Simplify, Objectify and Stabilize Policies and Guidelines

I've never known someone to make a policy change that suddenly stopped the flow of some kind of negative activity. The only exception would be the policies in place since the beginning, because they established an expectation before there was that community inertia. In almost all instances where there was a major shift in policy, it had more to do with a crisis that a large group of editors responded to. (See: BLP.)

It's always been about consensus. I could change a policy today to "keep naturalness in bounds" and it wouldn't do a thing because it doesn't have consensus. Even if the policy change somehow slipped by.

I'm not convinced this level of policy "instability" is a problem. To the extent that it's unstable, the wording and the form are unstable. But the spirit of the policies have been more or less immutable, aside from a few major turning points. (BLP, flagged revisions, sexual content, etc.)

Is there really evidence that changing a few words in WP:TITLES has suddenly changed how we name our articles? Without evidence of a problem, I'm more inclined to believe that titles are a largely uniform practice that is disputed on a few details, and what little instability there is in the policy would be an accurate description of the instability in the community.

I have never known the EXISTENCE of a policy to stop the flow of some kind of negative activity, whether suddenly or slowly.

As to consensus, there is a big difference in how "consensus" is defined and how it is applied in practice. In practice, consensus often represents the rule, not so much of the majority, but by the most active or most voluble. Thus, consensus is a limiting factor to Wikipedia. - Brya 05:39, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Consensus tends to be a good limit. There is a consensus around a lot of things: that we report all reasonable points of view in proportion to their prominence, that we avoid fringe theories, that we verify things, that you need independent sources to show that something is worth covering at all, that making new observations is best done by publishing an academic paper than by pushing it on Wikipedia, that truth is not a workable standard, that material should be presented in a consistent style, that certain kinds of data dumps are fundamentally inappropriate for Wikipedia...

I agree these are limiting factors. But "limit" is not a dirty word. A functioning project needs limits. But the most difficult drawback of these limits is how it makes it harder for new users to become "socialized" into Wikipedia's norms. This isn't a problem with the norms any more than it's a problem with the new users. The challenge becomes something like immigration. If you give them help to learn the language and get a job, they integrate. If you let them wander around aimlessly and then harass them when they do something wrong, they're probably going to leave (or worse).

Back to the main point... it's exactly what you said. Policy can't act as a sudden change in normal activity. It's the other way around: normal activity is represented as policy. And any policy instability is either reflective of inconsistent practices, or just an outlier that will be ignored when people go on doing what they normally do.

When I said "consensus is a limiting factor to Wikipedia" I meant just that: in trying to achieve its objectives Wikipedia can not grow further than consensus allows it to. In practice, consensus is a mechanism that is strongly holding Wikipedia back.

But, again, there is a huge difference between "consensus" as it is described in the policy pages and "consensus" as it is practiced, out there in Wikipedia.

I don't think there is much of a difference in practice and policy. Mind you I haven't edited in a long time. There are editors who edit war, but they are sanctioned. There are unverified articles, but they're deleted or merged. There is POV information, but it is tagged and debated and (hopefully one day) fixed.

What is the alternative to consensus? A wikipedia that is a battleground between people with very different ideas of what Wikipedia is. Indeed there are problems and debates. But there is a normalizing or socializing effect of being on Wikipedia for a while. Most of the debates are within an acceptable range of parameters (e.g.: people agree on verifiability but might disagree on certain sources, or how to deal with unverified information in the short term). And the debates that aren't within an acceptable range... well, that tends to affect veteran users and new users alike.

There is a huge difference between policy and practice. Policy says "All editors are expected to make a good-faith effort to reach a consensus that is aligned with Wikipedia's principles."

In practice, "consensus" is anything that a bunch of editors has agreed on, and it may well violate any number of Wikipedia policies. As somebody pointed out here, there is no rule of law on Wikipedia, but only political networks of users. - Brya 05:13, 24 May 2011 (UTC)