Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>, an expert in Wikipedia, wrote descriptions that seem contradictory to me. First he says the policies are great, then he says they are not followed:
> If you are interested in helping with Wikipedia, do register, but be aware > that it can be an abusive community, the policies and guidelines are > fantastic, and commonly not followed. They are not followed because the > users who understood them gave up pushing the boulder up the hill and > watching it roll back again. . . . I do not see how a set of rules can be "fantastic" when they are routinely ignored. A rule is only fantastic when it is enforceable. The rules lead to many problems: Users who persisted in insisting on policy, against the desires of any kind > of cabal or informal collection of editors pushing a particular point of > view . . . That is, the Arbs know how to be administrators, they all come from that, > but they don't know how to *manage* administrators. They are chosen by > popularity, not for management skills, and Wikipedia overwhelms even the > best of them. It seems to me you need rules that people can live with and that do not overwhelm even the best administrators. Rules that result in people being "overwhelmed" need revision. > The larger community *does* support the guidelines and policies, the > cabals attempt to subvert them and even sometimes openly oppose them. > If the larger community supports these things, why are they not enforced? Is there no enforcement mechanism? In that case the rules are inadequate. > Look, want to accomplish something on Wikipedia? No, I hope it withers away. Maybe what Abd has in mind here is that the rules are good and with a little tweaking they would work. It seems to me these rules were invented for Wikipedia. They do not work well because they are novel. I am conservative. I think it is better to apply old rules that were invented for conventional media and for conventional academic forums, such as the rules used to run physics conferences. Rule number one should be everyone has to use his or her real name. - Jed
