On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 8:16 PM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I wrote:
Our rule-boundedness is relevant in another way, as well: though it's loved by pedants and petty bureaucrat wannabees, it's absolute death to the truly intelligent and creative... So while there are good reasons for our tendency towards firmer and firmer policy... it's a trend which has to be intelligently resisted[.]
One huge thing to watch out for is when our policies end up hurting our responsible contributors more than the vandals and trolls they're supposed to protect us from. If every new contributor is guilty until proven innocent of being a vandal, POV warrior, linkspammer, copyright violator, or non-notable vanity article pusher, we're going to turn off and drive away a lot of new contributors. (The only way to make it worse would be if the process for proving yourself innocent involved following -- to an absolute T -- a bunch of elaborate policies which new contributors aren't likely to be aware of.)
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There is certainly a balance to be struck. On the one hand, we certainly don't want to tie everyone up in red tape, and unfortunately sometimes that does seem to happen. On the other, we certainly -do- want to stop POV pushers, copyright violators, non-notable vanity pushers, and spammers, and sometimes that doesn't seem to happen.
I don't think it's a question of more policy or less policy. I think it's a question of -better- policy, mostly, and determining what is most effective at its intended purpose with the least unintended consequences. Nothing is ever going to be 100%, but we can certainly do better. I think we'd do better to make gradual changes to policy and evaluate how they work, rather than the sudden, radical shifts we can see now.
I think another trouble spot is haphazard enforcement. It's hard to work with policy when it's impossible to know whether or not it'll be actually enforced in a given situation. On one hand, many are allowed to go on disrupting and trolling far too long after they should have been shown the door, or if necessary, helped to use it. On the other hand, yet again, we don't want to be too rigorous in enforcement to the point that the punishments are causing more harm than the crimes. In some areas, like civility, I sometimes think we're a little overly harsh. In other areas, like chronic NPOV, NOR, and V violators, we're not nearly harsh enough. Again, there's no perfect solution here. Purely mechanistic enforcement is not a great answer, and nor is purely subjective enforcement. It's that balance point that's hard to find.