Misplaced Pages

talk:Process is important - Misplaced Pages

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Herostratus (talk | contribs) at 06:54, 19 September 2006 (→There has to be balence.: right on!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 06:54, 19 September 2006 by Herostratus (talk | contribs) (→There has to be balence.: right on!)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Welcome to the discussion

Origin

I wrote this after having too many interactions with people who were IMO far too willing to ingore process in favor of what they regarded as a better short-term result. Lots of these people ahve been admins involved in deletion decisions -- both ways, and on multiple fora. This is also in part a response to opnions often aired at Misplaced Pages Talk:Ignore all rules, and by those citing WP:IAR in support of adminstrative (not editing) actions.

In its current form this is not sutitable to become a policy or a guideline -- it offers no rule for action. But it is my hope that this will gain significant widespread support, and that people will consider this when considering out-of-process actions, and point to it when discusing the merits of such actions. DES 16:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Reactions

I salute you. This is a very good essay. One thing which we could add (or have in a separate essay) is the difference between the original IgnoreAllRules idea (which I very much support) and administrator action which goes against not only process but also the opinions of a large part of the community. - Haukur 17:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I didn't do that because i think that even out-of-process action which is supported by a majority is toxic to the project. It gets people in the habit of acting out-of-process. It is also common for people to mis-estimate how much support there is for a particular action. Also if out-of-process actions are common, so that the written policies can not be relied on, the only way for a newcommer to learn the rules is to watch actions and see what gets reverted and what stands. DES 19:13, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Boo. Hiss. -Toptomcat 22:52, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree... to a point

I do agree with most of this document. However, I think "other than in truly emergency situations" should be "other than where it is reasonably clear that the good of the encyclopaedia directs otherwise". A solid rule is a bad rule, at least on Misplaced Pages. ] 19:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that I have seen so many peole claim that they are taking out of process action for the "good of the encyclopaedia". Most iof not all such people belive this in good faith, and are quite conviced that this is "reasonably" (indeed usually "very") clear. Often people will misestimate how much disagreement therye will be with such an action, and even where there is not disagreement, I think there is long-term harm to the project. The cases where the "good of the encyclopaedia" requires not only that action be taken, but that it not wait for process, are IMO much rarer than many people seem to think. "Don't just do something, stand there (and discuss first)!" "Fools rush in..." etc. DES 19:38, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
besides, this isn't being presentd as a rule, but rather as a phiosophy, a guide that people ought to consider before acting. DES 19:38, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I realise that. I was just saying that I mostly agree with you. I am trying to say that the rule should be (in general) that most people would rationally come to the conclusion that it was for the good of the encyclopaedia. I agree that IAR is abused. ] 19:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Much agreed. The issue with breaking rules where it is reasonably clear that the good of the encyclopaedia directs otherwise is that it often is most "clear" to the person taking the action and not so clear to the rest of the community :)
In cases where there is in fact a consensus for doing something and people agree that the normal procedure for doing it is unnecessarily cumbersome then, certainly, speedy let's do it is a valid option. - Haukur 19:46, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Aye, hence people should be more careful with it. It's amusing that I've been opposed for ArbCom because I am too much of an "IAR liberal". Curious. ] 19:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Heavens, I fear we are in violent agreement. I am just jaded about "speedy let's do it" because I think it leads to a slippery slope, as above. If it were really possible to keep it confined to the occasional and the clearly consensus-supported, I wouldn't be so opposed. DES 19:56, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about "clearly consensus-supported". I make emphasis on "would" and "rationally". There will not always be time to discover consensus. However, it will normally be clear. Where it isn't, there should be a discussion first. ] 20:11, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. DES 20:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
I think we all more or less agree :) The problem is with people who break rules to do something which they know perfectly well there is no consensus for. They're almost always acting from the best of motives but the encyclopedia is better served in the long run by placing importance on discussion, consensus and — yes — process in disputed matters. - Haukur 20:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Words to live by

I think this is an excellent guideline and I hope that we can eventually make it policy and deprecate WP:IAR. A maxim like "ignore all rules" just doesn't scale, and is utterly unworkable in an online community the size of Misplaced Pages. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 20:38, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I more or less agree. But I removed the proposed tag Ambi added, at least for the time being. Even if we eventually decide to make this a proposal we'd have to tidy it up some before it'd ready. Meanwhile I'm perfectly happy with having this as an essay and I've taken to linking to it.
The danger with a premature proposed tag is that people might come, object to some difficulties in the wording and before you know it this has a rejected tag nailed to it before it ever got off the ground. And as DES said it really doesn't read as a policy. A policy which tells you nothing but to follow policy makes as much sense as a rule which tells you to ignore all rules. Hey, wait... - Haukur 09:12, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
It is, however, a proposal, albeit a formative one. People are already trying to claim that it is policy because it lacks the warning tag (as the whatlinkshere shows). Considering the obvious intent of the comments here, to claim that it isn't a proposal is to be disingenous. Ambi 09:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
When I link to it I'm not claiming it's policy - I'm just linking to an essay I agree with (but one which still needs work). If the problem is that the category down at the bottom isn't visible enough then, okay, I'll add some sort of disclaimer. - Haukur 09:25, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Done. All better? :) - Haukur 09:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Fine by me. The caveat is there - that's all I asked for. :) Ambi 09:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, great :) Sorry for the misunderstanding and the little revert-war. - Haukur 09:58, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
And vice versa. :) Ambi 10:10, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
We don't want to deprecate IAR. We want to make it clear that it is often misused. ] 17:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
My personal preference would be to delete IAR and expunge it from the the database in all its revisions, frankly. But I acccept that I am in a minority on that. DES 17:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Policy or guideline status

Please note that I said at the top of this talk page "In its current form this is not suitable to become a policy or a guideline". That is why i didn't put {{proposed}} on this, because i wasn't even proposing it as a policy or guideline. The caveat now at the top is fine with me. Perhaps we should have a tempalte to match {{policy}} and {{philosophy}}? I think {{essay}} is already taken for another purpose -- how about {{wiki-essay}} or {{wiki-philosophy}}? DES 16:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I see that {{essay}} is appropriate. i will add it. DES 16:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
It's okay but what ticks me off slightly is that it too strongly implies that these are just the views of one author. In any case having two disclaimers is redundant. If you like it then put it back in and maybe remove mine :) - Haukur 16:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually I like yours better, i just didn't want to not use "approved" tags. But you are right -- to discalimers was excessive. DES 17:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


Process or policy?

What are the things we need to *do* to make an encyclopedia?

Originally, our best practices and guidelines were written following what worked. Indeed, they described what needed to be done and how in some particular situation. That's process.

Currently, there's a lot of times where people try to make it so you vote ahead of time on what to do next. You can select representatives that way, or choose between predetermined courses of action, but what you can't do is actually work out the details of what's in procedures.

Procedures works differently. That's a case of figuring it out, applying it, seeing what goes wrong, and go back to figuring how to fix that. This should sound familiar to some people around here, especially those who write procedures for computers. Writing procedures for people is harder, because they're so unpredictable. :-)

So yeah, I'd love to go back to writing process on wikipedia. It does seem that we might need to have some discussion about what we mean by process.

Kim Bruning 01:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Rewriting all process: now there's an idea! ] 22:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
A very good idea! Grace Note 04:46, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

What I want to know is, when did ignore all rules become ignore all views? When the rules are ignored because they're a problem for an editor or because the outcome is sure and the process merely a waste of time, it seems to be that process is not important. But when rules are ignored because they conflict with the personal aims of an admin, then there's a real problem, which doesn't disappear because the admin involved, or his or her friends, wave their hands and mutter IAR. Grace Note 04:46, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

That's actually quite a good summary of the issue, IMO. Ambi 05:09, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages as government

Any time anyone uses government as an analogy for how Misplaced Pages should operate — either legislatively or judicially — he loses my support. I didn't volunteer to become a subject of yet another government.

