[Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[MZMcBride]

Risker wrote:
> I'm particularly interested in policy simplification; I know our project has
> far, far too many complex and even contradictory policies, guidelines, and
> miscellaneous pages that result in "alphabet soup" messages that even
> experienced users find almost impenetrable. I pity the newbie who gets a
> "welcome" message that leads them to the Manual of Style, for example.
> Featured article writers "discuss" what it really means on a regular basis,
> so there's little hope an inexperienced editor will be able to follow the
> contradictions in it.

I agree that the collection of policies, guidelines, etc. has grown too
large and too complex, but I'm not sure it's a particular problem (at least
in the sense that you seem to be describing).

I think most users don't pay any mind to the Manual of Style or the featured
article requirements or anything like that. They might be inundated with too
many links in welcome messages (which I view as a largely separate issue
from policy creep), but I don't think the vast majority of editors pay any
mind to the details of policies and pages that even established users can't
be bothered to keep up with. This is what some argue is the actual meaning
behind "ignore all rules." :-)

The people who are obsessed with dashes and serial commas and date linking
will pay attention to the surrounding arcane, contradictory series of
policies and guidelines, to be sure, but I'm not sure I see a great
connection between their behavior and ill effects on new users. There might
be a reasonably good argument for their behavior having ill effects on the
more established members of the community and overall community health, but
someone would need to demonstrate this a bit more clearly (for me, at
least).

MZMcBride