[WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline

Sat Nov 4 20:38:10 UTC 2006

charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote
>  
>
>>Why is it so necessary to have everything spelled out in such detail?  
>>You are making "conflict of interest" an issue that is out of all 
>>proportion to its importance.  
>>    
>>
>Hmmm. I remember some very long threads of discussion here, quite recently, about corporate interests. Are you just assuming those will go away? 
>
There was indeed the long thread that you mention.  I am not a supporter 
of the corporatist agenda, but the best way to keep an eye on it is to 
have it right out there in the open.  Let them have their paragraph 
(sometimes more depending on the topic), and there will still be room 
for rebuttals or criticisms of their agenda.  The real neutrality will 
often be somewhere in between.  If they parrot the company's PR line it 
will be evident that it is exactly that.

>Isn't it more natural to assume that with every milestone Wikipedia passes, in terms of its audience, there is a corresponding increase in the number of those who will come to edit Wikipedia, without having WP's best interests at heart, because they put something else ahead of those? 
>
It's more than an assumption.  Such behaviour tends to scale very well.

>Think of the need to go into what we mean by that as part of the price of success in reaching a mass audience.
>
Rules do not scale as well as bad behaviour.  Tediously complex rules 
will just be ignored.  Simple flexible guidelines are far more 
effective, because they are more broadly understood and enforced by a 
wider community.

Ec