I hold this truth to be self-evident: that whenever any Form of Policy, Guideline, or Process becomes destructive of the End of creating an Encyclopedia, it is the Right and Duty of all Wikipedians to alter, abolish, or simply ignore it. Punishing volunteers for not following "the process," just because it's the process and disregarding the results, is destructive. Process created Nupedia. Ignoring all rules created Misplaced Pages. ➥the Epopt 19:23, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not a government, and such analogies are of limited value. But IMO any project that attempts to get cooperative action from large numbers of people will have to have some mechanisms in place for avoiding and dealing with interpersonal friction and clashes of views, and many of those are likely to be in one way or another analogous to methods used by government; and lessons learned from what works and what does not in governmental situations are often relavent, although surely not binding. Thus I find such analogies often helpful, if well constructed. of course they are only analogies. DES 19:43, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
What WP:IAR says is crucial to the constructing of an encyclopedia: It says that if you are doing something constructive toward the aim of creating an encyclopedia, do it. If ever there develops a "consensus" to, say, delete all images of anything sexual from Misplaced Pages, even if that decision is made through process, I will immediately ignore that alleged "process" and revert any deletion of images. Why? Because we're writing an encyclopedia, and sexual images are part of an encyclopedia. I don't care that that decision was made through alleged "process" - that decision is still wrong and may be freely ignored because it is destructive to the encyclopedia. People lose sight of what this place is. This is not a "community," this is not a "cooperative," this is an encyclopedia. All else is secondary. WP:IAR is a check valve to that end. FCYTravis 19:49, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
No it isn't. The consensus group just uses their power to remove you from any position where you can prevent them doing what they want. WP:IRA doesn't help you other than in allowing you to make a stupidly dramatic last stand.Geni 21:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
The consensus group, in that case, would be rapidly overturned by other admins, the ArbCom and Jimbo himself, if necessary. We would only be preventing a destructive act from taking effect until said destructive "process" decision could be thoroughly deprecated. FCYTravis 21:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Well said, Sean. ] 20:28, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • In my view FCYTravis's arguemnt above would have more merit if there had ever been such an obviously flawed consensus decision. I must also note that every encyclopedia has its own policies on what kinds of articels it will include, and wikipedia is no exception. There is no automatic and unchallangable platonic ideal that mandates a particular decision in all cases. While excluding all sexually related content would IMO be foolish and in conflict with the announced core goals, consider the much argued Misplaced Pages:Schools question. If a clear consensus determined that schools had to pass particular inclusion criteria, would you favor a use of IAR to override that decision? What if the opposite decison achieved clear consensus (At the moment as far as I can see, there is no consensus on this issue). Or consider the band article issue. A number of users have proposed in good faith that any band that verifiably exists ought to be included, while the current consensus requires some degree of notability, largely as per WP:MUSIC, and enforces this via WP:CSD A7. Would you support IAR use to restore verifiable band articles so deleted? Who decides when a decision is "wrong and may be freely ignored"? If multiple people with opposing viewpoints take that attitude, what we have is not an encyclopedia it is a revert war or a wheel-war. Those do not help the project. DES 21:27, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Suggested edits

  • Process is superior to Product
    • The important thing is for editors to feel that a process has been gone through. The result is of lesser relevance and at most of equal relevance.
  • Misplaced Pages should have a bureaucracy befitting its size
    • What are we, Uncyclopedia? We need rules, then people know where they stand!
  • Grey areas are evil
    • Everything that can be defined should be, for the sake of certainty.
  • "Judgement" and "clue" are code words for the oppression of editors.

How do those sound? - David Gerard 21:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

They sound to me like someone missing the point, or trying to ridicule an idea he disagrees with. They also sound like large distortions of what this page now says. DES 21:28, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
For example I don't belive that "Process is superior to Product" I do feel that ignoring process in search of an immediate and local improvement to the "product" usually harms the overall product in tha end, and not infrequently fails to actually improve the product as much as going through a proper process would have. For another example, nothing in the current page says or implies that "Grey areas are evil" or that judgement should not be used -- however unilateral excercises in "judgement" in areas where an agreed process exists (not all areas have one, or should) are IMO often poor ideas. DES 21:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I'll play devil's advocate and try to defend some of the strawmen you're attacking :)
  • Process is superior to Product
No, I won't actually try to argue that, but in the long run a good process will produce a better product.
  • The important thing is for editors to feel that a process has been gone through. The result is of lesser relevance and at most of equal relevance.
Sometimes this might actually be true :) Let's say we have an AfD discussion on a marginal article. Some argue that including the article makes Misplaced Pages ever so slightly better. Others argue that it makes Misplaced Pages ever so slightly worse. There's no objective way to tell. In a case like that the result isn't very important - but it can be important for the people involved in the discussion, especially those on the losing side, to feel that the process was fair and that they had a chance to voice their opinion. Keeping contributors happy is important for the encyclopedia.
  • Misplaced Pages should have a bureaucracy befitting its size
Yes.
  • What are we, Uncyclopedia? We need rules, then people know where they stand!
Yes, to some extent. Uncyclopedia actually has some good rules we might learn from, though. Check their deletion process for example. I'm not sure it would scale to Misplaced Pages's size but it's much more lightweight than AfD.
  • Grey areas are evil
  • Everything that can be defined should be, for the sake of certainty.
  • "Judgement" and "clue" are code words for the oppression of editors.
No, I don't think anyone here is saying or implying that :) Our policies and guidelines do, should and will always have a margin for judgment of individual cases. - Haukur 21:32, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I would like to warn David Gerard from violating Misplaced Pages civility rules in making this comment. I have seen him make comments like this on many occassions and they are just completely out of place. Nathan J. Yoder 08:02, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Community is Important

Stay tuned for the companion piece to this essay - Misplaced Pages:Community is Important :)

Notice that in the case of the speedy deletion of userboxes the principle product over process was invoked by those carrying out the deletion. But what is the product in that case? It's not (directly) the encyclopedia since the wheel wars were about templates used on user pages. The product is, in this case, the community.

Those in favor of deleting certain userboxes by any means necessary were doing so because they thought that the boxes were damaging to the community. They felt that boxes and categories segregating Wikipedians into religious and political groups could easily be misused and would poison the community.

Those in favor of keeping the userboxes argued (mostly) that allowing users to express themselves any way they wanted with templates was the way to keep the community happy.

Those in favor of deleting the userboxes but going through the normal deletion process to do so figured that was the best way of keeping the community non-poisonous and content.

Everyone was talking about the community. Because the community is building the encyclopedia.

Haukur 22:09, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Much too long

Whoa is that a lot of text! What are the main things we're trying to say here? - brenneman 23:32, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

That process is important to allow lots of people to work together.
"If we tear apart the laws we will also tear apart the peace." - Haukur 23:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Not a bad way of putting it. My main point was the title "Process is important" and that "Product over process" is misleading, at best good in the short-term, and often wrong headed. This was written in response to various encounters on policy pages, particularly WP:DRV and the talk page of WP:IAR. I wanted to prtesent what i thought were the arguemtns for thsi view, adn the consequences of it, fairly fully, so that a link to this page can avoid repeatign those arguments over and over. I really don't think it is all that long, and I think all the contetn is useful and worthwhile. No one insites that you or anyone read it. It is an essay, not a policy page. DES 23:57, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's too long either. Nevertheless some sort of short bolded summary at the top might not be a bad idea. - Haukur 00:00, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Scaling

This based on some statistics I've been doing, see also my user page

Of all articles. (and including vandals and spelling correctors)
  • 67.20% have been edited by fewer than 10 distinct Users/IPs.
  • 86.07% have been edited by fewer than 20 distinct Users/IPs.
  • 91.90% have been edited by fewer than 30 distinct Users/IPs.
  • 99.21% have been edited by fewer than 150 distinct Users/IPs.


A lot of us have seen too strict adherence to rules hinder particular pages, so we get an intuitive feel that maybe something isn't right there. If you understand that normally only very few people work on a page at all, it starts to make sense.

Ignore all rules may or may not scale, but that is irrelevant, because amazingly and spectacularly, wikis turn out to scale very well indeed.

In conclusion Ignoring most or all rules appears to still be the wisest course of action in 99% of all cases. It's overkill to apply >100KiB of rules to a page that's edited by just a couple of people. This does not mean that you can get away with not using common sense, of course :-)

Kim Bruning 07:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

(ps, note also, that the above observation makes the autonomous subdivision concept not just tenable, but obsolete, as wikipedia is already effectively subdivided in most cases) Kim Bruning 11:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd just like to say, I think this is an important insight. Thanks! --Khendon 12:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Lies, damn lies, and statistics ;-)
Of more interest, of course, is the question of breakdowns by category. For example, only a few users may have edited each individual article under, say, Category:Pokemon; but the total number of users who edited any article in that category may be rather higher. Therefore, simple editing would scale very nicely, while creating common standards for a particular subject wouldn't. —Kirill Lokshin 23:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

refactored out polluted section

Someone had made a total hash of the evidence based medicine section so I've removed it for now. Someone fix that...

