On Nov 4, 2008, at 3:12 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It's completely valid: I expect that if we roll out flagging as a replacement for protection, then we'll discover that it isn't evil, that it doesn't stop contributions, that it doesn't make Wikipedia stale, and that it improves quality, thus smashing the empty but compelling arguments being made against it. Or we won't but we'll come up with something even better to try, sparking a chain of iterative improvement.
In any case, after rolling it out we will have knowledge, experience, and measurements which we simply do not today. Those factors will drive our decisions rather than the fear, speculation, uninformed laziness, and resistance to change which dominate the discussions today.
Which gets to one of the root problems on En these days - it is impossible to get a global consensus for anything because of the wide prevalence of views that are either very, very poorly worked out or are substantially at odds with fundamental Wikipedia policies. Which is turning policy formation into an adversarial process, and making large decisions get made through intrigue and maneuvering rather than any sort of rational process.
I can't wait to see the CC-BY-SA argument on en.
-Phil