Re: [WikiEN-l] Rules on WP, was Re: Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)

[Ken Arromdee]

On Fri, 23 Dec 2011, Charles Matthews wrote:
 And the more you use it's in the
 rules as a club to hit bad users with, the more others can use it as a
 club
 to force bad ideas through; there's just no defense to what I want
 follows the
 rules.  You see this all the time for BLPs: Don't you have any empathy?
 We're hurting a real person.  You're just trying to distract us from this
 rule.  Your own personal feelings aren't an excuse to ignore our
 policies...
 We have IAR

IAR doesn't help.  IAR is useful only when you don't need it; if everyone is
reasonable, you can ignore rules.  But if there's a conflict between two
sides, and one wants to obey the rules and one wants to ignore them, the
side that wants to obey them wins every time.

Besides, IAR has a problem for BLPs.  It says the rules can be ignored
to improve the encyclopedia.  Helping a BLP subject doesn't improve the
encyclopedia (and yes, I've seen this come into effect).  So you can't use
IAR-or at least, you face an unnecessary hurdle in using it.

 BLPs are of course an obvious place where it may be hardest to argue that
 rules should be ignored.

Yes, but that can be bad as well--it also is hard to ignore rules *for the
purpose of helping the BLP subject*.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Rules on WP, was Re: Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)

[Ray Saintonge]

On 12/23/11 7:27 AM, Charles Matthews wrote:
 On 22 December 2011 18:10, Ken Arromdeearrom...@rahul.net  wrote:

 And the more you use it's in the
 rules as a club to hit bad users with, the more others can use it as a
 club to force bad ideas through; there's just no defense to what I want
 follows the rules.

Given the jungle of Wiki rules there is likely a rule somewhere that 
says the opposite. Tracking it down is the stuff of lawyers, or at least 
can waste a lot of time.  Rules work well when it's truly a question of 
bad users. For others they generate chaos.

 You see this all the time for BLPs: Don't you have any empathy?
 We're hurting a real person.  You're just trying to distract us from this
 rule.  Your own personal feelings aren't an excuse to ignore our
 policies...

Just like Assange was hurting real people with Wikileaks.

 We have IAR, and slavishness might be called IIAR, so it should be
 ignored as a guideline (IIIAR should trump IIAR). This could all get silly
 but according to some logical stuff, that has been known since about 1920,
   I^4AR is probably no different from I^2AR.

A convergent or divergent series?
 In other words, if the writ of ignore all rules no longer runs because
 the community thinks of it as too retro, there can still be some
 meta-principle about not following the wrong path just because rules
 indicate it. Rule-bound is like muscle-bound, a pejorative, and rightly
 so.

Follow the Tao of Wiki.
 BLPs are of course an obvious place where it may be hardest to argue that
 rules should be ignored.
BLPs need to be treated as the exception to the general rule.

Ec

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