see evidence above

But seriously, skip this, see evidence above. (under scaling). Over 900 000 articles were examined. Kim Bruning 11:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
How does that illustrate anything? That figure just tells us how many people edited an article, and nothing about process, outcomes... unless I'm missing something? - brenneman 12:34, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes. We have > 100KiB of process, while most pages are only edited by very small groups. Do you maybe see a small disconnect there? (In logic and pragmatism?) Kim Bruning 19:30, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, that is a total non sequitur. "Most articles don't have many contributors, therefor process isn't important". What about those few and/or highly contentious articles that do have a multiple editors? What about the fact that being nominated for XfD (for example) takes only one edit to the article, and then all the drama off-stage? Do these figures include the talk pages of articles, and what about discussions that take place on user talk pages? If four editors are having a massive POV pushing edit war on a page that only one other person is editing, your metric would seem to indicate that everything is fine there. Either there is more to your argument than you're giving us, or it simply doesn't make sense. - brenneman 22:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that since there's coming up on a million articles where everything is fine, and only a couple of hundred where things are not, why should we tailor wikipedia policies and guidelines to the minority? Note that XFD pages are part of that minority! They have been shown not to scale, and are long overdue for removal. Finally, you don't need 100K of rules to sort out a fight between 5 people. You just don't. I can do that just fine with just a smile, thanks. O:-) Kim Bruning 23:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Sure. You don't need 100K of rules to sort out a fight between 5 people. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. - Haukur 23:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Exactly. So now what if I told you that -but for an infitesimal number of exceptions- that's as large as it's ever really going to (semi-trivially need to) get? Kim Bruning 23:24, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
A large proportion of people's effort here is spent on articles like Jesus and George W. Bush, where there is a huge number of editors. But aside from that I don't quite see where you're going with this. We often have a lot of editors with different opinions on something. Process is important to sort those cases out. It's not important when everyone agrees what to do and fortunately that's quite common as well. - Haukur 23:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
No, a large proportion of peoples effort here is NOT spent on articles like Jesus and George W. Bush. Only an infitesimal portion of peoples time is spent on that. Understand the numbers. I also have graphs, if that makes it easier to visualise? :-) Kim Bruning 04:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
And, as I commented above, looking at per-article statistics isn't as meaningful as you'd assume ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 04:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Sure, let's look at statistics. Can you answer two statistical questions? What percentage of the total number of edits is spent on the top 10% of the most edited articles? How much is spent on the top 1%? - Haukur 09:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's a principle from a current ArbCom ruling:

Administrators of Misplaced Pages are trusted members of the community and are expected to follow Misplaced Pages policies. Their powers are to be used only for appropriate reasons, as set forth in those policies, and should never be used in disputes in which the administrator is involved.

Admins have to play by the rules when it comes to actions like deleting articles. - Haukur 11:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

How is that relevant to say... me? <innocent look> Kim Bruning 19:30, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

As someone who signed that principle (and was thus called over to comment!), I must say that it's not meant to be a straitjacket. It means "don't use admin powers as a bludgeon to win arguments", not "you must follow process always even if it's the wrong thing to do". (I really like User:Sjakkalle/Ignore all rules, which I'm going to plug some more. :-) I think that page says what I would say pretty well, so I'll leave it at that.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 19:39, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I like that essay too. And I don't think anyone would argue that process should be followed when everyone agrees that it's the wrong thing to do. Process is basically a way for people to be able to proceed when there is disagreement on something. The case when people agree on what to do is trivially handled in any system. - Haukur 19:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Also note (again, I'm one of the Arbitrators that signed that) that it doesn't mean "policy" in the sense of "the written-down rules that have been agreed by 87.573% or more by some spurious poll, of which the current version is always gospel and should be interpretted literally and exactingly". This page seems to try to be hijacking our ruling to try to make it say that, and that's why it's Wrong(tm) - because, well, process just isn't important, trust is. And, well, this is mistaken in seeming to say that trust is built by repeated application of mind-numbing proceedure.
James F. (talk) 23:43, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I just quoted your ruling. I'm not making it say anything it doesn't. Policy is important. It is especially important that admins follow it. See, I'll quote your ruling again:
Administrators of Misplaced Pages are trusted members of the community and are expected to follow Misplaced Pages policies. Their powers are to be used only for appropriate reasons, as set forth in those policies, and should never be used in disputes in which the administrator is involved.
This is basically what we're trying to say here. But rather than engage with that many people are attacking a strawman - like your 87.573% guy above. You sure knocked that one down good :) - Haukur 23:51, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Hoops

The essay currently says this:

Sometimes a process can be a pain in the neck. Some processes demand that editors jump through various hoops to achieve a result. Some can be cumbersome or time-consuming. Some do not deal with particular situations as rapidly as a person might wish. Sometimes going through the process seems unlikely to give the result that a person desires. In all these cases, there is a temptation, sometimes a strong temptation, to act unilaterally, to simply fix the problem. Often this is technically possible on Misplaced Pages. Sometimes no one, or almost no one, will object.

I think this buys right into the typical WP:IAR rhetoric about hoops and bureaucratic procedures. We should de-emphasize this. Misplaced Pages processes are largely not excessively bureaucratic. We don't have to fill out forms in triplicate to do stuff. Normally we just, well, do stuff and that's entirely within process.

People who emphasize the IAR philosophy typically try to put up a contrast between some sort of pointless bureaucratic nightmare and a simple easy freedom of IAR. This just isn't based in Misplaced Pages reality. It's a wiki. You can do things. There are just a few things, like deletion, where you have to make sure other people agree with you and we have processes to streamline that. If you railroad those processes you're railroading other people's opinions and that's not good.

I also think the essay shouldn't insist that process must be followed when everyone agrees about the result - that's going a bit too far for my tastes. But if a single person disagrees then we have a good reason to follow established procedures.

I'll rewrite the above slightly. Feel free to revert or improve as appropriate. - Haukur 19:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Have you been paying attention at all to the last three sections? :-P Kim Bruning 20:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Haukur commented in each one so I'm thinking yes? ++Lar: t/c 20:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I forget that irony doesn't carry. ^^;; Sorry. Kim Bruning 23:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Your division of the community into camps is not helpful, and polarises the divisions that naturally exist. Sam Korn 20:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Bleh. Reworded slightly. - Haukur 20:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Less rhetoric, more evidence (take two)

This edit stretches my ability to AGF. Is there some reason that actual examples of process/IAR are not allowed to be discussed? - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Worked

Nupedia vs Misplaced Pages

24 articles vs 6,938,685. QED. --Nick Boalch 11:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC) (The previous signed comment has been altered by User:Aaron Brenneman to make the first three words a subsection heading.)

  • So the only difference between the projects was IAR? Hardly QED. - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
    • That sort of sums it up, yes. And add in software that allows one to do that with little to no penalty. Kim Bruning 04:23, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
    • You could reduce the difference in philosophy between the two projects to pretty much that, I think, yes. --Nick Boalch 09:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
      • That's an untenable statement. Experts? Peer review? This reminds me of the old joke, "Brenneman is a terrible mathematician, he can only do the diffusion equation," "No, he's an excellent mathematician, he can transform anything into an application of the diffusion equation." If you're trying to claim this and the AfD below as "succesful" applications of IAR, I'll be forced to assume that you cannot provide any more defensible examples. - brenneman 12:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
        • You mean wikipedia is unsuccesful? *blink* Kim Bruning 15:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
          Oh! You mean it like that? Well, Nupedia had procedures that said people must be experts, they had procedures for peer review, etc. As you may recall, by refactoring procedures back down, they become more efficient. Tossing them out entirely is an extreme, but occasionally effective form of refactoring indeed ;-) Kim Bruning 16:06, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
          To you "Ignore All Rules" seems to mean something like "Wiki is a useful model" which, you know, we agree with :) Most of the times we can just write articles and don't need a lot of formal procedures to do so. We just write them. But for some difficult cases, like deletion, we do have formalized procedures and IgnoringThemAll doesn't work very well. If you delete something without showing a consensus for doing so first then you'll probably have more work cut out for you patching things up than if you'd gone through the consensus-gathering process in the first place. Process is important because we don't always all agree what to do. Process allows us to disagree but still be able to keep working together. - Haukur 22:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
          Interesting point. There's a strong correlation between pages where process is important, and pages where the wiki-principle breaks down, to do with the rule of 150. Instead of having a huge growth in policy pages, it might actually be simpler to refactor the <1000 or so pathological cases instead. We can then make do with a much simpler ruleset, and likely everybody wins. Kim Bruning 10:03, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal

(semi-explicit.(see box at top of page))

Simplified ruleset

(subverting a commission.)

