Wikipedia talk:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance/Archive 1

Archive 1

More info needed

Much more needed is information on how policy is created. IE, how are votes taken or even started, what is consensus?, how long must the wording of a policy stand to be considered uncontested, and how long must a conflict be dead before policy is considered consensus? Hyacinth 00:36, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I didn't want to be too prescriptive about those sorts of things :) But yeah, we need to think about that. Pcb21| Pete 00:48, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I bet the page Wikipedia:Consensus (started by Hyacinth I belive) will cover the "what is consensus" aspect, once everyone comes to a consensus (; So that part of policy making shoudl be left as a separate discussion. Although I agree with Pete that policy on policies should remain as open and non-prescriptive as possible, because policies can cover such variety things, ranging from deletion of pages to how to document a type of knot. —siroχo 04:51, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

Is this a current policy?

Is this a draft policy, or is this in place? I found it in a link from Wikipedia: Policy thinktank, but it doesn't have the header notice that says it isn't current policy. I'm afraid I'm kind of new here.

Thanks, Creidieki 07:15, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think it should be policy. Let's move it from the thinktank to official. There are definitely people who could do with considering this principles before coming up with reams of policy minutae. Pcb21| Pete 19:42, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Done. Dan100 19:24, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

How about some practical details?

This page should include a how-to for the thinktank and describe how proposed policy becomes current policy. Zocky 08:13, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, I added a how-to section and some basic steps. The section is very rough, but I'm sure some experienced Wikipedian will come along and improve it. - Pioneer-12 13:14, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Documenting existing practices

I edited the last section to make documenting existing practice sound a bit more respectable. In fact, I think this is the best way of making policy on Wikipedia: look for what's going on anyway, and as long as it's working, just describe it rather than trying to prescribe something different. If nobody is objecting to the practice, trying to "make it official" is just an unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle. Policies get their strength from the beliefs and opinions of Wikipedians, not from the words on the page. Isomorphic 04:54, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Isomorphic, this is a prescriptive policy on making prescriptive policies. Should be shot on sight really. Typically wikipedia policy is made in the trenches, and then someone finally remembers to write it down. :-) Kim Bruning 09:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Question about where to post proposals

The article now says: Post a link to your proposal on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and Wikipedia:Requests for comment.

The pump policy page contains many discussions and some notices of proposal pages, so that area makes sense. But the Rfc page seems to consist of disputes and complaints about edit wars and users and admins. Is this really a place to put a notice of a proposal and if so why doesn't the narrative text mention that as well? a curious newcomer trying to progress a proposal -- Sitearm | Talk 03:44, 2005 August 14 (UTC)

Instruction Creep

I think this policy policy needs a reference (or at least a link) to m:Instruction creep. Instruction creep is, after all, a commonly-cited reason to oppose new policies; anyone formulating a policy proposal should keep it in mind if they want their proposal to succeed. (Now that I look, there is a link as part of one of the other concerns, but the danger is not explictly named or laid out.) Aquillion 02:52, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Contradiction with RfC

This page suggests posting new policies on WP:RFC/POLICIES but that page says only to list active disputes between users. One of the two should be changed but I'm not sure which one. Is "Request for comment" only used for dispute resolution or is it more general than that? —Jwanders^Talk 22:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

How policies become official

In general, there are three ways in which a policy becomes official:

• It is pronounced official by Jimbo or the Wikimedia board.

  False, they do not interfere with policy on individual wikis anymore

• It receives a supermajority in a poll, the line for which is generally set at 70%

  False, this is generally not accepted, and has worked perhaps once or twice. (and then some people simply refuse to accept the outcome point blank)

• The idea of making it official has been prominently advertised on the Village pump, mailing list, and on related talk pages, and after a reasonable length of time all objections have been dealt with. (Or the more common, but less prefered, method of marking something as official and waiting to see if anyone reverts you.)

  False. Well almost, marking something as official and waiting to see if someone reverts you does work :-)

The next paragraph talks about documenting existing policy. True, except existing policy will always be marked as Guideline instead.

In short, the section is terribly misleading.

Finally notice that the related "how to hold a consensus vote" has been deprecated by the originators!

Kim Bruning 04:38, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

In furtherance to the above (for the morbidly curious), pages where failure to comply with any one paragraph for more than 24 hours will lead to an immediate arbcom ban, have at times been found tagged as Essay. Go figure. :-P Kim Bruning 10:34, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Wishful thinking

This page remains wishful thinking in so many ways. Many of the suggestions here are more likely to get a person into trouble rather than keep them out of it. It is actually possible to get guidelines accepted, but the ability to do so has degraded as we get more and more people joining who are not accultured, and wouldn't know where to start getting accultured in the first place. *scratches head* Hmmm, I think we have a set of linked problems in that respect. Kim Bruning 10:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

actionable?

What does "actionable" mean? This should be defined in the article. Fresheneesz 00:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense

This entire page is basically nonsense. It's a fairy tale about how some people wish policy was developed on Wikipedia, and it's almost entirely untrue. Anybody who tries to use this to create policy is just going to end up frustrated. Kelly Martin (talk) 05:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that this page is an effective back door way of inforceing m:Instruction creep?Geni 13:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

This entire page IS instruction creep. It basically tells people how NOT to make policy on the English Wikipedia. While this does have the useful effect of keeping clueless people from effectively making policy, it also creates disruption when people who don't realize that it's a load of horseshit try to follow it, and thereby end up disrupting Wikipedia inadvertently. Kelly Martin (talk) 17:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

it in short says take things slowly, comunicate, discuss, modify in the light those disscusions and accept that a new policy is unlikely to suceed. If people follow it and do all the above I don't see a problem. Certianly I wouldn't describe that as dissrupting the normaly functioning of wikipedia.Geni 19:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that it is extremely unlikely anyone will be able to create new policy using the mechanism discussed on the page. The way one creates new policy is by modifying behavior. But this page doesn't talk about that, it talks about how to dance around the consensus tree. While that is fun for some people, it's extremely ineffective, and most people end up getting frustrated and try to do something else and end up creating a kerfuffle -- because this page doesn't tell people how to actually change policy. And that's how this page leads to disruption. Kelly Martin (talk) 19:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

attempts to modify behaiour tend to be even more messy. At the moment we have quite enough policy so any aditions are likely to fail regardless of method.Geni 23:46, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. We should write a replacement page that actually explains it. The real procedure is actually quite easy, and very likely to be successful actually. <scratches head> Kim Bruning 09:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

How about this piece of ancient Greek as food for thought when developing the ultimate system for policy-making:

[...] οἱ αὐτοὶ ἤτοι κρίνομέν γε ἢ ἐνθυμούμεθα ὀρθῶς τὰ πράγματα, οὐ τοὺς λόγους τοῖς ἔργοις βλάβην ἡγούμενοι, ἀλλὰ μὴ προδιδαχθῆναι μᾶλλον λόγῳ πρότερον ἢ ἐπὶ ἃ δεῖ ἔργῳ ἐλθεῖν		[...] although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it, and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, from Pericles' funeral oration (II.40.2) translation Karl Popper (The Open Society and its Enemies, Ch 10.IV) and Perseus website

...it's only a few millenia old. How things seemed simple in those days... So many centuries later, having sophisticated wiki-technology to our service, things can surely only have become even simpler...

As a matter of fact I've always found Wikipedia:How to create policy, particularily the Guidelines for creating policies and guidelines part, quite practical. I apply it all the time, without much frustration. The frustration usually comes from those that are clueless about that part of the guideline. --Francis Schonken 12:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It's better than nothing I guess.

In any case, I've just modified Wikipedia:Suggestions_on_how_to_ignore_all_rules so that it actually describes how to edit {{descriptive}} style pages. Note how guidelines are a function of ignore all rules(!). This is one of those old pathways that was never adequately documented. Kim Bruning 16:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Now that's sillyness (sorry for the expression - sorry, I think I ignored a rule). I've reverted it. Here's why: if you're ignoring ALL rules, you can't make one and then follow it, because then you aren't ignoring ALL rules. Further, there's a chance that by adding to the body of rules, you created rulecruft, or it could be a rule tailor-made to promote your own POV in the encyclopedia, or your new rule could open a cupboard full of beans, etc. That's why ignore all rules is so important to Wikipedia: sometimes it's better just to ignore a rule than boost the rampant rulecrufting of Wikipedia. Indeed the other path is to improve rules instead of ignoring them. But then, follow Wikipedia:How to create policy. --Francis Schonken 16:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Erm, the idea of ignore all rules is to do so when you have to. Of course, at that moment in time you have to document what you did... ergo, you're actually creating a new guideline. Now it doesn't matter whether you believe that or not, it just happens to have worked this way since I joined wikipedia, so there you go. This (how to create policy) page has never described how it works, as far as I remember, though it's getting closer. Kim Bruning 16:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Re. "ergo, you're actually creating a new guideline": not necessarily, it's up to the community (and not to the person wanting to ignore rules), whether it would be best to leave it to a "one off" case, that would be too WP:BEANS to pour in a guideline, or should better be avoided, but was left uncorrected for once while it was not a severe case of breaking rules - or indeed make a new rule based on the incident that couldn't be avoided without breaking existing rules - or even suppress an existing rule while it doesn't really help, so that in the future nobody would be breaking that rule any more. If someone breaks or ignores a rule it is usually best not to leave the decision about what has to happen with the broken rule to the person who broke it.

Whatever the way it was when you started at Wikipedia (let's not get too nostalgic, but I'm also writing rules for Wikipedia for several years now), Wikipedia is now flooded with rules that need pruning. If people would have followed the Guidelines for creating policies and guidelines more often, I'm sure the body of policies and guidelines would be much more coherent, transparant, effective regarding Wikipedia's quality, and easier to follow than it is now. --Francis Schonken 17:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, it would be a bad idea to suggest that it is a viable method for creating new rules by breaking existing ones. The general name for that is disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Now, Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point is a rule that can be ignored. But then it's up to other Wikipedians to determine whether or not they apply the sanctions possible (but not obligatory) by that rule on the rule-breaker.

Note also that the section where you added the recommendation for jumping from rule-ignoring to rule-making was the section of that essay specifically intended for sysops. You're giving the impression that sysops have special powers in making rules (even as a good practice when ignoring them first), which, as we both know, is not something we favour. --Francis Schonken 17:28, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Any user with skill and ability can make new guidelines, this does not apply to sysops alone. This is the method that was used to make most of the "big" policy on wikipedia, and is therefore the best, most viable method for creating rules that I am aware of.

I have no idea what WP:POINT has to do with this, it is the exact opposite of Ignore All Rules.

• With IAR, you "break" the rules to ensure that the encyclopedia keeps running.
• Conversly with WP:POINT you apply the rules to break the encyclopedia, to prove that they're broken. (Also compare WP:BEANS)

See also Wikipedia talk:Consensus#Good_advice?

