[WikiEN-l] WP:LEAD

[Steve Bennett]

On 2/8/08, Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw at armory.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 07 February 2008 22:47, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Agreed. There is little consensus over how policy operates. Various
> > viewpoints seem to include:
> >
> > 1. Policy is whatever most people are doing. Policy pages simply describe
> > this.
>
> This is correct.

I think it's the least useful of the three definitions of policy I
gave, and is tantamount to declaring Wikipedia a wilful anarchy. If
policy is mere description of what people are already doing, why
bother? "Editors frequently engage in edit wars. Editors frequently
attempt to impose their point of view on articles". Great policy.

For policy to serve any purpose, it has to capture behaviour which is
desirable and is not yet being done by everyone. For it to work, it
should not appear out of the blue, but emerge through consensus as the
solution to a problem.

Steve