User:Electrawn/Process is Good

Process is Important &mdash; or we'd all kill each other. Following process really will reduce confusion.

But that doesn't mean more process is therefore better. Indeed, process is dangerous and must be culled regularly.



The function of process
Process is a means to an end only. Product is more important. We're here to write an encyclopedia.

Byzantine process excludes newcomers
Wikipedia is not finished and we always need new editors. It is important to Wikipedia that new editors not feel like they've fallen into a Kafka story &mdash; because the numbers show that occasional editors, not the regulars, in fact write most of the content. Process is for dealing with content; process that hampers content, and those who add it, must have severe justification.

Ossification
Almost all our processes are quick hacks to achieve a temporary result &mdash; especially the fragile compromises hammered out over much argument. Taking them as gospel to be preserved is fundamentally erroneous. They should be regarded as largely the bodgy hacks they are, to be thrown away when they are more trouble than they are worth. This is why Ignore all rules is policy.

Wikipedia has gotten big enough that people try to create policies and procedures to manage it. These don't really change it &mdash; Counter-Vandalism Unit didn't end vandalism, Proposed deletion (PROD) didn't fix deletion, etc. We hardly ever make changes that fundamentally affect Wikipedia's function; Biographies of living persons was the last big one, and that was arguably just a particularly severe application of Verifiability, NPOV and No Original Research.

What we do instead is make procedures that allow the streamlining of one way of using Wikipedia. Portals for topic-based editors, templates for organization types, different deletion pages for different styles of inclusion/deletion sorts, different admin pages for different admin styles, etc. Ultimately, these are all skins and mechanisms to prod at an increasingly too-big-to-actually-control Wikipedia.

The danger of process
See instruction creep.

People forget that process is temporary scaffolding for one purpose only: writing an encyclopedia. There is an observed tendency to treat any aspect of process as received wisdom, rather than the quick hack or fundamentally unsatisfactory compromise it was. They will revert-war to keep someone from changing process, behaving as though anyone trying to fix a broken hack is acting in bad faith or is too clueless to be trusted.

Wikipedia's editorial process has become like a piece of open source software with no version control: a mess of patches that work great for their creators, and no one else.


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

Good sense beats process
Process is not a substitute for common sense, and following process to the letter does not cover your ass in any way. In the pedophile userbox wheel war arbitration case, following process with no regard to good sense got several admins de-adminned for egregious stupidity.

Anyone who says "out of process!" may be forgetting this. Anyone saying "but I followed process!" should be referred to the above mentioned arbitration case and treated gently as someone who is sincere but doesn't understand yet.

How to deal with excessive process

 * Think: "How does this process help us write a neutral, verifiable encyclopedia?" If it doesn't, it should go.
 * Assume good faith. The people defending a bad process are as sincere and dedicated to the project as you.
 * AGF is hard policy.
 * But remember that "assume good faith" also means "never assume malice when stupidity will suffice." Then grit your teeth harder.
 * Ignore all rules.
 * Think deeply on the actual problem. There's almost certainly a more elegant mechanism.
 * After you've come up with the more elegant mechanism, you have to convince people.
 * Just because it's intuitively obvious to you doesn't mean it is to anyone else. Show all working. (US: "Show your work".)
 * Not-quite-parallel lightweight processes can sometimes help, e.g. WP:PROD handling the simple stuff for WP:AFD; WP:AFU doing the merit-related undeletions that the incumbents of WP:DRV refuse to allow it to consider.
 * You need to convince the incumbents of the broken process that this is a good idea.
 * Don't be a dick. Really.

Approaches that don't usually work

 * Blow it up.
 * This doesn't work very often.
 * Get the Arbitration Committee to blow it up.
 * This works even less often, unless the stupidity is really quite amazing.
 * Get Jimbo to blow it up.
 * Note that the community frequently tells Jimbo to get knotted that they strongly disagree.
 * This isn't Nomic. You can't in fact implode the rules by turning them against themselves.