See also original WP:POINT

Kim Bruning 23:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Historical

This current page doesn't describe anything, doesn't mention any practical, working or accepted process (by its own admission even).

Sometime we're going to have to make a new page that actually describes how to create process, but this page certainly isn't it, and it does more harm than good to have it marked as in use.

I think there's probably a case to be made for marking it rejected even. How many times has this method worked? Kim Bruning 21:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• Several times. WP:PROD is an example. That said, our policy/guideline creation process needs work, because 90% of all proposals fail, generally because of misinformation on the part of the author. But unless you mean to instate a formal process, or forbid non-admins from creating policy, I don't really see what you mean to do here. >Radiant< 22:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Nope, people just started prodding at some point, in spite of the discussion, not because of it, and the good and the bad points quickly surfaced and were fixed that way. I'm sure WP:XD also had something to do with it? :-) Kim Bruning 22:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Actually, Prod predates XD. PROD was proposed, modified by discussion, then started for a test run after enough people had gathered to watch it. It would be good if all guidelines sprang from existing practice. But sometimes it's necessary to modify existing practice or we'll never get anywhere; and also, people will always want to make their own changes - have you looked at CAT:PRO recently? People need a page like this, and unless you have any better advise, they will use it. >Radiant< 22:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

There is better advice to be had. For some reason no-one has really been writing it down. This is definately the key page causing wikinomic. If we remove it and actually write a descriptive page on how to successfully make guidelines, it'd be a big improvement. I'm marking as historical so that people hopefully blink, wake up, and *do something*. Am I applying the Radiant method properly? :) Kim Bruning 22:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• Hey, that method is patented! If it weren't for No Legal Threats, I'd send a copyright ninja after you! Anyway, I'd suggest {{sofixit}} - HOW would you like people to write policy or guidelines? Because people do want to do that (regardless of whether their proposals have a point) and unless you tell them how, they'll make a guess and likely guess wrong. >Radiant< 22:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I keep with my appreciation (as already expressed in the previous section on this page) that this is a good guideline, and that I've always used it when working on guidelines and policies.

Examples of guidelines I've started, and that were a success due to the methods explained in this guideline:

• Wikipedia:Categorisation of people
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (dates and numbers)

I work on a lot of other guidance (including policies) at regular intervals. Never have I seen that Wikipedia:How to create policy would have given bad advice/guidance.

I'm looking forward to see suggestions on improving this guideline, preferably on this talk page (or a "temp" page linked from here that of course can also always be used if you want to write a new kind of guidance from scratch). Please propose improvement suggestions to the community (WP:VPP would be a useful discussion page if you want to rewrite the suggestions on how to create policy too). Anyhow this "method" (which in fact lacks all method) of throwing out the old baby with the bathwater, and only after that has happened starting to think about how to make a new baby doesn't have my "consensus" currently. --Francis Schonken 10:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• One thing that might be improved is stressing the point of instruction creep, what kinds of "rules" are not a good idea, and that novice users should generally not attempt such. The reason I'm saying this is because roughly 80-90% of all proposals fail because they're not well thought out. Maybe people should discuss them at the village pump first before forking out to some page. >Radiant< 14:51, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• advice based on this? I think the page needs an instruction about the best way, which seems to be persistence--or is this giving away a secret. People often succeeds in the most unlikely things here-- new pages, edits, deletions, mainly because they keep mentioning it, and eventually the idea becomes familiar. (or they get lucky--but luck may not last very long).DGG 23:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC))
  • Persistence alone doesn't cut it - for instance, see WP:PEREN. If a proposal is a new idea, it simply has to "catch on", that is, other people have to agree it's a good idea and start doing it as well. If it's a good idea but not policy yet, there's nothing to stop people from doing it, and if enough people do, it'll be policy. If it's a bad idea but not policy yet, people doing it will generally be told to stop by uninvolved others who think it's a bad idea. The "secret" is that you can't legislate this place - you can't say "this is a good idea so we now must all do this", because people simply won't. >Radiant< 09:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Actionable guideline?

There appears to be some recent editing here [1] to reduce the specific nature of the wording to this guideline in terms of procedures to keep the community informed about proposals. In my mind this is adding to the confusion by allowing editors more latitude to develop and approve guidelines without seeking the broadest possible input. This is a dangerous course. Why would we want to encourage this? --Kevin Murray 10:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• People need to seek feedback. To mandate that such feedback is sought via one particular forum instead of some other (e.g. the admin board or CENT) is instruction creep. >Radiant< 10:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Inconsistentcy leads to confusion. --Kevin Murray 10:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
    • That is true, and that's why I've been trying to reduce the number of message boards Wikipedia has. Unfortunately we still have several. But if people in good faith use a different one than is mentioned here, that cannot be grounds for invalidating their ideas. >Radiant< 10:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
      • That is nonsense! Establishing guidelines should not be the purview of the ill-informed. If someone can't follow the procedures or are unaware of them, then they have no business writing more guidlines. --Kevin Murray 11:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
        • It would be nice if that were the case. But precedent (CAT:G, CAT:PRO) indicates otherwise, and policy (WP:IAR) indicates that it's acceptable for editors to be unaware of procedures. There have been several attempts to create a more formal way of generating policy; the most recent of these is presently on MFD. >Radiant< 11:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Quick third opinion

I don't see Radiant's edit that way as particularly bad. If people want to only use some of those means, or to find other means (so long as they're appropriate and non-disruptive) as may be called for by what specifically is being proposed, I see nothing wrong with it. If people attempt to "backdoor" something in, then people will either:

• Ignore it anyway.
• Object as soon as anyone tries to enforce it, or it's otherwise brought to their attention.

We pretty much always try to do things by "this has generally been found to be a good way to do things" rather than "You will do things this way and this way only." That can be both blessing and curse, but people will simply ignore any attempt to do it any other way.

As to the "ill-informed" proposing things, if a proposal is stupid, it'll just very quickly fail. On the other hand, sometimes it's the "ill-informed" that do call attention to problems that we've gotten so used to working around that we don't notice them anymore, and actually manage to solve them. Everyone's allowed a voice here, so long as they don't grossly misuse it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 11:04, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not disputing the right for people to propose ideas. I'm unhappy that well informed users have created a guideline (EPISODE) without following procedure in seeking the broadest possible participation. If it was an honest error, fine I'll give it a pass and move-on. But I can't see weakening the procedures to encourage repetition of the confusion and frustration. If a novice wants to propose an idea he/she should be encouraged and guided by seeking help. There's and old saying that if you step in a pile of shit, you don't rub it on your face to demonstrate that it isn't shit. Let's clean our feet and move-on. --Kevin Murray 11:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The point is, Kevin, that despite your assumption this isn't a procedure. >Radiant< 11:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Why don't you just put it to bed. I'm not making assumptions at all. Either guidelines are actionable or they serve no purpose. --Kevin Murray 11:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

WHY?

Hello Wikipedia.Forgiveme if i dont speak very good English language.Believeme i try my best.And this is exactly the reason that i am writing to you this message.About languages.I am a Greek guy .My name is Giorgos Kaskarelis ,live in Athens and i try VERY HARD ,to understand ,all those pages you have about policy of Wikipedia ,and not only.I verify you ,that this is impossible for me or very hard,even if i speak and write (as you can see)enought good English to understood all you are writing for.When i read the list you have about languages i accredit ,that the there is not Greek language.And i dont understand.WHY ,is that?There are languages like :Esrerando and Makedonian ,but there is not Greek Language .WHY ?All West culture based in GrekkRomean culture.My region give's you (i believe)the "LIGHT'S" of west cultular.Also we have give's you, thousands of greek words in English language ,and as i can verify ,you say :Thank' ,to us ,by this behavior.Thank's a lot Wikipedia.Dont you think ,that in similar future-at least-you MUST include ,Greek language ,between the languages you translate your pages. With my sincerenly thank's: Giorgos Kaskarelis (<personal information removed>)

See http://el.wikipedia.org for the Greek Wikipedia. --Tony Sidaway 11:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Why essay?

This is just some peoples' ideas on how to create guidelines. It is not actually very accurate about the way to go about it, and often fails. We need a better description at some point. --Kim Bruning 23:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

What are the specific problems with this? We clearly need some structure to have a consistent method for creating or modifying guidelines and policy. --Kevin Murray 23:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

This is simply wrong. It is written from a prescriptivist point of view, and expounds on prescriptivist ideas on how people *should* create policy. It then goes on to show exactly how often this particular method worked (practically never), and claims that creating or changing policy is very hard (which it isn't).

The thing is that the page looks marginally valid, because it does use key phrases in places. It would be easier to explain what was wrong if it described creating invisible pink elephants who stomp policies into stone tablets. ;-)

There does exist an existing method, which is even documented. However, there is a slight problem in that it is only implicitly documented right now. As with so many things, people just don't seem to catch on these days. :-P

I guess I'll have to do a rewrite now, won't I? :-/ --Kim Bruning 00:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC) Urgh, this kind of research takes ages.

I agree that this is not well written, but I suggest that we work on a better solution on a prototype page and then get consensus for adopting it. Otherwise you'll just end up in an edit war. I agree with your goal, but the tactic that you are using has generally failed at WP. --Kevin Murray 00:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The method you are proposing is the same as described for this page, and the page documents that the vast majority of efforts using that method have failed.

Which is also immediately the reason why I think that it's not realistic to call this page a guideline.

--Kim Bruning 00:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC) Wait and see if you don't think I can create policy ;-)

Protocol: You proposed and were reverted (twice). Now it's time to talk. Regardless of your dissatisfaction the status quo should be assumed to have consensus. I think that you need to build consensus for a drastic change, but it would be reasonable to fine tune the obvious errors. I'm happy to work with you. --Kevin Murray 00:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

As an experiment I tried to use Bold revert discuss twice in quick succession. (BRD is a method to find out who to talk with). That didn't quite work, since now I'm still only talking with one person at a time. Let me make a quick note. --Kim Bruning 00:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok done.

