When some people started trying to use the BLP policies to cover the deceased, I realised that not even the most precise wording could protect against the lack of common sense. When some people took the arb com restriction during their discussion of episodes and characters to refer to exactly that type of articles only, and succeeded in establishing it, this confirmed my view. When a respected admin argued at Deletion Review that speedy deletion policy covers removing duplicate articles, I realised we need both exact policy , and the will to back it up.
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
The problem, Greg, is that policies on English Wikipedia are almost uniformly horribly vague, and so if you have to figure out what they
[snip]
Policies are often enforced with the same kind of literalist mindset ... so it makes sense to evaluate proposals that way.
Certantiantly vagueness can cause problems... so it's in everyone's interest to avoid vagueness, policy proposers, supporters, opposers, and neutralists alike. If people can come to an agreement on a meaning then establishing a non-vague expression may take some effort, but it's mostly an effort of copyediting not something deserving an argument.
The issue I was trying to raise is that someone proposed a requirement of "a number of Wikipedians" which was countered with "Zero is a number" ... and If you're willing to take that literal an interpretation no policy can avoid being vague or having significant unintended consequences.
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