Policy Trifecta

(explicitly uses it.)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Uncyclopedia

Keeping something with 27 "keep", one "delete unless funnier" != good example of IAR. - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • The rule is to have a deletion run for a fixed amount of time. Short-circuiting AFDs is a typical application of ignore all rules.
    • Please review deletion policy, in particular Misplaced Pages:Deletion_policy#Early_closings. - brenneman 03:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Welcome to the complete ignore all rules cycle, where at the end of an Ignore all rules invocation, the results get written into the guidelines. Kim Bruning 04:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
        • It was already in the guidelines. I don't see how this AfD is a good example of IAR in use. Did the rules make the closing admin nervous and depressed? AfDs are often closed early when the result is clear. That's good process. - Haukur 09:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
          • Way back when, when we went 20 miles uphill both ways in driving snow, it was in fact not permitted to close early ever. Repeated application of ignore all rules in cases where common sense was called for eventually led to a modification of the guidelines into the form you see today. Welcome to the wiki! :-) Kim Bruning 15:55, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
            • But what gain is made by closing early? None. It simply didn't matter at all whether you closed this one early or not. So if there's absolutely no difference either way, why close early, if it requires the invokation of a contentious principle and perhaps encourages others who would close early on (say) an AfD with a 7-4 vote? Herostratus 19:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

GNAA

Do we have some specifics as to who this applies to this discussion? - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Basically multiple recursive deletion attempts on the article, and on the VFD for the article, and on the vfd for the vfd... etc..., they all got wiped out in one go. :-) Kim Bruning 04:28, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Didn't work

Ed deletes AfD

AfD restored, RfC results. - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Snowspinner deletes lots of AfD discussions

AfD restored, RfC results. - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Kelly deletes userboxes

Incredible amounts of venom released, most userboxes restored, now almost impossible to delete useless boxen due to "backlash" - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Update: Most userboxes have either been deleted or moved to user space. Kelly Martin (talk) 01:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
no thanks to your actions.Geni 15:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Only took eight months. ergot 22:23, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Neutrality deletes schools

Schools all restored - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Did he actually do that? Only thing I've seen is him nominating about a hundred schools on AFD over a couple days' time. Large amount of venom spewed, vengeful RFC created. The reaction of school inclusionists was really the same as the reaction of template inclusionists one section up. Radiant_>|< 21:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

When process screwed something up?

To be fair and balanced here's a spot to list where process was a mistake. - brenneman 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

start of a pattern here

It turns out that ignore all rules mostly has the occaisional problem with the current implementation of deletion. Unsurprising, everything has problems with that. Kim Bruning 04:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

If you're saying that often when someone ignores the current well-organised and overwhelmingly succesful deletion procedure there is a problem, I agree completely. - brenneman 12:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
If you're saying our current deletion procedure is 'overwhelmingly successful', I think you may need to reassess your understanding of the concept of success. --Nick Boalch 15:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Over 80% of articles are deleted or kept without a single opposing recomendation, and very very few articles of any validity are ever deleted. Even if we accept that those articles which go to DRV and have "out-of_process" wheel wars to restore them represent places where XfD going wrong, that's an error rate of less than one tenth of one percent. The complaints that XfD has failed are almost entirely apocryphal, and thos instances where it demonstrably does fail are often backlash against lone-gunman IAR action. Have a look above if you doubt me. I cannot help but notice there is an inverse correlation between the amount that one complains about XfD and the level of participation in the daily grind of examining articles and making recomendations as to their fate. XfD is broken? {{sofixit}}. - brenneman 02:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Even jimbo wales is treading carefully. The system is too entrenched. Kim Bruning 11:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

process is a tarbaby

Process is a tarbaby to catch and hold certain types of verbose time-on-their-hands contributors so they do less damage to the actual encyclopedia. Let the process pages expand! Let the mediations and wikilawyering in wikicourts expand to fit the need to distract people who would otherwise be adding their self important unsourced opinions all over the actual encyclopedia. Letting them play with pretty boxes is a good distraction too. Maybe the boxes should make noises and move (*.gif). distraction is a powerful tool. WAS 4.250 16:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer to mediate between people who are contributing to articles, thanks. Kim Bruning 16:29, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This page is too long

...and the layout isn't too good. You may want to consider making it more clear and concise. Radiant_>|< 18:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

A little quote

Something Jimbo said recently:

Misplaced Pages is not "all about process" and such an attitude is absolutely contrary to our longstanding community spirit. Misplaced Pages all about people, about mutual respect, about thoughtfulness and respect for others as individuals. The rules lawyers of Misplaced Pages are a sickness upon us. --Jimbo Wales

Something to reflect upon, I think. Kelly Martin (talk) 18:10, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't disagree. i have no interest in being a "ruels lawyer" and i hope Jimbo wouldn't see my actions and positions in that light. If he does, I think he is mistaken. Misplaced Pages is and should be "all about people". Process is IMO the most imporatnt and useful tool for smoothing the interactions of large numbers of people, for showing and encouraging mutural respect. It should never be used without thoughtfulness or respect for others. IMO respct for the process is respect for the vast group of others who make up the community of Misplaced Pages. Soemone else wrote on this page that the corallary to "Process is Important" is "Community is Important". I strongly agree. What I object to is people who take unilateral actions, ignoring both process and the views of other members of the communtity, thereby failing to show mutual respct, including respect for the people who created the process and for the much larger number who rely on it to set out a senasible and predictable way to get things done. This page is not "Process is All-important" nor IMO should it ever be, and anyone who thinks that is what is being said here has misunderstood me drastically -- or perhaps i have drastically failed to communicate well. DES 18:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
And the corollary to both "process is important" and "community is important" is "the encyclopaedia is important". All actions are a balance of the three. Sam Korn 18:30, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Fully granted. Process is a tool, no more. It is a tool used or that should be used, in the interest of furthering the project. The community is a means to the end of writing an encyclopedia. it is my view that without the community we won't have much of an encyclopedia, and without adherence to process we will at best have less of a community. Thus it is my view that "process is important" to the success of the encyclopedia project. Process for itself is pointless, and I have no interst in any such thing. The aim of process, as I see it, is to facilitate the creation of the encyclopedia, and to ease interpersonal interactions to that end. Any process that does not, in the long term, contribute to those ends should be IMO changed or abolished. i simply don't think it productive to ignore ia poor process rather than actually change it. DES 18:51, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. In most circumstances, the encyclopaedia and the community will benefit from the application of policy. That is, after all, the aim of the policy, creating guidelines that are normally applicable. This isn't an anti-IAR page (and it most certainly shouldn't be); it should be a take-more-care-in-applying-IAR page. That seems to me an excellent idea. Sam Korn 19:08, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
While this isn't an anti-IAR page, I am an anti-IAR person. If I had the power of decree IAR would be deleted. I have yet to see it cited in support of an action that I thought was wise. Therfore when i see it cited, my first assumption is that the action being taken by the person who cites it is probably unjustitifed. However, a person can strongly disagree with that view and still agree with what has been written on this page, I think. If more people took more care in applying IAR, I would be less opposed to the concept. DES 19:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
There's some examples of good application of ignore all rules on this talk page. Kim Bruning 01:14, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Of the examples liste above as "Good" some do not seem to me to be examples of IAR, and others do not seem to me to have been good. It may be that some of the ones I don't think of as IARs nonetheless had IAR cited in their support, which might be a counter-example to my statement above. But as I said above, that is of at best limited relevance to this page. This page does not say "delete IAR" or even "never use IAR" It says that ignnoring process is usually a bad idea, and think twice about the implications, long-term as well as short-0term, before doing so. I think that many supporters of IAR would agree with that view. My personal views of IAR are just that -- my personal views. DES 01:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, if I apply ignore all rules the way I do, and I say that this is how I apply it, and then you reject that my application of ignore all rules is actually an application of it, I can do nothing for you. Kim Bruning 02:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I winced when I saw the "all about process" line at Quadell's RfC, but I find the opposite viewpoint, which is getting thrown about more and more recently, I think, equally upsetting. As other have said, Misplaced Pages is big, frequently impersonal, and frequently prone to deal with controversial topics. When dealing with a project the size of Misplaced Pages, contributed to by so many different people, it's inevitable that common sense, and even occassionally mutual respect, are going to get frayed every now and then. Policy and process exists (or should exist, at least) to provide a means to prevent these occurances from spiralling out-of-control. The balance, as Mr. Korn has so effectively said, is ensuring that policy serves the needs of the project, and that the project doesn't serve the needs of its policy. Trolls hiding behind procedure are no better than trolls hiding behind IAR, after all. My personal attitude is that, generally, if you have to cite IAR in your defense, you probably shouldn't have IARed in the first place, but that doesn't mean that I don't fully support the ideology behind it. One way or the other, Jimbo has hit upon something important: it's all about respect for our fellow editors. If any of our policies aren't helping to make that possible, that's a problem that should be addressed. – Seancdaug 18:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, we had it addressed earlier on, and then people started playing wikinomic (aka. Calvinball) in the project namespace, so in the end, you need to sort of guesstimate your way around. Also hence why this page is a slight problem :-P Kim Bruning 22:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually i think Calvinball and nomic are different, indeed opposite, problems, and I am far more afraid of Calvinball (althoguh neither is good for the project). Nomic is playing with the rules to no end except for the fun of it. (Actually the original Nomic was an attempt to model/simulate governance systems, starting from a consensus system, and having been through a few sessions of noimic IMO helps make people more aware of what works and what doesn't in rulemaking. But wikipedia should not be a game of nomic.) Calvinball is really anarchy -- anyone can change the rules at any moment for immediate gain, or on a whim, and no one can rely on any rule at all. It is my feeling that incautious use of IAR would mire us deep in Calvinball, and that is exactly where I don't want to be. Overly strict adherence to processes and rules, particualrly if they were hard to change, would also have soem very undesireable results, but i think we currently tend to err much in the opposite direction. Indeed the equation of Nomic and Calivinball seems to me to indicate vastly missing the point, or perhaps simply not having thought about one's analogies very closely. DES 23:06, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Errr, Calvinball is typically seen as just a nomic you play in the real world with some balls and cones and whatever else takes your fancy (see the nomic article under variants). It's definately not anarchy. Currently the wikipedia: namespace is a game of nomic for all intents and purposes, and has been described as such by many people (yes, including Jimbo :-P) . This has a great distorting effect.
To help get a better grasp of our own processes, we played Calvinball at wikimania.
The most interesting thing that showed up when playing calvinball was that it was possible to halt the game by chosing contradictory rules. This is a situation that can easily occur by accident.
Having an Ignore All Rules metarule allows you to step outside the game and remove or avoid the offending rule(s) for a while, while fixing the problem.
This is why I insist on having ignore all rules. Your first experience with ignore all rules was when it was applied in such a situation on en.wikipedia itself. Note that in that situation, the action ended up being backed up by a steward!
Kim Bruning 12:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I see the Misplaced Pages: namespace as different from Nomic. In nomic, the game consists of altering the rules, etc. When we edit a policy or guideline in the Misplaced Pages namespace, however, we haven't altered the rules. We may have described them better or worse, but the rules remain nothing more than (a)Use common sense and (b)courtesy to (c)write a neutral encyclopedia (d)using a wiki. All of the policy and guideline pages are just essays and exegeses on those basic ideas, and changing the text of one of those pages isn't like making a rule change in nomic, where it's binding, at least until it's changed again.
Does that make sense? -GTBacchus 22:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