You say that you need consensus to demote guidelines, else you'd get rid of a lot of junk? Interesting. Do you think this particular guideline is junk then? --Kim Bruning 00:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not really convinced that we need this page. An important point is that about 90%-95% of "proposals" on Wikipedia fail. I don't think that removing the tag is going to make a big difference in that, however. >Radiant< 09:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • People shouldn't try to write proposed policy/guideline/essay/other at all, as that will (almost) always fail. Instead they should codify common practice. To change the way wikipedia works, you change common practice, by being bold and ignoring all rules upfront. You can do this smartly by applying your understanding of consensus, and convincing others to do as you do. Once you have changed common practice, please document your changes in the project namespace. In this way, we obtain new guidelines. --Kim Bruning 12:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
    • That is a good point, and it wouldn't hurt Wikipedia if people were to stop making proposals. Most of them get ignored, rebuffed really quickly, or are repetitive debates of stuff we already know. >Radiant< 13:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

In fact, if you just do the math, based on numbers under "difficulty of policy adoption" this method has a 91% failure rate in the field. Doh, should have looked at it that way a lot earlier. I think we can safely mark that as very, very rejected. --Kim Bruning 16:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm game for this. I've made a token revert of an edit by Kevin. I think this could fly. Overwhelmingly, new policy on Wikipedia has been made in the field, and I'd argue that that's the best way to do it. --Tony Sidaway 22:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The more practical problem is that rewording this page is not going to affect the fact that multiple proposals are started per week. >Radiant< 08:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• 80% of statistics are made up :) I suspect the actual figure is worse than 91%, as new policies are extremely rare and proposals for new policies are rather common. I did some searching and found that nearly all of our policies were created between 2001 and 2004. The exceptions are Foundation-imposed (office, oversight, BLP), a few pages split in two because of length, WP:WHEEL and WP:PROD. In effect the community has created two policies since 2004. This is pretty much consistent with the approach that we don't need a lot of policy. Radiant! 09:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Looking back on the way Wikipedia policy has evolved, I'd say that a lot more policies have formed over that time than a straight search might indicate. For instance, our views on verifiability have adapted to the challenge of running a top ten website that anybody can edit. Our attitude to free content has also tightened. While those changes were supported by external factors (in particular, Foundation-made policy) there was already a strong pressure within which made them possible to achieve

Another area of policy change is the dispute resolution process. As little as eighteen months ago administrators played a much smaller role in dealing decisively with problem editors other than vandals, and the arbitration committee was groaning with the strain. We now have regular admin intervention, at a fairly early stage, with serious problem users, and a broader range of actionable abuse under which administrators have discretion to act. Community bans are more common and less controversial, although this area of policy is still in development.

So this essay or guideline, or whatever it is, is a little out of date, if it was ever valid. It is stuck in prescriptivist concepts that have advanced policy a tiny bit, but neglects the descriptive approach to policy which is necessary to understand why the Wikipedia of 2007 is such a different environment from its 2005 incarnation. Policy isn't made by the community just sitting around and debating the merits of proposals. Wikiedia's policy is designed to be flexible enough for bold actions to be tolerated. Sometimes the community approves of such bold actions and, after discussion, adopts them broadly. This happens continually, not the once-in-a-blue-moon that the prescriptivist methods produce. Both are useful in their own ways, but this document does not accurately describe the conditions under which policy evolved on Wikipedia in 2005-7. --Tony Sidaway 11:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Historical then?

With no further replies or objections, can we in fact mark as historical, or even rejected? --Kim Bruning 00:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not stopping you. >Radiant< 08:16, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Apparently we have an objection on the bureaucratic grounds that "we lack the consensus to demote a policy", regardless of the fact that "demotion" isn't defined anywhere and that this assertion alludes to a process that does not in fact exist. WP:NOBOOK. >Radiant< 15:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Support for demoting from a guideline

It appears that a few editors want to demote this from a guideline to a help page. I oppose this. I believe others do now and more would if this attempt were broadly advertised. It seem that those proposing the change should advertise their concerns at the Pump etc. to gain support if they can. --Kevin Murray 15:29, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• No, you're asking the wrong question. There exists no such thing as "demoting" (if you think it does exist, kindly point out where this is defined?) Rather, it has been established that this page is entirely unrealistic, in that policies simply aren't made like this on Wikipedia, and that proposals made using the methods suggested here have an approx. 90%-95% likelihood to fail miserably. Rather than take the bureaucratic approach, look at the page's content. Radiant! 15:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

We have in-field evidence that this doesn't work on the page itself. Guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive. This particular guideline describes how NOT to go about creating policy, strictly speaking. Marking as historical. --Kim Bruning 16:02, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a guideline because most experienced editors on Wikipedia do not use the methods described to create new policy. There is a comon admonition in creative writing called "show, don't tell". It advises the use of action and dialog in place of impersonal exposition. Likewise, one of the most common ways in which policy develops on Wikipedia is by editors setting a good example which other editors follow until through its manifestly beneficial effects it becomes generally accepted. At some point, often quite late in the cycle, somebody decides to document the practice as written policy. The document here is misleading because, although it does describe one way of making policy, it implies that it's the only way policy is made. Nothing could be further from the truth. --Tony Sidaway 16:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I oppose the "demotion" or change, or whatever you call it, i agree that a small number of editors making what are IMO inaccurat claims (that this route never or almsot never works, and isn't the preffered route of experiencd wikipedians) is not a sufficent consensus to change this to a "historical status, so i have reverted. I welcom furhter discussion, and will put a pointer on the pump. DES ^(talk) 18:07, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

It says so on the page itself. There's also adequate documented evidence to back those assertions up. This is simply not a consensus based method in the first place, and -therefore unsurprisingly- it has never really worked. Guidelines document consensus on the wiki. That's the only method that actually works. So you're now attempting to oppose us documenting that this method doesn't work, using this very method. This is definitely very interesting. ;-) --Kim Bruning 18:21, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

As a compromise, let's demote to proposed. I do not believe that there is wide input from the community on this article as a guideline. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Hehehe! Good one! ;-) --Kim Bruning 18:21, 9 May 2007 (UTC) We're marking the concept of "proposed policy" deprecated, because it doesn't work.

Indeed, the document itself says that this method hardly ever works. It lists eight successful policy adoptions in the period 2003-2007, of which six "had sponsorship or support of User:Jimbo Wales", and goes on to state that in the same period "at least 80 proposed policies and proposed policy changes have been rejected." Since policy has developed radically in the same period, we can state with confidence that this is an inadequate description of how Wikipedia actually makes policy. --Tony Sidaway 18:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Why this cannot be a guideline

Guidelines are there to clarify Wikipedia policies and explain how the community addresses certain ways of working, based on adopted modus operandi. This is neither of those, and therefore cannot and should not be a guideline. An essay with be a better place for it. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:23, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Not even an essay I think. This doesn't work. It has been overwhelmingly rejected in the one location where consensus really counts and works: in the field. We shouldn't be telling people to use it at all. :-P --Kim Bruning 18:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a very persuasive argument. It's pointless to have a guideline that just bloody doesn't work. --Tony Sidaway 18:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually that is faulty reasoning. Most attempts to cahnge policy or practice fail, by whatever method. Use of thsio method has succeded is several important cases: the 2005 expansion of the Speedy delete criteria: the conversion of Votes for Undeletion to Deletion Review, the creation of WP:MFD, just off the top of my head. DES ^(talk) 18:47, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I might add that the document says that the 8 succesful attempts to change policy it mentions are "widely known" it does not say that those 8 are the only successes, and if it did, it would be inaccurate. DES ^(talk) 18:50, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point that nearly all of our current, 2007 policies have evolved out of practice. Thus this document is fundamentally inaccurate. Even the fluidity of this discussion is a considerable change from the 2005 era Wikipedia with its rather static concepts of policy, and take a look at how different requests for adminship and articles for deletion now are from the 2005 version. --Tony Sidaway 19:02, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Human project have significant social inertia. It is, IME, so common as to be inherent that people will often find some problem (or something that is perceived as a problem by one or more people) and propose some change in the way the project works to deal with it. (Look at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals) after all) In many cases, indeed in the vast majority of cases, either the problem is not perceived as a problem by most people in the project or the proposed solution is perceived as undesirable for some reason. Thus most proposals for change, formal or informal, whether using a show-first or propose-first method, or some variant, will fail. That is simply the nature of human endeavor, and a good thing, as it helps ensure stability and continuity. However, an excess of such resistance leads to rigidity. As in so many things, proper balance is the key, IMO. But this means that any method of suggesting policy changes will be found to fail "in the field" far more often than not, so that test cannot be sensibly used to determine which methods of suggesting or achieving change in how things are done or what things are done actually "work". You would need to compare the success ratios of different methods, and you would need to have good data, including on suggestions abandoned early. You are taking numbers that were intended to demonstrate that it is not easy to change policy or practice at all, and using them to try to demonstrate that one method works less well than another method. The numbers have large enough holes in them that they simply provide no useful evidence for or against that proposition. It would be possible, but tedious, to search through the wikipedia archives to find all the formal "proposals" made in a given time period, and how many of them were eventually adopted in some form. But it is probably impossible to find all the cases where someone "boldly" started trying a new way of doing things, and got nowhere (although XD is a case in point that went nowhere).

Also, minor changes are probably more amenable to the "try it first" method, while major changes probably benefit more from a draft/discuss/amend/adopt sequence, IMO.

In any case, if experienced wikipedians are making formal proposals, they are using that method of advocating change, even if the proposals are not adopted. And I would say that the process succeeds even when the proposal is not adopted, if the proposal's merits are reasonably considered and for more or less good reasons, the community does not find it worth while. A process that meant that anyone could make any change to how things are done at any time would leave things far too unstable to be useful, just as one that effectively meant that no one could ever make any change would be far too rigid to be useful.

Perhaps you could outlien some of the specific ways in which "how things are done" whetrher called policy or process or guideline or FooBar have changed without formal proposals, and it might be worth looking into how many of them had informal draft proposals first, adn how many truly started from soemone makign undiscussed changes.

If you or someone else wanted to edit the document to describe an alternative method along the lines of the Bold,revert,discuss philosophy, and perhaps the pros and cons of each, since each is used at least to some extent, that would IMO be a very different thing. That might be a very good idea indeed. DES ^(talk) 19:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a very, very long and dense bit of prose, but I think you're basically saying that only minor policy changes are achieve through evolution. This obviously isn't true. We're closing AfDs very differently in 2007, we're handling image deletions very differently, the bureaucrats are exercising much more discretion, administrators and the community at large are handling more cases that formerly went to the arbitration committee and the committee itself is tending to handle admnistrator conduct issues much more. AfDs are regularly blanks, biographical issues are handled more aggressively. I could go on, but the point is that these radical changes in how we do things on Wikipedia have come about through evolution. And this document says nothing about that. --Tony Sidaway 20:19, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The AfD closes i see do not look substantially different than the ones from 2005-06, where do you see a significant change? Image deletion appears to be driven in part by edict from jimbo, and in part by the technological change that such deletions are now reversible, and even so, the changes don't look all that drastic to me. Perhaps I'm missing something. (BLP was a Jimbo mandate.)

