On 18 Jun 2007 at 01:54:36 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
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 ...
"You hadn't actually gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But, look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy