[WikiEN-l] Image of the day

[Kurt Maxwell Weber]

On Tuesday 29 January 2008 09:50, Ken Arromdee wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > Selective enforcement has an amazing power to dull the sharp corners
> > of any rule.  Had someone not been interested in trying to make an
> > example out of this it could have happily sat forever with its less
> > than totally accurate license tag.  Less than ideal, perhaps, but it
> > would be far far from the worst inaccuracy in tagging.
>
> "Selective enforcement has an amazing power to dull the sharp corners of
> any rule" is a bug, not a feature.
>
> Rules which are badly broken enough that we need to selectively enforce
> them really should be fixed.

Which is why it's so important that everyone understand that we don't have 
rules in the first place.

"Policy", on Wikipedia, is not prescriptive.  The choice of the word "policy" 
was unfortunate, and unless we do something about that we'll be dealing with 
this forever.  All "policy" on Wikipedia is is merely a description of what 
has typically happened in certain situations in the past.  Actions do not 
follow "policy"; "policy" follows actions.  People needn't be afraid of 
breaking the rules, because there are no rules to break.  Just use your head 
and do the right thing.

And no, I'm not saying "Ignore all rules."  I'm saying there are no rules to 
ignore in the first place.
-- 
Kurt Weber
<kmw at armory.com>