User:Andrewa/Andrew's Principle

This may one day be a user essay, for now it's a work in progress

=Andrew's Principle=

If no consensus really is possible, then it doesn't matter which way we go.

Corollaries
C1. As soon as it's obvious that we won't get consensus for a particular view, further posts supporting it can be safely ignored.

This is WP:SNOW rephrased.

C2. The value of a reply is in inverse proportion to the factorial of the depth of indenting.

That is, a reply is worth about as much as the original comment, a reply to a reply about half, a reply to a reply to a reply about one-sixth, and so on. This is an unproven conjecture analytically as I write but seems to hold empirically.

C3. The value of any comment is in inverse proportion to its length in syllables.

This of course factors in the vegemite test.

C4. Wikipedia will always be a bit messy, and it doesn't matter

C5. Any attempt to perfect Wikipedia is counterproductive

This applies to attempts to write perfect rules, to implement any of these rules (perfect or otherwise) perfectly, to demand perfect behaviour of yourself or of others, and lots and lots of other aspects and levels of Wikipedia's governance and polity.

Lemmas
(Principles on which Andrew's Principle is in some way based)

L1. The three important things are content, content and content

This is the web. If the content is there people will find it. Good navigation aids will help them a great deal, but strange to say the absence of these won't hinder them all that much, and bad navigation aids need to be really, really bad to have any significant negative impact.

But if the content ain't there, it ain't gonna be found there. D'oh.

L2. In response to any form of bigotry or illogic, further bigotry or illogic is negative progress

Not to be confused with

 * The Andrew Point.