Wikipedia talk:Be cautious

My take

 * 1) I think Be Cautious may be a policy whose need has been felt for some time. However, people who would go around making changes to policy pages could be - a) newbies, who cannot be expected to look at this policy page before making changes, b) regular editors who have been around long enough (they wd/shd already have an idea abt the process and hence wd anyway try to build a consensus before changing a policy) and c) vandals who wd not bother abt policy before damaging the policy pages and who wd anyway be reverted without much ado. So, while I do feel a need for the Be Cautious policy, I am not sure about its efficacy and who its targets shd be.
 * 2) Apart from the appropriate policy talk page, after attaining consensus, a discussion should also be initiated on Village pump (policy) as some of the current policy talkpages are inactive or not monitored actively by many editors thru their watchlists.
 * 3) The current draft would suggest Be Bold on the article space and Be Cautious on the Wikipedia space. I am not sure if that is what is intended.
 * 4) Be Cautious may be required for some edits in the article space as well - e.g. moving pages without discussion, merging pages without discussion etc.
 * Please view the above points more as pointers to lead the discussion rather than my points of view. --Gurubrahma 13:25, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Some good points. I'm going to add the Village pump idea to the proposal now. Filiocht | The kettle's on 13:46, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Breaks consensus test
The acid test for consensus on a wiki is that a page doesn't get any further edits.

So it's impossible to say "don't edit a page if consensus has been reached".

Kim Bruning 18:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi, if I understand the proposed policy correctly, it only asks us to be cautious in making edits, and, if they are of a major nature, to get consensus for the major edit on the talkpage of that policy page. So, no one is saying "don't edit a page if consensus has been reached". --Gurubrahma 08:59, 26 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Isn't that the same thing in different words yet again?


 * That and having a "let's make policy really really hard to change" rule at the moment when we should actually be doing a massive cleanup of the rulecruft that has accumalated over ages is probably not the wisest plan ever. Kim Bruning 16:05, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the spirit...
... of this proposal, but not the letter. Many policies are continually fiddled in small ways. Take a look at if you want to see what I mean. There is an issue of proportionality here: small changes don't usually require general community discussion. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:56, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Uh, fixing the grammar in a policy page doesn't change the policy. -Splash talk 17:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Policy pages as describing de facto policy
Just a thought: you could take the view that policy pages exist to document the actual practices and policies of Wikipedians. That is, policy pages don't so much define policy but describe it. Hence, changes to policy pages aren't so critical. For example, the Blocking policy page has been recently updated to reflect the consensus that widespread personal attacks are disruptive, and therefore such users are blockable. &mdash; Matt Crypto 18:03, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * That'd be Descriptivism, more or less. -Splash talk 18:37, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I do so wish we could get this through to people more. Typically folks get tangled up in voting and rules and "you can't change this rule!", and you never get past that point to actually just describing what people actually do, as succinctly as possible. *sigh* Kim Bruning 18:50, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Merge/redir
I've redirected this to WP:BOLD, which already has a section cautioning people when not to be bold. Please add corollaries of a policy to the policy's main page, it's more easily understood that way. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 11:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)