I had several points. One is that any policy change method results in no change more often than not, so using this as an argument against a particular method is pointless. Another is that the use of numbers provided for a quire different purpose was inherently inaccurate. Yet another is that the proposal method is in fact being used in significant numbers of cases, and so does represent how things are actually done at least some of the time. I do think that the "try it first and see if anyone follows" method is both more useful and more likely to be used for smaller than larger changes, but I wouldn't say it was never used for larger ones. I would like to see this document describe both methods, and perhaps include or link to an essay on the perceived pros and cons of both methods. DES ^(talk) 20:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• In response to the above, I should point out that in the past the criteria for speedy deletion had been decided by methods such as this, the last instance being July 2005. Since then, other criteria for speedy deletion have been instated by far more informal methods, generally based on talk page discussion. So {{historical}} would be rather appropriate here. >Radiant< 08:05, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Working to a solution

I think that we have to choose among the evils of top-down centralization and having creep run-amok. Can we develop an improved guideline which more clearly reflects how policy is determined. It seems that it should be difficult to implement new policies so that broad consensus is reached and just a few people don't appoint themselves the keepers of the rules in each corner of the WP project. Can we take some small steps toward fine tuning this? --Kevin Murray 20:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Policy formation on Wikipedia is too fluid to pin down. If there's a rule about how to make policy successfully on Wikipedia, it's "any which way you can." The successful ideas prevail, as long as people just apply them instead of hanging around discussing them to death. --Tony Sidaway 20:21, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(EC) Personally, I'd be more for changing it. It seems, at current, that it is roughly as easy to make any significant change to a policy as it is to push a several-ton boulder uphill. And as to creating any new ones, the hill's greased on top of it. How about something that actually reduces the inertia, and makes it possible to amend existing stuff, propose new ones, and if need be, deprecate or remove outdated ones. For me that would involve, after a good long discussion, putting it to (I'm going to say the bad word, wait for it!) some kind of well-designed vote. Sometimes, it comes time to make a decision. Yes, consensus-based decision making is nice. But it's not always possible. In the end, we shouldn't allow 25% of people discussing something to stall and filibuster it, when 75% want it, and often, with consensus-based stuff, that's the actual result. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Product, process, policy and Wikipedia:Follow consensus, not policy, might be a start? This stuff is documented right now. --Kim Bruning 20:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(after EC)If policy formation is "too fluid to pin down" editors must effectively depend on the 'oral tradition" which unfairly disadvantages new users, and is far less transparent. If the process is more flexible and multifarious than the current document describes, lets improve that document so that it is more useful. i don't believe that the methods used are in fact so "fluid" as to be incapable of description, and when describing his preferred methods elsewhere Tony Sidaway doesn't seem to find it an impossible task.DES ^(talk) 20:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Seraphimblade suggests that a discuss/vote method of adopting or changing policy should be adopted, and that a search for consensus too often allows a minority veto in effect. That may be so, and we do often use polls and other things that look very much like votes, although in theory they are all aimed at determining at least rough consensus. a move to explicitly abandon the ideal of consensus would be a major change, and i predict would be opposed by many. Perhaps Seraphimblade's desired results could be attained by better defining just how rough 'Rough Consensus" can be, and when a poll or other vote-like device is an acceptable tool to measure or fix it. DES ^(talk) 20:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how much more documentation you need for policy creation than "just do stuff, and if people like it they will copy you." All the rest is just paperwork. --Tony Sidaway 20:47, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(after EC)I don't really think that is an aceptable or sufficent bit of advice. Ther are limits to what kinds of "Just doing" thinngs will be approved of. That formation would endorse, oh say deleting WP:AFD to take a random example. Indeed if that is to be taken literally, "policy" has no meaning, because anyone can do anything at any time, and thsi really is "Anarchyopedia" If I were convinced that that was the primary rule hjere, i would stop botheing to waste my time on it. Please note Wikipeidia is not an anarchy. DES ^(talk) 20:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

We may have outgrown some of the informality that was possible in the early stages. This is probably the largest volunteer effort know to mankind, and we have to be able to adapt to the changing environment. We can't train and prescreen our volunteers, so we must have some semblance of organization. --Kevin Murray 20:57, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Kim and Tony: The problem as I see it is that guidelines are popping up all over the place without being broadly discussed. I'm not really too concerned whether these are top-down or grass-roots, as long as they are well discussed and not the result a cabal activity. I've not yet been satisfied that I've ever seen any guidelines getting adequate attention from a broad group of editors. I would prefer having no guidelines to having poor ones. --Kevin Murray 20:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(In reply to Kim and Tony as well) The problem is, that ad-hoc, "village council" style works great for a village. But we're not a village anymore, we're New York City, and that doesn't scale to infinity. Anyone noticed how we don't all that often see a new name stick around very long? I've noticed that, and I'm concerned by it. Yes, some newcomers are skilled at reading social undercurrents and just judging "how things are done" by looking at them being done. And that's fine. But for many others, we need a rulebook to tell them to read. That does many things. It gives them a reference to look at without being afraid of "asking a stupid question" to a more experienced user. It also shows them that the rules are not arbitrary, and aren't just a case of "an admin decided they didn't agree with you." If someone gets blocked for violating the 3RR, it's much easier to tell them "Look, here is the three-revert rule. You broke it, and you got blocked because of that." Now, in that particular case, we do need some flexibility to deal with those that game the system. But we've got that, in terms of a general prohibition on edit warring, and a clear statement that you shouldn't blow things up to illustrate your point. Again, it's there, it's laid out for everyone to see, and it applies to everyone. And, yes, we have IAR, and I'm not even up for getting rid of that. But even that has an important qualification, and when someone invokes it, it's entirely proper to ask them "How did your ignoring the rules improve the encyclopedia?" Unfortunately, anymore, IAR tends to take on the cast of "I can do whatever I want, so long as I'm convinced enough that I'm right."

But, to get back to policy and guideline making and changing in general. Sometimes, people disagree on what's the right way to do things. Sometimes they can't work it out by talking, and sometimes it's not a case where each one can keep on "doing their thing", because each one's "thing" is in direct conflict with the other. At that point, it comes time to put it to a well-advertised vote, and just come to a (yes, prescriptive and binding, though not unchangeable in the future) decision, or else it will just lead to endless quarrelling without ever resolving the underlying issue. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:16, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Research I did with the help of Greg Maxwell shows that the wiki system allows wikipedia to scale very very well. Research I did with the help of Durin shows that centralised discussions and votes first cause scaling problems, and then demand solutions for those scaling problems. It's a bureaucracy that requires a bureacracy to maintain the bureaucracy. This is, of course, silly. With few caveats, ripping out the bureaucracy allows wikipedia to scale quite impressively. We're a modern 21st century cross between adhocracy, a kind of clan/cabal structure, and by perhaps some small stroke of luck, the way our wiki operates tends to distribute people so that they don't tend to get in each others' way. Literature exists to show that each of these structures work very well, and scale very well. On the other hand people aren't yet being educated in these systems very much, since some of these concepts are only a quarter century old or less. Acculturation is a major challenge.

Rules and guidelines are important for people to learn at some stage, as stated in both the links I provided earlier (to ppp and consensus not policy). These pages also explain how guidelines can be formulated. I suggest these two pages should be used as the alternative for this one.

I do agree that in certain very limited situations, votes and polls can work as tie-breakers in tricky situations. They should not, however, be the norm, and they should not be used for day to day guideline maintenance. (maintenance would come to a standstill) --Kim Bruning 22:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we're probably largely in agreement, then. Yes, certainly, we don't need an up-or-down vote on every issue, quite often discussion does resolve it. But sometimes, it doesn't, and sometimes then it does come time to say "Look, alright, this requires a decision one way or the other, and we're at a hopeless deadlock. It's time to decide it and for that to be the end of it." At that point, there is the obligatory person (generally who hasn't participated previously at all) who must come along to tell you that "Teh VOTING is EBIL!!!!!!1111". Well, no, sometimes it's not. Sometimes, perpetual indecision is worse than any other option, so one way or the other, a choice must be made.

As to the rest, I guess I just don't see it scaling in practice, whatever the research showed. Every system we've got is operating hopelessly beyond capacity, everything's a perpetual battle, and there's no stability whatsoever. Sometimes, bureaucracy ain't evil either. It's a pain in the ass, to be sure, but sometimes it really is an efficient and effective system. In other cases it's disastrous. But we shouldn't be so quick to state that "votes" and "bureaucracy" and "binding decisions" and "prescriptive policies" are by definition bad. Sometimes, no they're not, and the knee-jerking doesn't help anyone or anything. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:38, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The voting is evil story is quite funny. It was invented by my German wikipedia counterpart (Elian), and relayed to me by Jimbo. :-) The idea is that polls often are divided between many equally unenlightening slogans, so why not just add an extra slogan? ;-) I'm an eventualist btw, I think that in situations where folks are deadlocked between two solutions, probably both solutions are wrong. Whatever the case, we can take just short of forever to solve them, so no worries. If you get really impatient, sure, you can hold an up or down vote, but 999 times out of 1000, that's unwise, and someone will notice and add the infamous option ;-) . Ayup, it's The German Solution (tm)

There are a small number of pages with serious scaling issues that demand everyones constant attention. Because of this, people's perceptions become distorted.

So in early 2006, to see what's was really going on, we decided to do some actual measurements. The measurements we did showed that of the 1 000 000 pages at the time, only roughly 1000 had potential scaling issues. All the other million or more pages seemed to just be humming along quietly.

So the great great majority of pages are not noticed much at all! Of course, those pages are also totally boring. Nothing to do to make people feel very important, and decidedly lacking in wikidrama! ;-)

Though hmmm, this does seem to be drifting away from best practices wrt working on guidelines though.

--Kim Bruning 00:09, 10 May 2007 (UTC) Make the wikipedia community boring! Heh, what a slogan. :-)

I don't think it's drifting away a bit! Seems to me some important questions to ask are "What should policies and guidelines be, and how should they be adopted?" That seems a relatively important consideration toward best practices. As for the rest-we could use some more boring old stuff in some cases! Yes, sometimes it is a bit of a pain to go through a bit of process. But it's a tremendous pain to go through tons of drama again and again because the process isn't laid-out and clear. And we really don't have an unlimited period of time to deal with that, for the simple reason that it's driving good people away. Even when people don't like the outcome of something, they're much more likely to live with it anyway if they clearly got their "fair shake". With so many things very slippery and undefined, it's almost impossible (whether it's true or not!) to have it appear that way in many cases. Now, of course, it's possible to go too far the other way as well-no ruleset can cover every eventuality, and sometimes people will just have to use good sense and discretion in unusual situations. But for usual situations, we can and should develop usual means of handling, and we might want to consider a better way than "Leave it in perpetual deadlock until it ends up blowing up, it goes to Arbcom, everyone gets banned, and wait for it to repeat with a new set of players." Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I certainly agree that this isn't anarchy. However what exactly it is,I don't think anyone can easily describe in a document. There seems to be a certain element of natural selection, and I think perhaps that's even the strongest theme. So in that sense, Wikipedia policy is what works. --Tony Sidaway 08:26, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The actual and frustrating difficulty of recent policy discussion on WP is not due primarily to the difficulty of mechanisms for obtaining consensus: it is primarily due to the basic disagreements on what the policy should be. Seraphimblade talks about the effect of 25% in blocking changes, but I do not think there has been a true 75% or even 66 2/3% agreement on any major question. At the most basic level, there is no agreement between those who feel quite literally that everything with two sources should get an article, and those who additionally want the articles to have some intrinsic importance--the actual practices as seen at AfD varies from subject to subject. (and of course its application varies from article to article). Typically, those who support strict standards in one area do not support it in another--most debaters seem to me to have agendas in support of their favorite types of articles, and these mainly determine what they say. People who find the present compromises adequate for their interests typically do not want to change. DGG 12:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

