> discussion to link to -- a discussion that took place on the WikiProject
> page. Since such a discussion cannot override a general rule such as the
> Naming Convention, how do I properly respond to this without causing an
> edit war (or move war)?
>
> Timwi

The best thing to do -- if you want to make an issue of it -- would be
to bring the question up on the main NC page and invite the
WikiProject to make their case their.  Having said that, a few points:

- There is nothing inherently less meaningful about a discussion on a
WikiProject page versus a discussion on some other page; both function
as a consensus of participating editors, which isn't really affected
by the page name.
- It's perfectly normal for guidelines -- particularly
one-size-fits-all guidelines -- to have exceptions (even broad ones);
and quite reasonable for WikiProjects to come up with such exceptions.
 The deciding factor is whether what's being proposed makes sense, not
who came up with it.
- Looking over the linked discussion on the WikiProject page, I'm not
convinced that they're actually incorrect in suggesting pre-emptive
disambiguation here.  It's pretty much a decided issue that all
geographic locations will eventually have articles; and if
constituencies are, indeed, named after locations, then delaying
disambiguation until those articles get started -- even though we
*know* that we'll need to disambiguate -- seems rather unnecessarily
bureaucratic.  (If nothing else, the project could easily fit within
the letter of the law here by creating one-liner stubs for the
locations; but I don't think that's something we ought to push.)

Kirill