[Wikipedia-l] Re: Deletions and respect.

[Toby Bartels]

Brion VIBBER wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>I should continue: everyone has a habit of modifying policy through their
>>actions on Wikipedia. I have a habit of modifying policy explicitly. As
>>should everyone else.

What was being discussed was your modifying policy *pages*.
That doesn't change what the policy *is*, implicitly or explicitly.
Implicit change in policy: change over time in de facto behaviour.
Explicit change in policy: discussion that results in a policy decision.
Editing policy pages is an appropriate response to either of these,
but it is not either of these.

>>I have changed policy pages to reflect de facto policies that I disagree
>>with as well as ones that I agree with.

This would be an edit that responds to an implicit change in policy.
Very reasonable.  It would not be a change in policy itself.

>>The policy pages aren't sacred and shouldn't be considered as such; but they
>>should be followed. If you (being a reasonable and good person) think it is
>>unreasonable or detrimental to follow something on a policy page, then you
>>should change the policy page.

If you edit a policy page to say that something is policy when it isn't,
then you're not changing policy, you're lying about policy.
And this paragraph quite at odds with your previous paragraph.
After you edit a policy page to reflect a policy that you disagree with,
do you then change it right back since you think that
it would be detrimental to follow the policy that you disagree with?
Presumably not, because you *are* a reasonable (and good) person.

>IOW, the policy pages _describe_ project policy, they don't _define_ it.

That doesn't seem to be the same as what Cunc said at all.
More precisely, it seems to be the same as Cunc's second paragraph,
and antithetical to his first and third paragraphs.

My understanding is that policy is to be decided (or defined if you will)
by discussion on talk pages and the mailing list (and in theory meta).
People have said as much here before without confrontation.
Once that has been done, the policy page should reflect the decision;
that much should be obvious.

Mav described an edit that Cunc made to (not a policy page as such but)
the part at the beginning of [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
that describes (or should describe) the policy for using that page.
Mav didn't think it had been discussed properly
(and it certainly didn't reflect de facto practice),
which is why he thought that it should be confirmed by the list.
So if mav was right about the lack of discussion,
and I've been right about how policy is decided,
then mav was right that the edit was premature.

I would like to be able to cite policy pages when I want to cite policy.
Thus, it's important that these pages (and the policy sections of other pages)
be accurate about what the policy actually is.
In particular, if policy is in the process of being discussed
(and thus decided, or defined), policy pages shouldn't be edited
to reflect the opinion of one side of the discussion.

>It's been frequently noted that policy and documentation pages aren't 
>always consistent with practice. Sometimes this means the pages should 
>be changed, sometimes this means practice should be changed, sometimes 
>it means both.

Right.  But editing the policy page is not the way to decide the issue.
I hope that you agree.


-- Toby