[Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

[The Cunctator]

On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 01:48, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> But they are /not/ encyclopedia articles, or even talk pages for that matter. 
> Therefore normal rules of editing do not really apply. 
> 
> At the very least there needs to be boilerplate on those pages mentioning 
> that they are policy/guidelines/conventions/style guides/rules to consider 
> etc. and also have statements indicating how each page type should be edited; 
> policy of course can't be changed by fiat; neither can conventions (although 
> there should be a bit more wiggle-room here), style guides are somewhat open 
> to unilateral change (although you should expect protests and reverts) and of 
> course rules to consider can be edited fairly liberally. 
> 
These ideas represent exactly the kind of stultification and
bureaucratization I fear.

To be less vaguely disapproving, I'll say that the fewer rules there
are, the better. And the fewer rules about the rules, even better.

It is *crucial* to recognize that by comparison to the number of
Wikipedians in the future, the collective number of participants on this
mailing list is effectively equivalent to a single person. So policies
that are hashed out on the mailing list right now are little better than
ones done "unilaterally" or "by fiat". And in reality, all policies at
Wikipedia derive from policy decisions made "by fiat" by Jimbo. "By
fiat" isn't a) inherently evil and b) inherently the province of single
editors. 

Decisions made by committees aren't much better than decisions made by
trustworthy individuals. In fact, they're often worse.

If you find that reasonable, then the question of trustworthiness
arises, which is another interesting and fruitful discussion.