[wp-docs] New page policy discussion

[Morgan Doocy]

On Mar 1, 2005, at 10:24 PM, Craig Hartel wrote:
> Is this a dumb "policy"? I'm pretty much the one that suggested it and 
> set up the reminder template that sits in most peoples' TALK page.

To be honest, I've never liked the idea, simply because it's so 
contrary to the concept behind a wiki. Seems to me that a certain 
amount of pruning and maintenance comes with the territory, and it 
should be up to the bureaucrats and sysadmins to keep duplicate content 
in check and flag pages for improving if they don't fit within the 
guidelines.

To draw the usual comparison, Wikipedia doesn't have a similar policy, 
and they manage quite well. Perhaps if the job is too large for the 
current staff of admins, more admins should be appointed to balance the 
load, rather than implementing guidelines which, while they're 
well-meaning, restrict the openness of the wiki platform.

The idea of not putting pages into production until they're finished is 
a nice one in theory, but on wikis, where there is never a final draft, 
I think it serves only to deter other users from contributing to the 
unfinished pieces. Not only that, but I'm sure that hiding drafts in 
the privacy of user pages actually contributes to duplicate 
information, since they have very low visibility.

Morgan