That's why evolution has emerged as a primary engine of change. Monkey see, monkey do. --Tony Sidaway 12:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

In recent AFDs we have seen some widely reported news items about crimes or "water-cooler stories" get deleted. BLP was conjured up as a basis for deleting (sometimes quite out of process) well sourced stories about minor crime victims, but for stories not involving privacy of minors we have started deleting some of the multiply-independently-reliably sourced ones. This leaves people who LIKE the stories grumbling that there is no basis for deleting them. WP:NOTNEWS was tagged into rejected, then essay status. It looks like, from the arguments above, it is perfectly proper and in accord with the understanding of policy modification of most of those posting here to create a "We are not a news archive" policy by going right ahead and deleting routine crime stories, internet memes, and watercooler stories on the ground that they just do not belong in an encyclopedia. On the other hand, people who like crime stories can argue the AFD was improper at DRV because the crime stories satisfied WP:N and WP:A. The argument that "policy is whatever people get away with" might be hard to sell at a DRV. The ways described above of changing policy by being bold and ignoring all rules have also led to extreme drama. What is so bad about a formal and genteel way of changing policy, to have some guideline to point to, and to decrease the wikidrama, DRVs, and the rest of the alphabet soup of RFC and ARB. Waddya think? Edison 23:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It sounds sensible to me. --Kevin Murray 23:58, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The view expressed by the plurality here seems to be that WP:IAR trumps WP:N and WP:A. Just vote to delete things that don't seem encyclopedia as WP:IDONTLIKEIT would suggest, and if it works enough times, cite it as policy? Edison 04:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

• IAR must by its very nature trump everything else--that's the very meaning of Ignore All Rules. IAR isn't policy--its a statement that we may if we choose ignore policy. As there isn't any force holding us to policy, that's obvious anyway--its just a convenient symbol for saying that we are going to do what we please regardless, and a comment that you won't get banned if you do that judiciously. At most, its advice that if you cite IDONTLIKEIT nobody will listen to you, but if you cite IAAR in exactly the same circumstances they will. DGG 07:21, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Biographies of living persons are an interesting problem at the moment. There are people who hold several different views on this. It gets more interesting when some of those people are the lawyers of the living persons in question ^^;;

To prevent the latter from taking too much of an interest, a number of people seem to advocate a more preventative approach, or (ab)use the speedy/deletion review combination in creative ways they weren't really designed for initially. --Kim Bruning 15:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Interesting Kim; do you have some examples? I saw some of this at an article on Bruce McMahan. There were issues both ways in that the bulk of the information in the article was tabloid, but having his PR people/attorneys editing and disrupting WP seemed inappropriate. A bad test case though. --Kevin Murray 16:03, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

As you know, The entire wikipedia deletion system (bar the proposed deletion system) is very much broken. Some Biographies Of Living Persons patrollers are now actually exploiting the flaws. Deletion Review requires consensus to undelete, while Articles For Deletion requires consensus to delete, so ironically, it's harder to undo a speedy deletion than to prevent an AFD. This is a useful property to exploit, if you would like for an article to go away.

This situation proves that some people are applying rules too rigidly, thus creating holes for people to exploit in the first place. Ironically, the strict folks are the very same people are the ones who are now crying foul, despite the fact that they are the ones responsible for exactly these dynamics in the first place.

It's quite a situation :-/ --Kim Bruning 16:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Kim I see twelve cases where speddy deletion is authorized:

• 1. Patent nonsense
• 2. Test pages
• 3. Pure vandalism,
• 4. Recreation of deleted material.
• 5. Banned user.
• 6. Housekeeping.
• 7. Author requests deletion.
• 8. Talk pages whose corresponding article does not exist,
• 9. Office Actions.
• 10. Attack pages.
• 11. Blatant advertising.
• 12. Blatant copyright infringement

I think that the abuse re: BLP as blatent misuse of the tools and share your concern. Thanks! --Kevin Murray 17:08, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

• I should note that there is presently an arbitration case on this very issue, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff. At any rate the DRV/BLP mess is pretty much irrelevant to this page.
• To answer Edison's question, "what is so bad about a formal and genteel way of changing policy": for a variety of reasons, Wikipedia at present does not have formal policy or a formal way of creating or changing policies. What these reasons are and whether people like them is academic.
• There is nothing a priori wrong with having a formal policy and a formal way of making it, but despite several requests to do so, the people who believe this is a good idea have never made a solid proposal for this, and have basically contributed nothing to this approach but wishful thinking. If you want formal policy (including formal mechanisms to propose/revoke/amend policy), write down a proposal for it and pose it to the community. Because regardless of whether you want formal policy, this page as written isn't one. >Radiant< 11:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

And of course, being a proposal, it will be rejected (and rightly so) --Kim Bruning 11:53, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

• Quite possibly. However, for people who would support a formal approach, it is more appropriate to formally propose their formal approach (with, yes, the possibility of it being rejected) than to assume that said approach already exists (per WP:NOBOOK, and because such an informal assumption de facto undermines the principle of a formal approach). If you want to do things formally, you have to do them right. >Radiant< 12:08, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Perscriptive is not automaticaly bad.

A whole lot of this discussion is predicated on the following phrase - "Wikipedia policies and guidelines are descriptive not prescriptive!". This sound good, egalitarian and wiki-like.

It is however false, and easily demonstrated to be false.

Take edit wars. Edit wars are a common occurrence on Wikipedia, so if our guidelines were descriptive not prescriptive, we'd allow for them right? But oddly we don't. We have strong recommendations against it, and we even have a very prescriptive policy called 3RR. This flies in the face of the "Wikipedia policies and guidelines are descriptive not prescriptive!" soundbite.

Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are consensus driven, and sometimes this means they are descriptive rather than prescriptive. But Not Always! Sometimes the consensus is that the status quo is wrong, and that we shouldn't be doing things they way they have been done. Or that the consensus identifies a common practice that has been self defeating, or a common practice that wasted effort, or a common practice that was just downright silly. And in those cases we come up with consensus driven proscriptive policy and guidelines.

So here's a new soundbite. "Consensus drives Wikipedia policy, not tradition." --Barberio 12:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• That is a rather obvious straw man. In stating that "edit wars are common practice" you omit the important fact that "...and people can get blocked for it". Obviously a misstatement of facts is not valid. >Radiant< 12:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

And they get blocked for it because of policy saying they can get blocked for it. --Barberio 13:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Wrong. They get blocked for it because it is disruptive to the encyclopedia, and policy says so because such blocks are not controversial. You have it precisely backwards. >Radiant< 13:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately for your argument, the actual history of Wikipedia disagrees with you. As demonstrated here, Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version/Policy vote: 24 hour bans for revert wars bans for revert wars and edit wars was a controversial and disputed step. --Barberio 13:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Unfortunately for your argument, citing a single instance is not a good demonstration of "actual history". To get a better impression of "actual history" you should for instance listen to Tony Sidaway or Kim Bruning, both of which have been here longer than the three of us combined. >Radiant< 13:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

A recognized evolution in organizations is that they frequently outgrow the style of the founders as part of the maturation process. Longevity is not a gauge for judgment. --Kevin Murray 13:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Precisely. And you are judging this page solely on its longevity. If you don't accept longevity as an argument, this is not a guideline. If you do accept it, you must likewise listen to Tony and Kim who state that this was tried in the past and shown not to work. You can't have your cake and eat it. >Radiant< 13:27, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• That's a load of crap. You are un-artfully twisting logic. The longevity of the guideline is irrelevant; the status quo is that it is a guideline, and the status quo is that Kim and Tony are advocating a course which is wrong for a larger organization. --Kevin Murray 13:52, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I've just read the oppose section of Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version/Policy vote: 24 hour bans for revert wars, and I'm not entirely sure how it supports anything that barberio has said. Everyone, even the opposers it seems, agreed that edit warring is disruptive (and therefore bad), and stopping edit wars was common, accepted practice. No-one was saying "let's create a policy in order to make edit warring bad", which appears to be what Barberio is asserting. – Steel 13:32, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

While stopping edit wars was supported, the idea that Revert Wars should come with a proscriptive block to protect the wiki *was* disputed. What seems now to be common practice, was then uncommon practice suggested in a policy discussion. --Barberio 13:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Which is a considerably weaker claim than your initial one. – Steel 13:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Check what I wrote again. My initial claim was "bans for revert wars and edit wars was a controversial and disputed step", which is exactly the same as this claim. --Barberio 13:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

No, your initial claim was "Edit wars are a common occurrence on Wikipedia, so if our guidelines were descriptive not prescriptive, we'd allow for them right?" (and the rest of that paragraph). – Steel 13:57, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Steel, Barberio was using an analogy to make a point. Perhaps the parallel was not precise, but you're making a mountain out of a logic-mole-hill. The point is that without some degree of perscription we will have anarchy. It is the degree which is in dispute. Let's move toward some logical solutions, rather than debating semantics. --Kevin Murray 14:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving on sounds good. I've said what I wanted to say. – Steel 14:09, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Regardless of the philosophical point, I should point out that if this page is descriptive it is simply false, whereas if it is prescriptive it prescribes ideas that have been shown not to work. So either way, it doesn't work. >Radiant< 14:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Empirically, lack of prescription does not equal anarchy. Wikipedia operated without this method for quite some amount of time, and seems likely to be able to operate without it in future as well. --Kim Bruning 14:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, that is not true. This page gives a good recount of how most policy is proposed; most policy proposals fail because they are ill conceived or unnecessary. That some people proceed by other means out of ignorance of the guideline or defying it doesn't mean that the guideline is false. Many people solve arguments through murder but we don't suspend this law because it is ignored or disobeyed. What is your beef here? What specifically do you oppose in the text? --Kevin Murray 14:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• The point is that a suggestion that fails ~90% of the time does not make a good guideline. >Radiant< 14:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The thing is that evolutionary design in the field and consensus design in the field are very powerful tools, and outstrip this particular method in efficacy. They also have a longer history at wikipedia, and have been used for most of our policies, guidelines, and essays (over 200-300 pages?). During that same period, this method has hardly put a dent. --Kim Bruning 14:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• I vehemently disagree. By nature writers are creative. We desperately need to curb that creativity when it comes to rule making, or we will be drowning in rules. A sieve that only filters-out 90% needs a tighter weave. It's ironic that you are proposing to eliminate the rule which is our guardian against a flood of rules. Kim's count of 200 - 300 pages of rules is a testament to the problem. --Kevin Murray 14:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • What gives you the idea that this page is our "guardian" against a flood of rules? >Radiant< 14:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Good enough point, but I don't think this method is designed to prevent proliferation. I think we'll need new designs for that. :-) --Kim Bruning 14:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, it is the guardian by keeping 90% of proposals from becoming rules (per your count). --Kevin Murray 15:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Kim, if you have a better plan I'm all ears (eyes, ect.) But let's propose and evaluate a new fix before tossing out this one. --Kevin Murray 15:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Actually, I would say that this page is the enabler by causing those 90% of proposals to be made, whereas WP:POL, WP:BURO and WP:CREEP are the guardians that prevent them from becoming rules. I know plenty proposals rejected as instruction creep, overly bureaucratic, or not meeting the standards of WP:POL; I can think of zero proposals rejected for not following the instructions on this page. >Radiant< 15:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Kevin, this method is the new kid on the block. It was tried, and it failed. In the mean time, we already have existing methods to obtain consensus and write pages; methods that have been used to write most guidelines on wikipedia; methods with a proven track record, used to write over a million pages; methods that actually work. :-) --Kim Bruning 21:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Others support this guideline and there is not sufficient consensus to deprecate this. You site obscure consensus not in evidence at this talk page. All I see is three editors in opposition. --Kevin Murray 21:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a repetition of moves. If we go by sheer numbers alone, I see 90% failure/rejection rate of this guideline in the field. Sounds like case closed to me. Do you have any new arguments? --Kim Bruning 23:14, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Kim, can you explain what you mean by "90% failure/rejection rate of this guideline in the field"? What field? By whom? --Kevin Murray 23:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

