[WikiEN-l] Policy adoption (was Jayjg: Abusing CheckUser ...)

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:

>On April 13, 2006, the text of [[Wikipedia:No open proxies]] was
>changed from the descriptive "Users using open or anonymous proxies
>are currently not allowed to edit Wikipedia." to the prescriptive
>"Users are prohibited from editing Wikimedia projects through open or
>anonymous proxies."  The edit was made by User:Pathoschild and the
>summary of the change was "Updated policy from the Meta-Wiki".
>
>I'm not sure what that means and whether or not the change was ever
>discussed, but it seems to me that this was the point where the policy
>changed from one that allowed blocking of the IP addresses used by
>proxies into a policy against using those proxies.
>
This repeats what I said on Meta in response to Elian.

This begs the question, "Who's policy is this?"  I can appreciate your 
understanding that it was copied one day from the English Wikipedia, but 
at the same time there is a notice on en:wp not to make changes there, 
because any human changes will be overwritten by a bot when changes are 
made on meta.  It has also been made clear that this is not a Foundation 
policy.  Slim Virgin asserts that the policy should not be changed 
before there is a consensus, but I can find no place where there was a 
consensus to adopt it in the first place.  There are some positive 
aspects to the policy, but that does not justify the kind of dishonest 
policy games that leave people on at least two projects believing that 
it was duly adopted on the other project in the hopes that no-one will 
question the origin of the policy. I am seriously concerned about how 
this policy has been applied on an English admin request, and I am even 
more concerned about the way in which policies in general are adopted.

>The whole philosophical/political debate over whether or not someone
>making an edit to a policy page changes the policies of the
>encyclopedia (perhaps after some period of a lack of objection) is
>somewhat interesting to me, but I don't foresee much in the way of
>consensus over *that* issue.  Personally I'd advocate to
>[[Wikipedia:Follow consensus, not policy]].
>
The entire policy adoption process is remarkably fucked up. It favours 
the policy wonks with private agendas who have the time and tenacity to 
ensure that their favorite views will prevail.  The corpus of our 
policies (including guidlines and other pseudo policies) is so huge that 
it becomes easy for anyone to plant a policy virus whose infective 
nature will not be noticed until much later.  At that point the 
supporters of a change can offer nothing but a glib response to the 
effect that you should have said something about it earlier, because now 
that it has been here so long it can only be changed if a consensusto 
change  is first achieved.  If it can then be transferred to meta ...

I do not advocate that the Foundation should be generally writing up 
rules for the projects, except in a very few limited areas.  But a 
consequence of that must be that the projects accept more responsibility 
for what is happening. 

Ec