Wikinfo talk:Policies and guidelines
From Wikinfo
As originally imported from Wikipedia this policy is not our policy. Edit this page to reflect our policies. Fred 08:35, 29 April 2007 (EDT)
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A few points to start a conversation
I think this is a good start, but I'm very wary about copying wholesale a great deal of Wikipedia policies.
Consensus
While some are clearly valid, some, such as "consensus," may lead to confusion and the same rubbish that goes on there. Consensus THERE is often used as a reason for endless debates over meaningless things - like where to put the comma in a sentence or how "biased" an article is. HERE, we have signed articles and SPOV, which means that often, bias isn't an issue and seeking a consensus on supposed bias would be a missunderstanding of the concept of signed articles and SPOV.
The numbers required to gain "Consensus" in WP is also ridiculously high, and perhaps deliberately high, so that "creative tension" and conflict are unending. I'm not a fan of conflict for conflict's sake. Nor do I believe, as Jimbo does, that simply not spelling out rules in advance and instead letting the mob create them "sometime" in the future is a productive idea. WP is an experiment in anarchy because of that failure to lead.
"Notabilty" vs. notoriety
Having said this, articles that are clearly ficticious, misleading or inventions of the editor (and I believe we've had at least one of these recently - a band of some sort) need to be challenged to present some kind of verification. Although I'd caution that a lack of "notability" is frequently misused and abused on WP to restrict content to only those items which have achieved "noteriety" which is something quite different, and an odd thing for a supposedly all-encompassing information source to do. In short, I think an article about a garage band or a regional band that isn't well known is a great idea - so long as it's REAL. This project has proven that non-notable topics can be extremely informative.
Not a battleground
As noted before elsewhere, I'm also concerned about the over use of the "citation missing" template. This is an encyclopedia, but it also does not need to be a battleground as WP has become ("This is not a battleground" - one of WP's unfullfilled "nots," needs to be here, too. And it should mean something here.)
Not WP
Finally, I also think one of the policy statements needs to be "This is not Wikipedia." Making a wholesale copy of WP with only the SPOV policy as a significant difference seems pointless to me, and I hope that's not where we're going. Differences need to be clearly spelled out so they are not confusing to new editors. - Nhprman 10:27, 29 April 2007 (EDT)
