On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/24/06, George Herbert
<george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The dichotomy of "editors" not being
"users" is false. We're a subset
of readership. We should not use our judgement to assume what readers
want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different. Spoiler
Of course we should. We're here to write an encyclopaedia. For
readers. Who will never tell us what they want. We have to make
thousands of assumptions in that process. What fonts to use? Unicode
or ASCII? Should [[Georgia]] be about the US state or the country? Or
neither? Are photos or diagrams better? Should we use thumbnails or
larger images?
A bit of intuition, discussion, and yes, common sense, go a long way
in answering these quetsions.
We're linguistically haggling over where we define "arbitrary" and
"common sense", not a substantiative disagreement, Steve.
If no other internet communications medium used spoiler warnings, and
some editor came up with them out of the blue, and started tagging
articles with them, that would be arbitrary.
Them being in use "everywhere" and commonly accepted practice, and
their use in WP being subject to ongoing positive discussions, makes
them common sense. By definition, pretty much - they're already
common enough that their use can't be considered arbitrary.
Chosing not to use them is a perfectly valid point of discussion, and
could be a valid end choice on a policy basis if an argument and
consensus were reached. But using them now is common sense.
--
-george william herbert
gherbert(a)retro.com / george.herbert(a)gmail.com