picture

I added four pictures, mainly (but not entirely) to make the whole thing easier on the eyes. Herostratus 20:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC) I thought it would be easier to put them in and let people complain about them than discuss it first, cuz its layout which is easier to discuss if you can see it. If ppl don't want them, say so, of course. Herostratus

Whimsical and fun. Thank you :) - Haukur 20:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I loved the encyclopedia example. Somehow I wonder though, wasn't our strength precicely that we can make something of similar quality with a lot LESS oversight? Kim Bruning 22:20, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Interesting and not unsensible choices, IMO DES 23:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

added note not to cite this as policy

I've added this because, guess what! Someone did just that!

(I tell you, sometimes the degree of tough love some of the community need would be a waste of falling anvils) - David Gerard 00:03, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Would you rather that they copied and pasted the essay? Even if it's not policy, people may still choose to use it as a justification for their positions on various discussion pages. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 06:03, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • That is not a citation as policy. That is citation of the argument by reference, just as people often link to the Misplaced Pages:Schools page to explain the reasons for an opniuon without rehashing the entire issue. DES 19:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh for goodness sake. How about all the people citing WP:SNOW? Anyway, I copied over your revision of the notice to WP:SNOW... after proposing to do so on the talk page, and waiting a decent interval to see if there were any objections, which there were not. Oops, was that a... process? Must have lost my head... Herostratus 05:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

And the Golden Center?

How about a policy that says that Process is Important, but in some situations it's better to IAR? — Ilyanep (Talk) 04:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Nope. If you need something tell you there is a time to IARs then you shouldn't be doing it.Geni 04:10, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Or excuse me...not policy, but something like this. The way this reads, we should be bureaucratic mindless drones following only policy. — Ilyanep (Talk) 05:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but all actions involving citation of IAR are subject, like all reversible Misplaced Pages actions, to potential revision by the community. This creates implicit unwritten rules about the application of IAR. The question is, if it is necessary to ignore rules to achieve something (rather than, say, reinterpret them), doesn't this indicate that the rules are broken and should be fixed rather than ignored? Perhaps someone feeling the need to cite IAR should also suggest revisions to the rules to the prevent the need for its citation in similar situations in future. If nothing else, it's a useful thought experiment - if you're not willing to make your IAR application a precedent, you probably shouldn't do it. Rd232 15:52, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Again, this page isn't policy, nor proposed policy. it is an essay suggesting arguments for not ignoring procvss when there is relevant process. Nowhere does it suggest being a "bureaucratic mindless drone". If a given process is overly bureaucratic, propose a change to it to make it more flexable or more useful. There is no "process" for most content editing, so this hardly applys to that sort of action. If most people who used IAR also suggested policy improvements, as Rd232 suggests above, things might be better, it's worth thinking about. This page nowhere says that you can't use IAR, it merely says "here are some reasons why it might well be better to go throguh a process when one exists, rather than ignoring it or evading it" DES 19:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Per tradition, after applying Ignore All Rules, it is important to note down what you did, so others can indeed use it as precedent. Kim Bruning 20:48, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

People applying Process Is Important should ask permission first, or else be banned, per WP:BOT

Hmm, let's try an extreme position and see where it leads. Don't yell at me for acting crazy. I've heard people joke about this position, and I'd just like to go over it and see how defensible this position actually is.

Because people applying process strictly are essentially indistinguishable from bots, according to Alan Turing we should probably treat them in the same fashion, as per WP:BOT

Would that be a sane position to hold? Why or why not? Kim Bruning 20:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

permission for what, from who? define your parameters... Rd232 21:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Permission to run a bot ;-) Kim Bruning 04:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Um, no, that wouldn't be a sane position to hold... it would be more like... let me think... I've got it! insane! Not just insane but (cue Crazy Eddie) INSAAAAAAAAANE! Why? Because... well, really, I've got somebody who can say it better than me. Ready, Crazy Eddie? Because it would be... INSAAAAAAAANE!!!!
LOL. Sheesh Bruning let it go for chrissakes. The last thing we need with all the new users coming in to be telling ppl Hey! There's no process! Why? Because our process is not just low... it's INSAAAAAAANE!!!!' Herostratus 04:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
You're yelling at me anyway :-P
The thing is, the reason we have humans on this site at all, is because humans posses common sense, which bots don't. <smirk> On the other hand, seeing the responses so far, perhaps we should ban the users after all, and let the bots do the work </smirk>. Kim Bruning 04:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
There are large grey areas in policy and areas policy simply does not conver.Geni 10:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Interesting idea. I think that the problem with bots, and the reason for the bot policy, is not that they're rule-governed but that they are dangerously efficient. Humans are also sometimes dangerously efficient, which is why I think a single dedicated idiot can do more damage to Misplaced Pages than a hundred vandals. Yes, efficient people should be required to seek community consent before unleashing themselves. It's only fair.  :-) -- Visviva 07:09, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I just want to say...

This page brings a joyous tear to my eye. I can't think of any other namespace page that I agree with more than this. MUCH kudos to everyone who contributed in writing this. -- Hinotori 00:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

IAR abuse

The problem with IAR is that it can be used cyclically (circular logic) to justify anything. How do you actually justify an application of IAR? At the extremes you have jusitification through a dictatorial process ("I am right; you're all wrong!") and super consensus (100% support).

If IAR exists, then its application should be inversely proportional to the controversy in the issue involved. Process exists as a tool to help prevent abuse; this is why many governments and government-like structures (of which ALL large websits are) use it. It allows the end result to be more objective and balanaced and avoid the dictator secenario (which is very antithetical to consensus). Being opposed to any government-liek structures means literal anarchy support (which is, by definition, lack of government). The people who l iterally support that are extremely rare, so even the people who say they're opposed to makingi t government like actually are and don't even realize it.

It's true that for (just picking a random number) 90% of articles most process doesn't matter, but process we have process mostly for the other 10%, not the 90%. Therefore, process exists to help Misplaced Pages function during controversy, so ignoring it during controversy is against its very purpose. Otherwise IAR becomes a tool for the most powerful people to bludgeon their opponents with. Does any truly think that IAR should be applied in controversial situations?

So far I have not seen a single good argument against this page, nor even one that qualifies as quarter-decent. I've see several logical fallacies (ad logicam, ad hominem, strawman, question begging, non-sequitur, etc...) and even a civility violation. It seems quite clear from the opposition's inability to form a cogent argument that even they realize that their position is truly indefensible. This is not surprising as the biggest opponents of this support the dictator mindset wrt to Misplaced Pages and expect people to accept their word as right without justification.

