[WikiEN-l] Jimbo on Commons

[Ken Arromdee]

It's obvious some of Jimbo's idea is ill-considered.  But what bothers me is
the responses that this violates some kind of blanket policy.  Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia, and we may not remove useful information for any reason.
Wikipedia is not censored, we are not allowed to have exceptions.

I suggest that this is a piss-poor way to create Wikipedia policy.  There's
a substantial contingent of policy wonks who take any blanket policy statement
as gospel and use it as an excuse to avoid even *trying* to figure out if
some suggested exception to that policy is a good idea on the grounds that
we don't do such things, ever.  It's a triumph of rules lawyering over
common sense.  Of course, when questioned they will admit that exceptions
are allowed, but their attitude to any proposed exception remains the same.

(And that's not related to whether this policy is a good idea.  To use a
less controversial example, BLP and privacy protections.  You should see how
some people resist any attempt to protect privacy on the grounds that
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" and that therefore nothing which makes it even
a tiny bit less of an encyclopedia can ever be removed.)