Wikibooks talk:Policies and guidelines/Proposed reform

Style over Substance
I think most of this page is mainly style over substance. It really is if we should have just a few very large policies (like WB:WIW) or many very small but specific policies (like WB:FUP).

Merging content from several policies might have some usefulness, but IMHO they should at least be "enforced" or "official" policies here first before they get merged. The debate over a significant policy change can be more focused and on topic if you keep the changes simple and deal with only one topic.

In addition, these seemingly seperate policies have tended to be created due to pressures that have come from many different sources. While not a justification to keep these as seperate policies, it is important to understand the historical context that each policy was created. WB:FUP, for instance, was written largly by myself when a major discussion about the topic of fair-use content occured on the Foundation-l mailing list. Believe it or not, it was inspired primarily by the Italian Wikipedia policy on this topic, whose participants have seemingly done the most amount of thought on the topic without being deadlocked in committee (which has happened on en.wikipedia).

My personal preference is to have several very specific policies that are perhaps grouped into topical themes. But as I've pointed out with the topic header, it really makes no difference, and that is mainly style of how the information is presented. --Rob Horning 12:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting to note...
I skimmed these briefly. It is quite useful to consider all policies together as one unit, rather than individual policies with varying levels of enforcement, consistency, and overlap.

Good (in my opinion):
 * The shortness of both Inclusion criteria/Proposal and Be nice
 * Having Disclaimers/Proposed merger on one page

Bad (in my opinion):
 * All of Copyrights/Proposed merger would need to be protected, but we really only need to protect the top part (that says that what we write must be under GNU FDL). The other sections ("Publication by third parties" through to "Image upload policy") ought to be editable. I suggest using two pages, one protected and one editable.
 * Inclusion criteria/Proposal is missing enough from What is Wikibooks that we might begin including things that we previously excluded. (In contrast, What is Wikibooks/Unstable might be too long to be useful, even if we make it agree with itself.)
 * The policies at Policies and guidelines ought to be moved somewhere else. (We could defer this until later.)

--Kernigh 03:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with User:Kernigh here, for the most part. I like the Inclusion criteria/Proposal and Be nice proposals, and the disclaimers proposal. I think that the Copyrights/Proposed merger page should be completely protected, because there is no reason that just any joe-schmoe user should be allowed to edit the text of that page without good reason. Inclusion criteria/Proposal, as User:Kernigh said, is missing alot of stuff, and at the very least it shouldnt be a step back from WB:WIW. If we can find a new, condensed way to say all the same things from the current policy, then so be it, otherwise i say we should just keep the old WB:WIW, and make changes to it, as necessary. Also, all the other guidelines and stuff that isnt "real policy" ought to be moved into the help pages, to keep all that kind of information together in a single, convenient resource. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)