Nathan J. Yoder 08:36, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

As part of the 'opposition', here's my attempt at a cogent argument: process is always evil. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need any process: Wikipedians could simply be trusted to use common sense, treat each other responsibly, 'do the right thing' as they saw it and act in the interests of improving the encyclopaedia. The fact that we don't live in an ideal world, of course, means that we do need some process, but I think it's a truly fundamental part of the Misplaced Pages culture to remember that process is a necessary evil. That implies two things. Fans of IAR need to remember that some process is necessary. Fans of 'Process is important' need to remember that just because it's necessary doesn't make it any less evil.
So, yes, I do think IAR should be applied in controversial situations as a means of improving the encyclopaedia. Wikipedians acting in good faith in the interests of the encyclopaedia should always trump process. --Nick Boalch 11:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
"IAR should be applied in controversial situations..." - no, quite the opposite: in controversial situations, process in the broadest sense (discussion, debate, not acting unilaterally) is more important than in non-controversial situations. NB are you aware that "process is always evil" is an explicitly dictatorial and/or anarchic position? WP:NOT a democracy or a bureaucracy, but nor is it anarchy (Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Policy matters). Rd232 14:39, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
In theory. Welcome to the real world. When there's a chaotic situation and there's a clock ticking (occaisionally happens), you're fscked. Time to grep meatball and WikiWikiWeb, apply the Feynman algorithm, cross your fingers, cross your toes, pray to your god(s), and then hit the buttons. Hail Mary!Kim Bruning 14:45, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
The one time I really have had a clock ticking there was a debate of sorts.Geni 16:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
I've had some stuff that was wierdly time related. It's not normal, agreed. Kim Bruning 16:38, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
'Process is always evil' is entirely consistent with 'WP:NOT anarchy'. Note that 'process is always evil' doesn't mean 'there should be no process' in this context. --Nick Boalch 11:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

"This is important"

I've removed, from this essay and from WP:SNOW, some boilerplate that seemed to be saying that these essays are "important", and with a "nudge nudge" type of wording implying that they're up on the level of guidelines or policies. This wording struck me as inappropriate to both essays. They're essays and that's that. --Tony Sidaway 13:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

And what about WP:IAR? —Ashley Y 22:59, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo quote

This was added, trimmed, cut, and restored earlier today:

Misplaced Pages is not "all about process" and such an attitude is absolutely contrary to our longstanding community spirit. Misplaced Pages all about people, about mutual respect, about thoughtfulness and respect for others as individuals. The rules lawyers of Misplaced Pages are a sickness upon us.--Jimbo Wales 16:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Given all of that action already, let's see if we can work out here where/if this belongs in relation to the essay.

My personal view is that it doesn't belong on the essay page itself, because it serves mainly as a counterpoint to the essay, thereby "undermining" it. I don't even agree with Process is Important(tm) most of the time, but in most cases, discussion on the merits of an essay seem to take place on the talk page. So I would recommend leaving it here, regardless of archival. -- nae'blis (talk) 20:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh this is an easy one to deal with you just cite this and remove it.Geni 14:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

OTOH It'd be dishonest not to point out that many key wikipedians are diametrically opposed to "process is important", somehow. :-/ Despite the strong wording of the last sentence, I'm not sure how to proceed here. ^^;;

Kim Bruning 20:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


From my talk page:

Just out of curiosity, what was your reasoning behind putting a quote about how Misplaced Pages is not all about process, at the essay talking about how important process is? Seems counter-productive, and maybe designed to undercut the essay with an appeal to authority. But maybe you can shed light on this for me... for right now, I've removed your inclusion. -- nae'blis (talk) 19:43, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
please, lets discuss in the relevant talk page, not here. this is a conversation worth having where the entire community can hear us, not use on a user's talk page. In any case, thanks for the headsup, but my watchlist is as good as yours ;-)--Cerejota 19:48, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Now to the meat of the matter:

I was bold in my editing because this page has been used as a policy source by users who seemed not to understand it isn't policy, and this seemed to be a great way to poke fun at all the wikilawyers out there, who seem to be even worse than their real life counterparts, so they can bow down in awe at The Words of Jimbo Wales. Plus see their faces of confussion as it doesnt compute that procedure can be both important and not be ALL important :)...

In that sense, I think rather than counterpoint, it deepens the understanding of the underlying debates the essay points towards. While as an essay on policy, it has certain rights other articles don't, most of them community given (not process given :P), its goal still is to make Misplaced Pages better, and I think it both makes wikipedia better and the essay better, to have that quote in there... (and give the wikilawyers something else to debate about besides the merits of WP:XYZ versus WP:ZYX).

Furthermore, I think it is a relevant funny quote and a great epigraph for this article! Come on! Sense of humor? self-deprecation? having a pulse? :D (now, there is an idea for a page, the Little Blue MonoBook of Quotations of Chairman Jimbo!). --Cerejota 20:35, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Having looked at the context of the quote I think it is rather a bad one to include. Jimbo was basically attacking a complete strawman; the opinion he's arguing against is not found in the post he was replying to. I like this part, though: "Misplaced Pages all about people, about mutual respect, about thoughtfulness and respect for others as individuals." I think this encapsulates well why process is important. We show respect to fellow editors when we allow them to have a fair say within a fair process - when minority opinions are steamrolled with reference to IAR or some such, people get frustrated. Haukur 21:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
The strength of a society can be gauged by how it treats its minorities. Process guarantees rights to minorities on WIkipedia. Stephen B Streater 08:03, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is the right language. You have no 'rights' on Misplaced Pages. (Or, rather, you have precisely one right: to fork Misplaced Pages's content.) --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\ 09:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Editors may not have rights, but their content does. The AfD process allows content to get a fair hearing before it is deleted, for example. Stephen B Streater 09:11, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I certainly don't disagree that this is a good thing: personally I'm a great fan of AfD, because it can result in unsuitable or unencyclopaedic content being improved to the point where it benefits the encyclopaedia. However, I'm still not sure this should be construed as a 'right'. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\ 10:22, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
"AfD" and "fair hearing" in one sentence... <shivers> Kim Bruning 14:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
HAHAHAHA...And then process defends minorities... face it process is a sham invented by wikilawyers... there are policies, and there is the dictatorship of Jimbo. Rights? WHo do people think this, the role-play UN?

New essay

User:David Gerard/Process is Dangerous

Not a contradiction of this essay, honestly. In fact, I was very sceptical of this essay but have been convinced of its basic message. But nevertheless, process is a means to an end. Suggestions, additions and disagreements are most welcomed - David Gerard 22:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Another perspective

Check out this page from WikiWikiWeb: Wiki:ThreeLevelsOfAudience

I wonder if it's possible to see this essay as being for people at the first level, David Gerard's "Process is Dangerous" essay (see above section) as being for people at the second level, and Ignore all Rules for people at the third level. Sort of like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, y'know?

That seems rather condescending, actually. One could easily reverse it, as those at the "third level" being the children who think the rules don't apply, the "second level" being those who get in trouble now and then, and the "first level" being those enlightened folk who realize some order is preferable as opposed to chaos. Neither description would be accurate, respectful, or worth bothering with, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Please be assured that I didn't intend any condecension. I'm sorry if it came across that way. I think the Wiki page I linked to above is insightful and important, and expresses something that's important in the kind of endeavor that I see Misplaced Pages as. I hope you'll consider that I'm not trying to look down on anyone, but that there may be some merit to viewing an activity such as Misplaced Pages in this way. -GTBacchus 00:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
And I didn't mean to accuse you of condescension either, and sorry if it came across that way. I'm really more commenting on the merit as well (or, in my view, the lack thereof). Anyway, yes, sorry. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:45, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
No worries. :) I still think it's an idea worth developing, but if and when I do, I'll be very careful about the pitfall you've pointed out - I don't want to give people the wrong idea. -GTBacchus 00:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Beginners go to English class, and learn grammar guidelines from a book. As time goes on, they learn when it's more appropriate to break the guidelines.

It's safest for newcommers to adhere to the rules. But rules exist for a reason, and an experienced person will understand the reasons behind these rules more deeply as time goes on. Unless the experienced people actively try to keep the rules updated to encompass all possible situations (which is something our community doesn't seem to think is the best way to go), eventually deep understanding becomes more important than fixed words on a page. --Interiot 02:23, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The link at the top of this section... it was talking about technique, for chrissakes. It wasn't intended to be applied to political organizations (== things composed of people). Good lord. Engineers. God save us. Herostratus 05:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe there's something to be gained by applying it to Misplaced Pages. Just because that wasn't the original intent, doesn't mean nothing maps across. I'm just saying it might be worth thinking about. -GTBacchus 06:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry. You are right, it could map across. I don't think it does, but I didn't need to get shirty. It's an interesting link, and I thank you for it, and it is something to think about. Herostratus 08:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Well... it certainly maps onto playing music. I play the bass guitar in a band, and the idea matches my experience of playing the bass. I first had to learn how to play the root, just supporting whatever chord the guitarist is playing, and basically stick to the 1 and the 5. Soon, I started learning how you can break out of those patterns and play different and more interesting things, but they somehow work in relation to the "rules" that you're starting to "break". Playing notes that aren't strictly in the key that the song's in - learning to do that is pretty cool, but when you're starting out, you'd better be careful. I'd say I'm at the second level. I haven't gotten to the point where I can just play by feeling, without thinking about some kind of rule, but I've had glimpses of it, and I know such a level exists.
Now, playing music is a partly technical, and partly social experience, especially in a improvisational setting. I'd say that making up music in a group and writing on a Wiki are closer to each other than either is to coding up a piece of software. Playing music involves paying attention to others, and not violating others' expectations too much, and occupying some kind of social "role", and all kinds of "political" aspects. The "three levels" idea certainly applies to it, so why not to a Wiki? -GTBacchus 22:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Sure, that's one way of looking at it and there's nothing objectionable about it. But often it may be better to think of this difference between the wiki-n00b and the wiki-veteran prosaically as "the n00b has to look up things on the policy pages a lot but the veteran doesn't because she mostly already knows what they say". Of course one of the points emphasized in your theory is that the veteran not only knows the content of the policy pages but also the general social expectations at the wiki. Absolutely. Also remember that once you've got the hang of a particular process you may consciously forget that you are following a process. When I go swimming I don't think thoughts like "okay, this limb should move next, all according to the swimming process" but of course that's what I'm doing. Similarly you can reach the state where you say "huh? I'm not following any processes, I'm just wiki-ing" but that doesn't mean there aren't some underlying processes you've learned and then forgot you learned but still follow. Haukur 23:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I agree with that. There are underlying processes that the most experienced Wikipedian is following, and those processes are what our pages in the Misplaced Pages: namespace attempt to describe. The map is not, however, the territory, and the description that we've come up with so far, is not to be taken as the be-all end-all. The more tuned-in you are to the real process of Wiki-ing, the less you have to worry about what the written version says.
It's like, first you follow the written rules, and understand that they're pointing to the true rules (which are nothing more than common sense and civility, plus understanding what it means to write a neutral encyclopedia on a wiki). Once you've internalized the true rules, you stop thinking about the written rules, and at some point you may find yourself violating the written rules, by following the real rules. In such a case, common sense trumps what's written down, and you might consider writing down whichever piece of common sense you've discovered. -GTBacchus 00:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

