On 19 April 2012 15:22, Ken Arromdee <arrom...@rahul.net> wrote: > > Rules can cause trouble, but they have one benefit: at least ideally, it's > clear when you have or haven't violated them. (Many Wikipedia rules are > not > ideal, but that's a discussion for another day.) It's a lot harder to > inject personal prejudice to the issue when the rule spells out what you're > allowed to do. > > > I was thinking about this graphically, with an x-axis measuring involvement in, commitment to, or responsibility for Wikipedia. The y-axis representing the value attached to detailed policies, in enWP's sense, as a definition of what the site is or should be. I'm pretty sure that in a notional plot the spread of views would go north-west to south-east. Jimbo is somewhere asymptotically off to the right, for sure. I'm quite sure that when x goes negative you get people whose view is that policy should be drafted in entirely legalistic terms. Those people, who do not have WP's best interests at heart, are always arguing for a disconnect between the letter and spirit of policy, because they have no interest at all in the spirit.
There are probably some outliers: why wouldn't there be, in a diverse community? But roughly speaking most editors who could get near the ArbCom are interested in making the site work a bit better, rather than pacifying the ghost of Jeremy Bentham. Charles _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