It's dead, Jim. --Tony Sidaway 11:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• To say that "policy is descriptive, not prescriptive" is to say that there is no such thing as policy. Indeed it is to say that wikipedia is an anarchy. If policy only describes what people do, than anyone may do anything at any time, and anyone else may react to it in any way. There is no principled basis to say to anyone "what you are doing is wrong", because s/he can simply reply "No I am merely trying to change how we do things" and if people really believe that all policy is descriptive, the they must accept this claim, even if they don't adopt whatever "new way" is being proposed. If all policy is descriptive, than i can start ignoring WP:NPOV, because lots of non-neutral text exists now on wikipedia, so a descriptive policy would indicate that some but far from all wikipedia writing follows NPOV principles. The same holds true with the other pillars, except for IAR, a "descriptive" policy renders them merely suggestions, hardly even guidelines. Or else it says that the real rules are what people wind up enforcing on each other and that any "official policy" is merely an after-the-fact recorder of who won the latest boxing match. I hope that that isn't how wikipedia works, and i don't see how the project could long survive if it were. Nor is that how supporters of "descriptive" policy actually act Most such people are quick to point out violations of principles, and even process, of which they approve, while feeling free to violate any they don't like, in the name of "experimentally" creating new policy.
• What is true is that wikipedia often creates policy by codifying practices that have become common. But there is a limit to what kinds of changes can be made in this way, and this is not the only way in which changes cam be made. And until such things are codified, at least informally, they aren't policy in any sense, and there is no principled basis for insisting that others go along, and such insistence often does not work. DES ^(talk) 14:37, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• "To say that "policy is descriptive, not prescriptive" is to say that there is no such thing as policy."

Invalid logic, That does not (nescesarily) follow.

• Indeed it is to say that wikipedia is an anarchy.

That does not follow from the previous. (look up Anarchy, perhaps)

• If policy only describes what people do, than anyone may do anything at any time, and anyone else may react to it in any way.

What if no one agrees with what you are doing?

Actually... hmm, perhaps you're very accustomed to doing things in one particular way, that you only see things in black or white, (your way or highway :-) ). Perhaps you're missing the great big elephant in the room? That would be entirely excusable, mind you, for elephants tend to be grey ;-)) --Kim Bruning 19:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Kim you make a lot of cute comments about yummy sandwiches and grey elephants, but you have yet to propose a better solution or to answer specifics about how you are evaluating the "consensus in the field." I like the humor and it is clever, but it is time to be a bit less grey and more specific. Please. --Kevin Murray 20:04, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• WP:CON, obviously. The purpose you ascribe to this page is actually covered better on other pages (CON and WP:POL, specifically). >Radiant< 08:46, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Negation

I have been told that this text "negates the guideline". However, that text I inserted is provably true and matches how Wikipedia works. In other words, actual practice negates the guideline. >Radiant< 13:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

That is to say, Wikipedia works how it works and not in line with the guidelines. In other news, Pope found to be Catholic – Gurch 19:19, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Kevin has still not bothered to explain why he is so keenly intent on hiding this important caveat. He calls it an "opinion" and a "commentary", ignoring that it is simple fact. >Radiant< 14:38, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, there is no need for the rhetoric; what you are doing here you would not tollerate at other policy pages. You are deprecating your own standards in this dog-fight to make a point. (A) there is no precedent for indivicaul commentary on the quality of a guideline in the lead paragraphs, (B) you, Tony and Kim are ignoring the opinions of others at this talk page in your constant edit-war behavior toward deprecating this guideline. This is benath your stature. --Kevin Murray 14:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• A fact is not a commentary. I have already pointed out that this page fails both your and my (admittedly different) standard of being "policy". The opinion that Wikipedia should have a formal way of dealing with policy is valid, but the fact remains that this page is not that (as said above, if taken as descriptive, this page is false; if taken as prescriptive, this page makes suggestions that are known to not work). I therefore suggest that you make a proposal for how you would like Wikipedia to formally work. >Radiant< 14:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• I don't oppose modifying this guideline toward a better solution as long as there are consistent criteria for encouraging broad participation and evaluation in the process of proposing and approving policies and guidelines. I am content that this guideline reflects both (a) a good method, and (b) the way the system typically works at WP. To throw away the rules beccuase some people successfully subvert them with success is not a reason to change the rules. If you want to draft a well supported alternative; I will be happy to work with you. --Kevin Murray 16:14, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • As has been repeatedly pointed out, both (a) and (b) are in fact false. >Radiant< 16:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• False in your eyes, but not in those of others. Why don't you propose something as a workable alternative. I'd be inclined to be very flexible toward compromise to end this squabble. --Kevin Murray 16:30, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Once again you mistake fact for opinion. False. Show me one policy that was written using this method and I'll show you three that weren't, and ten that were attempted but never got anywhere. Evidence shows that this is (a) a poor method, and (b) the way the system typically fails at WP. More evidence up on this talk page. Proof by assertion isn't, you know. >Radiant< 16:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• Radiant you continue to support my position that this guideline prevents a lot of nonsensical guidelines from sliding by, but those who want to ignore it flaunt it and make guidelines without due scrutiny. Give me some examples of guidelines which were made by not following procedures and we'll see whether these truly had reasonable backing for acceptance. --Kevin Murray 20:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Do you have any proof whatsoever of policies made via this process, or of guidelines made by "following procedures", or of this being the system typically used on WP, or that this "prevents a lot of nonsensical guidelines from sliding by", or of any guideline that was rejected for not following the process outlined here? >Radiant< 08:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, you propose no alternate solution, continue to cite problems which you won't demonstrate, and now your try to put the onus onto proponents of the status quo to refute your unsubstantiated claims. This is the ultimate in nonproductive rhetoric. --Kevin Murray 20:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• I'm offering a perfectly viable alternate solution, which is not to mislead users into thinking that this suggested way of creating policy actually works (which, incidentally, is precisely what you are doing). I have already shown evidence, earlier on this page, that the community has created a grand total of two policies since 2004 (PROD & WHEEL), neither of which followed the procedure outlined here, and that during that time there were a lot of rejected policy proposals, most of which did follow more-or-less this procedure. Now for the third time I ask you to produce a shred of evidence that this page "prevents a lot of nonsensical guidelines from sliding by", considering that's what WP:POL does, or of any proposal that was rejected for not following this process? >Radiant< 08:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
  • You persist in mere rhetoric and offering of personal opinion. This is bordering on a trolling diatribe. --Kevin Murray 08:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Let's see. You asked evidence. I gave evidence. In return, I ask evidence of you, and in return you call me a troll. In other words you really don't have an argument, you are deliberately ignoring facts that don't suit your view, and you use personal attacks to make your point. I think we're through discussing this, and I request that you stop hiding the facts just because you don't like those facts. You are in fact being actively misleading on what you purport to be a guideline, and that is disruptive. >Radiant< 08:24, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

The dispute

Let's see. In the past years, there have been two policies succesfully created, neither of which followed this method, and about 80 that failed, most of which did follow this method. It follows that this method does not work. Does anyone have evidence to the contrary? >Radiant< 08:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• • It follows that this method works very well at preventing needless policy by keeping the development of policies and guidelines transparent to the community. --Kevin Murray 08:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I would like the opinion of someone who listens to arguments, not of someone who simply makes personal attacks to people who disagree with them. Your bad faith here is obvious from your ignoring of evidence, refusal to substantiate your own allegations, and actively attempting to mislead people. >Radiant< 08:54, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
      • This seems to be a bit dramatic -- panties in a twist type of reaction. You've made this very personal, which I regret since I generally respect your opinion and goals. Please stand back and look at the logic here. I've asked for constructive solutions, and your response is rhetoric and ongoing blunt deprecation of an established guideline, wihtout broad support. Why? --Kevin Murray 09:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
        • You made this personal the instant you started making personal attacks, and I note that after five or so requests you still blandly refuse to give any evidence whatsoever. Please stand back and give people with an actually constructive approach a chance to respond. I'm not going to respond to you any further. >Radiant< 09:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

To reiterate

To repeat the actual question and give people the chance to respond - In the past years, there have been two policies succesfully created, neither of which followed this method, and about 80 that failed, most of which did follow this method. It follows that this method does not work. Does anyone have evidence to the contrary? >Radiant< 09:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• Can you cite an example where this page prevented a good policy from being adopted?
• Can you explain the method(s) which were used in the creation of the two policies you cite?--Kevin Murray 09:42, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Statistically, if I'm not mistaken, you (Radiant!) are not giving enough data. Let me take a quick look at it. We have "this method" and any other one, "not this method". Out of 82 proposals (I'll drop the "about 80" for simplicity) 2 succeeded, using "not this method", 80 did not succed. Of those 80 most used "this method", which implies that some (s) used "not this method". A cross-table of "(no) success" by following "(not) this method" would be:

	"success"	"no success"
"this method"	0	80-s
"not this method"	2	s

These could be roughly considered as following a Binomial distribution (several yes/no experiments). Deriving a 95% confidence interval of the probability of success (p) for each method is highly dependent on s. Values for p for some values of s follows:

s	0	3	4	10	20
"this method"	0.0% - 4.5%	0.0% - 4.7%	0.0% - 4.7%	0.0% - 5.1%	0.0% - 6.0%
"not this method"	15.8% - 100.0%	5.3% - 85.3%	4.3% - 77.8%	2.1% - 48.4%	1.1% - 29.6%

That is, if "some" equals 4 we are already crossing a border of uncertainty: if 2 out of 6 succeeded not using this method, while 76 out of 76 not succeeded using this method we are not sure that the real probability of success of not using this method is higher than that of using it.