essay tag

I removed the essay tag in the name of maintaining parellelity with WP:SNOW, which at the current time has no tag, due I guess to warring over the tag there. Maintaining parallelity with WP:SNOW prevents proponents of either essay from getting a leg on the other, e.g. by placing a Guideline tag at WP:SNOW, as has happened. This is in the interest of preventing, or at least trying to prevent, edit warring at either article. It protects both essay, but as a practical matter it probably protects this essay more, things being as they are. Herostratus 15:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Considering both pages are in the essay category but only WP:SNOW is kissed as a guideline, I guess Misplaced Pages is more complicated (less parallelified) than it would appear at first. Rfrisbie 16:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
WP:SNOW isn't exactly "kissed" as a guideline, as much as some would want it to be. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Put another way, changing message boxes without changing related category assignments appears to be an incomplete process. :-) Rfrisbie 16:41, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The point of removing the tag from SNOW was that it's defined as a corollary to IAR, and isn't really an unofficial essay, but neither is it a separate/extra policy. Since this isn't a corollary to anything, I'd think it would need a tag of some sort. Also, if PI is parallel to anything, I'd think it's parallel to IAR. --Interiot 16:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think SNOW is self-evidently a corollary of IAR - you can easily agree with one and not the other. We could just as well define PI as a corollary of some other policy page :) Haukur 16:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, WP:SNOW is allegedly a correllary of one policy page - IAR. This is a corrollary to most every policy and process page out there designed to keep things moving smoothly and keep questions from cropping up. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that's a slight misuse of the word "corollary", to say that PI is a corollary of all the process oriented pages. Having a process written down does not imply anything about how much weight the process should be given. The way I see it, WP:SNOW and WP:IAR represent an attitude one might take towards process, and WP:PI is kind of a reaction against that attitude, and has yet to gain wide acceptance among experienced Wikipedians. I don't see why SNOW and PI wouldn't both be called essays. -GTBacchus 17:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The first couple words of SNOW have long been The "snowball clause" is a corollary of "ignore all rules", but who knows what's up for grabs these days. At their core, they mean the exact same thing, that process is good, but when process should not be followed when says to do something that's not beneficial for the encyclopedia. --Interiot 16:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I just think it's a good idea all around to yoke the tags SNOW and PI articles. As I said, this makes slapping a Guideline or Policy tag on WP:SNOW less likely, as it conveys no real advantage, since it means automatically applying the same tag to WP:π. The converse is also true, of course. I do think that the two articles are near-complements. And WP:SNOW should (in my opinion) have an Essay tag, but whatever they're going on about over there has lead, at least for the time being their solution is no tag, so it won't hurt to have the parallel tag (that is, not tag) here until they get it sorted out. Also.. Interiot makes a fair point, that WP:π is the complement of WP:IAR rather than of WP:SNOW, as WP:SNOW is a subset of WP:IAR. Hmmm that makes sense, except that to slap a Policy tag on WP:π on this ground would accomplish the opposite of what I'm trying to do. Anyway, after hearing my explanation, if anyone wants to restore the Essay tag to WP:π, that would be OK. Herostratus 17:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
If the goal is to stop edit-warring on SNOW, I don't know if that'll happen. There's a cold war (no pun intended) over SNOW, and regardless of what tag is on the page, one side is going to keep citing it for official purposes as they have for almost a year, and one side (one person?) is going to keep objecting whenever they see it being used. --Interiot 18:23, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
One person, really. Anyway, if that's the case, best to leave the Essay tag off this article also then. Having no tag on WP:SNOW leaves it more open to interpretation, one interpretation being that it's policy, while keeping the Essay tag on this article leaves it as "only some person's opinion". So in the interest of fairness I guess this article should remained untagged too. Herostratus 19:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

This essay is not somehow at odds with WP:SNOW. SNOW is a special case of process: when it would be ridiculous effort.

By the way, I've renamed mine User:David Gerard/Process essay because it's not against process at all. I think it's about using process as a tool in itself. The process of process. Recognising that process is mostly formed by a series of ad-hoc kludges and should be treated as useful only until disposable. Etc. Etc. I'll let you know when I've finished it. It now includes a section on what to do about people who don't yet understand that IAR doesn't really mean "do whatever dumbarse idea occurs to you" - David Gerard 21:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you're doing a great job here, David, in opening useful dialogue between the two 'camps'. And renaming the essay was an excellent idea - typically essays tend to get cited not so much for their content but for their single basic idea or even just their title. Having a title like 'Process is dangerous' will give you kneejerk reactions while a bland title like 'Process essay' forces people to actually read the darned thing ;) Haukur 21:23, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • While I have no particular opinion on the way to tag this page, I should point out that forcing two pages to always have the same tag (or lack of tag) is a rather weird idea. m:instruction creep and all that. If you feel two pages must have identical tags, merge them into one page. >Radiant< 14:28, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I'll take weird=delightfully different, as I don't think you meant it's outright uncanny. =) David Gerard is spot on... no one else has seen this before: both articles are true, even though (or perhaps because) they are opposites... Herostratus 16:00, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Should I have followed process?

I don't usually "Ignore all rules", so I don't tend to have examples at hand. I just now did it though, and since I'm already in one discussion here, I thought I'd toss this out as an example. I knew I was about to act out of process, and I did it because of common sense. I'm submitting to this page for review, instead of WP:AN or something, because I suspect I'll find a good, tough crowd here, and maybe the case will be instructive or illustrative in some way.

There's a big backlog at WP:RM right now. User A requested that Sea of Fertility tetralogy be moved to The Sea of Fertility, on the grounds that the correct title has a "The" at the front of it. Trouble is, User A put the {{moveto}} template on the talk page of the incorrectly named article, but didn't list a poll to gauge consensus. After 12 days, nobody had commented, one way or the other, and User B relisted the move request, on the grounds that process wasn't followed and we were thus unable to determine consensus. On the other hand, we're talking about some series of books that has a correct title, which anyone can confirm on Amazon, or whatever. It seemed pretty trivial, so I just de-relisted it, and went ahead and deleted the redirect which had prevented User A from just doing the move in the first place, and I completed the move, and corrected all 10 or so incoming links.

