[WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies

[Charles Matthews]

On 19 April 2012 15:22, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

>
> Rules can cause trouble, but they have one benefit: at least ideally, it's
> clear when you have or haven't violated them.  (Many Wikipedia rules are
> not
> ideal, but that's a discussion for another day.)  It's a lot harder to
> inject personal prejudice to the issue when the rule spells out what you're
> allowed to do.
>
>
> I was thinking about this graphically, with an x-axis measuring
involvement in, commitment to, or  responsibility for Wikipedia. The y-axis
representing the value attached to detailed policies, in enWP's sense, as a
definition of what the site is or should be. I'm pretty sure that in a
notional plot the spread of views would go north-west to south-east. Jimbo
is somewhere asymptotically off to the right, for sure. I'm quite sure that
when x goes negative you get people whose view is that policy should be
drafted in entirely legalistic terms. Those people, who do not have WP's
best interests at heart, are always arguing for a disconnect between the
letter and spirit of policy, because they have no interest at all in the
spirit.

There are probably some outliers: why wouldn't there be, in a diverse
community? But roughly speaking most editors who could get near the ArbCom
are interested in making the site work a bit better, rather than pacifying
the ghost of Jeremy Bentham.

Charles