If "some" equals 10 - 2 out of 12 succeeded not using this method, while 70 out of 70 not succeeded using this method - then we are pretty far from sure of it. Instead we would be close to showing that passing new policy is hard, no matter the method.

Note that these statistics prove nothing, thus the italics above, they only point what is more (un)likely. Still the unlikely happens and the likely does not, sometimes. Sorry for the odd methematical explanation... but I hope it helps. Enjoy! - Nabla 17:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm

Just ponder for a minute: 80 attempts at using this method: not successful, 8 succesful, but we have rather more Policies and Guidelines than that. So how can that be so? --Kim Bruning 07:45, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I hate these charts and things. Presumably they mean something to someone. --Tony Sidaway 07:57, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

In short, I say that from the figures given by Radiant! does *not* follow his conclusion. As that may be a non-intuitive statement I supported it with some math. Note that I do not say his conclusion is wrong, only that it lacks some more reasoning as the figures, by themselves, only prove that policy is hard to pass, no matter how. - Nabla 22:02, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, Radiants figures were somewhat misleading perhaps. We have 82 guidelines and 47 policies. 8 of these were claimed to be successfully proposed using this method (but 6 of those needed intervention by Jimbo). --Kim Bruning 13:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Even if it is proven that "policy is hard to pass, no matter how", it follows automatically that using the process outlined here will probably not result in an actual addition or change to policy. Even 8 out of 47 is a pretty bad case. The point isn't just the tag war, the point is that one editor strongly objects to this page pointing this out. >Radiant< 13:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not so sure how the community perceives the distinction between "help" and "wikipedia" pages. To me a help page should be for technical matters ("how-to"): how to make links, how to make tables, how to move pages, etc.; while "wikipedia" should be about the project's "what & why", and the human relations' "how": what contents do we wish and why, what writing style do we wish and why, how to solve disputes, how to be an admin and choosing them, etc.. (an extra namespace - say community - could be useful to separate the encyclopedia matters from the encyclopedist's ones, but would likely only add more confusion.)

So I think the the page should be at Wikipedia:Modifying and creating policy (IMO, a better name than the previous one Wikipedia:How to create policy, that redirects here)

As to the point, I think the page should spell out that policy is hard to create/modify. Because it is so; because it most naturally is so: as someone said above, it is human nature to privilege statu quo; and, the most important, because it should be so: there are only so many rules needed to coordinate an encyclopedia (WP is not a republic, even if it has it's aediles and praetors...) and they should be reasonably stable, yet flexible, and the less they are the more it is so.

Tagging this as historical would be bad, as it would create a void in guidelines on how to propose modifications. The important thing is to update where needed. Why not showing more than one route? If there are other ways, let's spell them out too.

I propose establishing a good section on 'policy is descriptive' versus 'policy is prescriptive'. It is both. Making that inner tension clear will make the process look clearer too. As I see them, policies are mostly descriptive at the start. We don't go around creating rules for non-existent problems, we solve problems that come up, discuss them, and then write down the established solution (hopefully a good one). After it is written down it becomes (kind of) prescriptive, not that it is written in stone, never to change, but that there is the need to have some standardisation in criteria and process, so that we produce a balanced encyclopedia with a minimal disturbance of each other's work (and mental health). They may be broken, in good faith and for some good reason. No penalty should go for the infractor if he did so, other than a likely reverse, and it may even trigger improvement. - Nabla 01:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• Well see a number of people keep saying that this page "fills a void" or that it "keeps spurious proposals from becoming guidelines" and so forth, but it's actually WP:POL which does that. >Radiant< 12:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

There's tonnes of guidelines and policies and essays and etc, so unless all guideline writing stopped on the day this page was written, there have been many successful guideline pages written since then. --Kim Bruning 17:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The expiration of protection

Is listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Protectedpages&namespace=12&type=edit&level=0 as being different from what's stated on the page. --Sgeo^TC 02:31, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that is because the protection template was not subst'ed, thus was showing a date 1 week from "now", not 1 week from the initial date. I changed the date to a static date, May 30, according to the log. - Nabla 21:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

"This method is more useful for creating guidelines"

So far I see only one documented instance of a {{guideline}} being accepted using this method (under naming conventions). So as far as the evidence shows, only 1 guideline has every been created using this method. Hence I removed this sentence. --Kim Bruning 13:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC) (small correction: edit summary erroneously states I removed a paragraph instead.)

• The failure rate for guideline creation is approximately equal to that of policy creation. It is a shame that Kevin is unwilling to discuss that he is in fact misleading people. >Radiant< 13:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Rereading text, the described method is changed from where it was before?

Hmm, on what date did "and vote" turn into "do not vote"? --Kim Bruning 13:33, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean this edit? - Nabla 17:09, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

That saves some time. Now we just need to get rid of the proposed tags, and maybe a variant on this method will one day actually work ;-) --Kim Bruning 18:52, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Full circle

Kevin Murray said: "If it is a bad help page, let's change it to reflect the actual procedures".

In reply, I made an edit which I think is the consequence of that request. (Which is a full circle, back from where we started, I think.)

Creation of policy is a tricky process, and this isn't that process. The actual process is distributed througout the wikipedia namespace in strangely tagged pages (some of them essay, some of them guideline, some of them policy, some of them expanding on policy, etc) ... It might be an idea to have the actual procedure refactored so it's on one page. But that's a different effort.

At the same time, we should really take this misleading page out of circulation. This is still my opinion. :-/ --Kim Bruning 20:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Kevin, I don't actually see any comments or reasoning here. I'll revert in 24 hours if I don't see anything, if that's ok?

In the mean time, and I'm guessing from your edit summary, but haven't we established quite solidly that this guideline has been rejected by the community?

The problem is that anytime someone puts a {{proposed}} tag on something, the odds are pretty high (at least 9 times out of 10) that it will be {{rejected}}. So I think my whole point is just So Don't Do That^(tm). --Kim Bruning 00:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Kim, your premise seems flawed. The proposals aren't rejected because they are tagged as proposals, they are rejected because we don't need more and more rules, and much of what is proposed is ill conceived. --Kevin Murray 02:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Likewise, this page is rejected because we don't need more and more rules, and much of what this page says is ill-conceived. >Radiant< 08:58, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing that in fact all of what is proposed is ill conceived, as it is probably the act of proposing itself which is the problem. :-/--Kim Bruning 01:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not unhappy about the current version [2]. However, I would be happy to work with Kim and Radiant to modify the instructions here to more accurately reflect the actual process(es) which they say are being used. --Kevin Murray 13:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • You can start by answering the many questions you've been asked on this talk page that you've ignored, and by explaining why you persist in removing factual statements from the page. >Radiant< 14:53, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that it sets out to explain to people how to create policy. This is not really a best practice on wikipedia at all. Instead, we've mostly been documenting best practices. Doing so is rather uncontroversial.

Originally all such best practices documents were designated guidelines. Later people started dividing documents into policy, guideline, essay, other, which to this day, I think has muddied the water more than that it created clarity. People later created this page, which caused new misunderstandings to be stacked on top of the earlier misconceptions caused by the classification system.

So for me, the premise of the premise is already wrong. :-/ But that's just me.

Ok, background explaining done. Here come some questions...

On the wider wiki, people do seem to have had some inkling, because in at least 90% of all cases all attempts to use this guideline were marked {{rejected}}. The total number of reviewers could be into the thousands. (Assuming an average of 80 pages rejected, with 100 people reviewing per page, 80*100=8000. This might be high. If only 10 people reviewing per page (order of magnitude less), then 80*10=800, which is just under 1000.)

Did we get across the point that I believe that hundreds or maybe thousands of people end up rejecting this concept every time? It's not just me, it is a rather large number of people. I'm basing this point on evidence on this page itself. I'm trying to understand if you take that point? Or that maybe you disagree (but hadn't quite gotten that across?)

--Kim Bruning 01:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Kim, what you are saying is that people reject most proposals, not that they are rejecting this format. It seems likely that most proposals should be rejected since they are poor proposals. I just don't see the problem. I keep asking for an explanation of how you think that policy should be created and all I hear back is that this method causes proposals to be rejected. --Kevin Murray 04:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• Kevin, you're telling Kim and me to modify this page to more accurately reflect reality, and yet you kneejerk revert us every time we do exactly that. I suggest you get off your soapbox. >Radiant< 08:47, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • A load of steaming crap! You continue to editorialize the page with your personal opinion in the form of a disclaimer. I have continually asked for your specific objections to the text and suggested that you propose the alternate method(s) which you assert are effective ways of making policy. I think that Kim and I have affected a compromise by bringing the factual discussion of the difficulties of this method to the top of the page, but you continue to insist on doing it your way without compromise, and accuse me of "knee-jerk" and other non sequitur. This seems like an obtuse method toward consensus. --Kevin Murray 13:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Kevin, are you aware that (1) you have categorically refused to answer questions about this subject; (2) you use personal attacks and/or incivility to make your point; (3) everyone else on this talk page appears to disagree with you, despite your attempt to vote stack the issue; (4) a fact is not an opinion, and nobody has pointed out any errors in said fact other than that you happen not to like the fact; (5) you haven't edited at all this week except to revert war over this, which is telling; and (6) the last time you did a series of edits related to policies and guidelines, every single one of them was reverted, and not just by me? When so many people disagree with you, you might want to consider that you may in fact simply be wrong. With respect to compromise, please remember that the factual explanation is in fact a compromise with respect to the people who do not believe this to be a guideline at all. You're pulling the old trick of revert warring between a proposed compromise and the version you preferred all along. >Radiant< 13:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
      • More unsupportable rhetoric without answering the question. --Kevin Murray 13:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
        • Precisely my point. You routinely ignore everything everybody else says here and just keep repeating the same few points over and over again. Read back on this page and you'll see dozens of questions asked of you, which you refuse to answer, and you see several insults, attacks and other incivilities you made in response, in lieu of giving actual answers, and you see several facts that you refuse to acknowledge because you happen not to like them. Time to get off your soapbox. >Radiant< 13:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
          • More and more rhetoric. I'll be happy to answer any clearly stated non-rhetorical question. Please state your question here. There is plenty of opposition to your ploys above; however, not all of us share your energy for beating a dead horse. As to my light participation lately: (1) I'm happy about most of the compromises in other areas of WP, (2) sometimes my job and life must take precedent over WP, though my commitment remains constant. As to getting personal, we probably both live in glass houses and should be warry of casting that stone. Some people are nibbly insulters, personally I'd rather call a spade a spade. --Kevin Murray 13:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Cheers Radiant! I almost support your new format. Clearly it is good advice, while potentially simplistic. I'll stand back and see where it goes. Thanks! Kevin --Kevin Murray 14:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• Very sneaky. You say you remove "your" posting of the disputed tag, while in fact the only reason that tag was there is because you objected to calling the page historical. >Radiant< 14:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • My goodness, I was only trying to be supportive of your efforts. --Kevin Murray 14:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Heya Kevin. Ok, so we've established that proposals get rejected. Would it then be a large leap of logic to advise people not to write proposals as such? --Kim Bruning 14:44, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Kim, I'd be really interested in seeing what you suggest as an alternative. As it stands it seems that proposing something by definition makes it a proposal, and to get adequate feedback from the community it should be advertised as a proposal. I will try to keep an open mind. --Kevin Murray 14:48, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think people should be making proposals for new rules.