Now, is there any "Process is Important" kind of reason I shouldn't have done what I did? Did that article need another 5 days in requested moves, over an trivial name correction? -GTBacchus 02:36, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I think consensus is the key, and probably this should be noted more prominently in the essay. My rule of thumb is "follow process unless you have consensus". —Ashley Y 06:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Now, if only people could similarly agree that IAR was conditioned by "where there's consensus to do so" (at least after the fact, in cases where speediness is crucial), and then we could practically merge the two...  :/ Not holding my breath. Alai 07:59, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I thought the reccomendations for IAR do say you have to try to get as close to existing consensus as possible, even when you can't get a perfect fit. Isn't this being made clear enough? In any case your actions need to get consensus post-hoc, else you've clearly made a mistake. Kim Bruning 09:49, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Isn't this being made clear enough? For a long time now the people who hang out at IAR have resisted all attempts to insert "but don't ignore other people!" or "respect consensus!" or something to that effect into the page. So, yes, it's not being made clear enough. In fact it isn't being said at all. Haukur 10:00, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, I think it's safe to say that all complaints about IAR arise from situations in which it's done without consensus. The tendency to blame IAR for the problems that then arise, instead of recognizing that IAR wasn't used properly, is unsettling. -GTBacchus 10:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
IAR says nothing at all about consensus. Thus at present, your common-sense opinion that people should only apply IAR with regard to consensus and are otherwise doing so 'improperly', is overridden by others' common-sense opinion that "the mob's" consensus is bunk, and Gordian solutions are required. Ultimately this is only resolvable with regard to the express or implied authority of the person doing the overruling, so the oft-repeated "common sense" rationale is just an appeal to vague populism. I think the consensus qualification is being not "said" so loudly as to be strongly suggestive of the opposite. Suggestions on how to ignore all rules is an excellent... essay. Why would invokers of the policy-negating policy bother with a mere essay as a constraint? If that were folded back in as a qualification to IAR, we'd have something that was firstly, less prone to actual and rhetorical abuse, secondly, less of a logical absurdity than it is at present. (Which would make discussions of what IAR's "corollaries" more meaningful (given that falsity implies everything, "Regularly Climb the Reichstag Dressed as Spiderman" is as valid as WP:SNOW). It's hard to avoid the suspicion that there's more to this reluctance than simple parsimony. Alai 11:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely agree with Alai. The obvious example is an edit war in which both sides honestly think that they are improving Misplaced Pages, and can invoke WP:IAR in defence of each edit. Sure, edit-warring itself is bad, but without a reference to consensus, each individual edit in the war can be justified as "improving Misplaced Pages". —Ashley Y 17:08, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that this was not only acceptable but also perfectly within the WP:RM process - non-controversial move proposals are routinely just done without messing around with templates and polls. Haukur 09:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't know; I'm new to WP:RM, and saw no documentation allowing for extra-procedural closings. If ignoring the process is perfectly within their process, then good job on their part. -GTBacchus 10:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
The first two sentences of WP:RM (not counting the backlog notice) are: "Requested moves is the place to request article moves that are not straightforward, or that require the assistance of Misplaced Pages administrators. Normally, logged-in users can do uncontroversial moves themselves using the tab found at the top of every page (see Help:Moving a page)." Alai 11:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
One reason for following process is to not upset or anger people. People in a minority position are likely to feel propiated if, even if they lose, at least their loss was according to a stated and previously agreed on process. If they are met with "your position has no chance of victory IMO so, per WP:SNOW, STFU" they are more likely to feel angry or upset - and if contributing to Misplaced Pages ends up making you feel angry or upset, you are less likely to want to edit contribute to Misplaced Pages, no? But in cases where no one would likely feel upset or disregarded, short-circuiting process is likely OK, per WP:NO HARM, NO FOUL. Herostratus 16:33, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Well put. Now there's a tempting redlink... Alai 18:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

essay tag 2

I removed the essay tag. Please discuss before restoring it. I removed the tag for these reasons:

  1. The parallelity argument above. I don't know if this has been decisively refuted or not. As long as it holds it can contain hostile edits like this with a minimum of effort, but if not we can go to the trenches, whatever.
  2. User:Alphax's edit summary was "this is an essay, nothing more." That sounds like a hostile edit, that is, an edit by someone who doesn't hold with the basic idea of the article itself. Hey, we don't go over to your essays and remove your tags. Granted that partisans of WP:π are more likely to be even-tempered, patient, and polite than some other editors, this should not be mistaken for weakness. If you want to start a guerilla war, well, it only takes one side, so I can't prevent that.
  3. On the merits, I would not say this is "only" an essay anymore. If WP:SNOW was also "only" an essay, them maybe. But partisans of WP:SNOW seem to have basically decided that it is oh so much more. But WP:π is invoked far, far more often than WP:SNOW. Because WP:π is invoked by inference every time process is followed. One doesn't post "Per WP:π, I am now closing this AfD in the normal manner" or "Per WP:π, I am allowing this DRv to run its normal course instead of closing it early in a fit of pique or impatience or just to get my way", and so forth. That would be unnecessary verbiage. (But, you know, one could do that. If necessary, I could start droping a WP:π reference into my edit summaries and encourage other editors to do the same, as well as dropping in on random discussions to note "Per WP:π, I won't be cutting this discussion short, bye!" or whatever. Hopefully that won't be necessary. Herostratus 17:08, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I think both this and WP:SNOW are simply essays. However, I have restored the old messagebox as a compromise. —Ashley Y 18:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Ah, that's the old message box from IAR, is it not? It doesn't really apply here. For one, this page doesn't have a long history (IAR was the first on our original rules page in 2001, this page is barely half a year old). For another, the first box this page got when written () was that of an essay in development. And for a third, '"process is important" is important' sounds kind of weird. Anyway, I'd be happy with {{essay}} or simply no tag or whatever, but this one is just not right. >Radiant< 19:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I added {{essay}} to the top then reverted myself when I realised the matter was under discussion here. The point of {{essay}} is to tell readers that this is the opinion of some Wikipedians, rather than widely agreed-to policy or guideline. The fact that this page is currently contentious makes it more important that this be flagged. I am strongly in favour of its inclusion. Snottygobble 01:20, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
The tag needs to be restored. There are a surprising number of literal-minded people on Misplaced Pages who are uncomfortable with grey areas. (I have my suspicions that those who are not proto-trolls are simply overwhelmed with the size & diversity of Misplaced Pages & desperately need something to be certain about.) Without this tag they use this essay as ammo, go after the latest Misplaced Pages veteran to have invoked WP:IAR, shoot first on full auto & ask questions later (if at all). -- llywrch 19:35, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm really not too sure about the idea that this essay is "invoked by inference every time process is followed." We shouldn't mistake inertia for enthusiasm. Most of the time I follow process, it's because it's what's there. It's like, if you took an empty field, and criss-crossed it with some paved paths, then most people trying to cross that field would follow one of the paths, as long as it's going in basically the right direction. This doesn't mean that all those people are stating by inference that paths are important, or that it's better to walk on a path than across the grassy spaces. It's just that people tend to be fairly docile and go along with whatever seems to be happening. Most people, when presented with a formal way to do something, will just do it rather than question it, unless it's particularly absurd. That doesn't mean they've thought about the case, and decided that the process is better than the shortcut; it's just human nature to default to a pre-existing structure, whether or not it's actually a good one. -GTBacchus 20:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

That's true, it's difficult to distinguish between applications of "process is important" from "process just happens to be there", or indeed "I'm following process because I thought it was policy to follow process, and didn't realize policy was now/always had been self-negating in regards to process and everything else". But it's clearly the case that there's "underreporting" -- not to say, no reporting -- of "applications" of WP:PI for the reason H*r*str*t*s mentions. In my view, this and WP:SNOW should have equal standing, because it's fairly clear that people are equally partisan in favour of both, and equally, some people regard them as complementary. It's besides the point to argue that IAR grants SNOW automatically greater standing, since it's qualified by the state of belief of the person applying it as to what's good for the quality of the encyclopaedia (or the state of belief of the community, admins, arbcom, or applauding or sanctioning them for applying it "correctly" or "incorrectly"). (If it weren't so qualified, it would be immediately paradoxical, instead of merely so without reference to whose judgement "wins".) Alai 06:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

There has to be balence.

I see WP:IAR, WP:SNOW and Misplaced Pages:Process is important as both mutually complementary and contradictory.

Misplaced Pages:Process is important is there to remind us that without process, orderly discussion and community falls apart.

WP:SNOW and WP:IAR are there to remind us that without common sense in applying policy and knowing when to follow process, nothing gets done.

Process is there to make things work smoothly. We have to recognize that sometimes the process does the opposite.

These two contradictory views are probably also our most misused essays and policies, but without them, things couldn't get done here.

But these views complement each other... yes, process is important, it serves to stop conflicts, it serves to keep the wheels and gears turning however slowly, but it can also bog us down in red tape so high that we would never have time to edit. Thats why we need things like WP:IAR and WP:SNOW. They boil down to use common sense. When applied correctly, whether to editing or to administrative actions, they allow us to be more productive, and allow the processes to work as they should in the cases where they really are needed.

Defending process simply because its process doesn't help. For process to be successful, there has to be a point to it, otherwise you are just burning up energy that could be used elsewhere. Similarly, circumventing process blindly doesn't make things any better either.

It boils down to this. Defend process only when the process is a means to an end, not just an end in and of itself. Assume good faith when dealing with matters of process, and especially with matters of WP:IAR. meatball:DefendAgainstPassion when dealing with questionable cases... It doesn't help the encyclopedia to have a heated debate on whether or not process was followed in closing an AFD on day 4 with a 50 to 1 margin. Sure, not everything's that clearcut, but when you feel that it isn't, deal with it diplomatically rather than by increasing the temperature even further.

My two cents... - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 00:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree. Just to note: it's the job of this article to generally promote respect for process; this article doesn't need to overly worry about times when process should be bypassed, there are the other articles for that. Herostratus 06:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)