[WikiEN-l] My views on policies and debates over content

Wed Jun 8 21:58:23 UTC 2005

Clearly the lack of rules are ''also'' being abused by the ill intentioned. 

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 6/8/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The concern that some feel about this is not, I believe, based on
> their misunderstanding of Wikipedia's fundamental policies.  Rather,
> it is about how those policies should be interpreted, enforced, and
> utilised.
> 
> Personally, my concern is that policy interpretations based on highly
> contentious articles may lead to poor general rules: "Hard cases make
> bad law".  I'm also concerned that turning policies into rigid rules,
> procedures, committees and the like may advantage those who like to
> rules-lawyer over those with less patience for minutae.
> 
> Every rule set down in stone is a rule behind which a troll can hide.
> Or turn into a club to beat those they want to antagonize.
> 
> Every time we are tempted by instruction-creep, we should think "How
> will this rule be abused by the ill-intentioned?"
> 
> -Matt (User:Morven)
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