The "alternative" (actually the main method) is that we continue the tradition of describing what (parts of) the community are already doing in the form of best practices and guidelines. This is how practically all of our policies/guidelines/essays have come about, and is what makes them so effective.

The method is and remains decentralized, makes good use of the wiki, and is scalable. --Kim Bruning 15:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree in theory with the premise that describing is better than prescribing; however, I remain somewhat unconvinced that the informality is infinately scalable. Ironically, my primary concern is limiting the seemly unchecked rule bloat. Perhaps this guideline should evolve away, but I think that until other sections are amended to clarify consensus, we should be cautious. I am happy with Radiant's recent approach before he/she tried to blank the page and redirect. All that being said, I would be interested in exploring and supporting a feasible way of evaluating and documenting a system which fairly and objectively "describes" the WP process. Thanks! --Kevin Murray 15:40, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

It does have the somewhat unique property that it has actually worked and continues to work up until today. So it does have at least that going for it ;-)

You may have heard the name ofthe process somewhere: it's called "wiki-editing". You can find details at WP:BOLD, Wikipedia:Consensus, WP:5P, or in fact in the Wikipedia: (project) namespace in general. --Kim Bruning 17:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC) If we couldn't even eat our own dogfood, then what would our process documentation be worth?

I have full protected the page. It is not an endorsement of the current version. bibliomaniac15 An age old question... 20:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Categorization

{{sudo}}

This is (for the moment, at least) a how-to page, not a guideline, yet it is in Category:Wikipedia guidelines. I assume this is because it is about guidelines, but this is a little confusing, especially since it's about policies as well. Can it either be moved to Category:Wikipedia policies and guidelines (which is more for pages about policy, and contains Category:Wikipedia official policy and Category:Wikipedia guidelines as subcategories) or just removed from this category? Thanks – Gurch 12:05, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

• The category is indeed a mistake, and it should be in Category:Wikipedia how-to. Pages about guidelines are generally either there or in Category:Wikipedia essays. >Radiant< 12:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It's already in Category:Wikipedia how-to as a result of having {{how-to}} on it. So I guess the category just needs to be removed – Gurch 12:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the category as well as what appeared to be vandalism. ('''Bold text''' at the end of the article) Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 16:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

This page needs to be moved to an essay

It is not part of the WP:HELP, not a Guideline or anything of that kind. It is misleading to have it here. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:10, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I only got here via the cross-namespace redirect Wikipedia:Policy thinktank, which I found on a subpage of User:Uncle G. Certainly I'd expect to find this in the Wikipedia namespace. Carcharoth 15:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I should point out that the "policy thinktank" is a three-year-old concept that is now superseded by CAT:PRO as well as WP:LOP. >Radiant< 13:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Page is currently protected and self-contradictory, and not clearly marked as either :-P

Could someone look into that and/or unprotect? It must have been locked for weeks now? --Kim Bruning 12:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't know whether this would help with the discussions above

I just started Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance.

The second half of that page is copied from Help:Modifying and Creating policy. The first half is a new description, trying to avoid many of the stumbling blocks described above.

As far as I'm concerned:

• Wikipedia:How to create policy (and the other redirect pages) can be changed into a redirect to Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance;
• After un-protecting, Help:Modifying and Creating policy can be made into a redirect to Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance too;
• Help talk:Modifying and Creating policy can be moved to Help talk:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance;
• The "nowiki" tags around the interwiki-links at the bottom of Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance can be removed.

As far as I'm concerned "How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance" may be moved to "Help:" namespace too, and/or be given a more appropriate title, if someone can suggest one.

Also the {{essay}} template on top of the new page is not necessrily "final" as far as I'm concerned, I would go along with replacing it by a {{guideline}}, {{wikipedia subcat guideline|how-to guideline|Guidance}}, or {{proposal}} tag, or anything more appropriate.

Of course, if someone of sysop level takes the trouble, the edit histories of Help:Modifying and Creating policy and Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance should best be merged, that is: if and when it is decided that the one page redirects to the other. --Francis Schonken 12:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Policy v. process

As written, the description is very clear. gain consensus for a common practice where possible, then document it, rather than writing up an idea and canvassing for support.

The question I have is about new processes, or process changes. Interestingly of the 7 examples given where proposal predated adoption, five were policies reflecting introductions or changes to processes, as opposed to editorial practice:

• Semi protection
• Speedy delete creation and initial criteria
• The 3RR enforcement process
• Creation of the arbcom dispute resolution system
• Creation of the RfA system

I've therefore attempted to add an umbrella section summarizing the different approaches, and ensured the article notes policy v. process appropriately. Please edit and improve. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 04:43, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

• Semi-protection doesn't belong because it's a feature request. ArbCom doesn't belong since it was created by Jimbo fiat. As for the other three, well, I wasn't around back then, but note that these changes are rather old and we do things differently these days. CSD and 3RR were, I believe, formalizations of something that was already starting to happen (mind you, the community was smaller back then so this was easier) and the RFA system gradually grew from a noticeboard to a notice-and-comment board to the ~vote it is now. >Radiant< 08:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

How to go about guideline "creation"

I have been looking through the various policy and gl pages and found a few "concepts" that i think should be considered. What is the best way to go about starting the process? Jmfangio ► Talk 13:10, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• Make your suggestion on the village pump. >Radiant< 13:34, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
• You appear to be a fairly new user. I suggest gaining some experience and understanding of the current policies and guidelines at WP before specifically proposing new policies. But fresh perspective is good and your ideas should be discussed perhaps you could share them at the Pump as Radiant suggests or seek a mentor who might be able to direct you to where these topics might already be discussed. I would be happy to help. --Kevin Murray 15:36, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
• Just do what you think is the right thing, and convince others to do the same. If it works, document it! :-) --Kim Bruning 04:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Page is protected. Page has been edited while protected. No protection reason provided here.

What's up? --Kim Bruning 04:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC) {{editprotected}} It should be tagged {{protected}}. There is a case to tag with {{disputedtag}}, since it is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

{{tl:displutedtag}} is bad news, and probably should be deleted. I also don't think requesting immediate edits is at all handy, and the tag is probably redundant. Generally pages should not be protected for long periods of time.

Xaosflux did post a rationale on my user talk page, but that basically went "do as you see fit", so I guess we could just unprotect and duck and cover, simply because that is the default action to take. Does anyone have a good reason not to do that? If so, please speak up now! --Kim Bruning 04:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. Since the dispute appears to revolve around policy adoption by proposal, which was a flaming failure for WP:ATT, why don't we just renumber it to #6, and condense the description to "it almost never works" with the category-naming as an example where it did. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to disable the editprotected tag. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Mumbo jumbo

This "how to" guide is no more than mumbo jumbo. Redirected to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:26, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Time to archive page?

I feel that it is now time to archive this page. Any thoughts on this matter would be appreciated. If no one objects to this, I may archive this page in a few days time. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 13:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Approval voting?

Wait a minute... what's going on here? Oh this is the old page that got totally mauled... --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:47, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

What's the new page, Kim? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

There is no new page. This is dead. That's the point. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Historical

I don't accept reverts without rationale, period. Provide a rationale!

The reason I marked as historical is because the page is unmaintained and contained at least one totally hilarious piece of prescriptive content. There was 1 edit in 2008, and the rest was done in 2007.

It is basically a recreation of a page that had previously been argued to death (literally) when its proponents couldn't show that their methods worked. Some of this page describes workable methods, but much does not, and the things that work have already been described elsewhere as well.

Previously this page had been redirected to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines... As the talk page has also been restored, and can be read above, you can read more detail there. :-)

What I'm missing is the old page history. The talk page was moved, but the page history itself wasn't.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 22:06, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Re. "This is dead" - says who? --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Let me read the page carefully. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec, kept my responses to parts deleted since)

Re. "Eh? Pay attention to this section please." - what do you mean?

Re. page history:

• Explained above in #Don't know whether this would help with the discussions above
• As explained there, the old page history is at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Modifying_and_creating_policy&action=history
• See also first edit of the current page, import is neatly linked in the edit summary
• As suggested above in #Don't know whether this would help with the discussions above, I still suggest a edit history merge.

I never "resurrected" it. This page existed (7 July 2007), without fundamental change since, before the old one was converted into a redirect (20 October 2007)

I never "promised" anything, you're probably confusing with something/someone else.

Re. "I trusted you" - of course, like you should, otherwise you would be in breach of WP:AGF. But don't give that an inculpating slant.

Re. "But it never happened" - what never happened? Stop speaking riddles.

It would really help if I understood what your problem with the page is. I've read comment after comment of your flowery language ("warts" this time), but it never felt like a concrete problem being pointed out. So please explain: what is your problem? --Francis Schonken (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Parts were deleted because I'm going to do some rereading. ^^;; --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

What are the alternatives?

This page Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance should not be considered as historical, it is useful information currently to en:wikipedia, as advice, or a guideline, or an essay, whatever. The debate further up this page of prescriptive versus descriptive is dead rhetoric. --

Read the document, and act as you see fit. Act. Take action, that is how wiki works. Some information is helpful, so use it, it may be descriptive (usually), but sometimes proscriptive. --

And some information is unhelpful, ie Instruction Creep. There is very little of that in this document. I consider it a helpful document, currently, I think I said that (Having read the discussion page, but not examined the DIFFs in the revision History very much).

Prescriptive (normative) versus Descriptive.

Well, the debate goes on, but what are the alternatives, really? --

[...] Kim, I think we actually are in violent agreement that normative policies ought to be avoided. [...] -per— Carl (CBM · talk) 13:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC) [3]

[...] It is all very well to argue about whether policy should, in general, be descriptive or prescriptive, and so forth. [...] -per- Kirill 18:04, 27 April 2008 (UTC) [4]

(Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kim_Bruning")

See also: WP:VPP#Using a policy page as a scratchpad to develop a proposal. --

And there are two things to keep in mind, requiring sensitive treatment:

A) dealing with practical policy enforcement

B) theoretical policy writing. --

(added)--NewbyG (talk) 00:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think both A and B are detrimental to wikipedia.

Policy is not something that is enforced as much as that it grows from interaction between peers. We should not be writing theoretical (prescriptive) policies, but rather practical documents that show what people are actually doing. --Kim Bruning (talk) 18:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)