Wikipedia talk:Relevance

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[edit] The terse proposal

I (Len Raymond (talk)) have:

This proposal follows in the spirit of Ignore all rules -- takes a minimalist approach. Personally, I am more wedded to my own essay, Wikipedia:Relevance emerges as the proper thing for a Relevance guideline, but there is something very elegant and inspiring about a one statement guideline. —Len Raymond (talk) 21:21, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with this page, minus a "guideline" or even "proposed" header. This isn't a guideline; it's basically just a disambiguation page.--Father Goose (talk) 22:33, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I do not find that it is "basically just a disambiguation page", even though most of the lines have to do with disambiguation. The policy portion just happens to be short, not insignificant, and on a topic like "Relevance" one should expect a large body of disambiguation information. The policy portion has meat! It would establish two, significant actionable items.
  1. a fact must be useful to the readers
  2. a fact must be in the right article
These are no small things. What is not said is also significant, i.e.: details about implementing these two actionable items are intentionally left up to the editors and are expected to remain so. (unofficial details via essays allowed of course.) —Len Raymond (talk) 01:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
No, this page currently does not establish neither (1) or (2)! It contains the definition of a term "relevance" and disambiguation. No meat. No suggestions, no rules, no guidelines. So, this is currently not a proposal of a policy nor guideline nor process - I'm changing misleading {{proposed}} tag until the issue is fixed. --Kubanczyk (talk) 12:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for a policy guideline

Kubanczyk, I like your edits (see above) except the change to "essay". I am reverting to "Proposal" status -- a proposal for a policy guideline. The "no meat" as an argument is not supported by the fact of WP:IAR. Nor can I find anything in guidelines that suggests support for your position. I am guided by Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Sources of Wikipedia policy, in particular:

Documenting actual good practices and seeking consensus that the documentation truly reflects them.

...continuing: Aren't (1) & (2) real rules in actual practice? And, is not their meaning obvious? Why should anything more be needed? As for "establishing" [the validity for] the rule; I agree such has not been done. I think you would agree that "establishing" needs to be done here, on the talk page. In that spirit:

  1. a fact must be useful to the readers - A focused Google search finds around 1,000 hits of editors arguing "not useful". If you browse through the hits you find sound reasons for 'not being useful' -- reasons as varied and unique as one could imagine and therefore impossible to map out. The rule "must be useful" stands on its own.
  2. a fact must be in the right article - the above arguments similarly apply.

Simply, I find that making one's argument compelling is what wins the day when arguing 'Relevance' -- the "meat" if you will. Unfortunately, "compelling" belongs in a style guideline, not here -- Len Raymond (talk) 01:11, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Incidently, this project has an incredibly long and complex history, starting about a year ago. I have been an intense part of that history (as WikiLen), too-intense to be objective. Perhaps one of the editors that monitor this page -- ideally one less involved -- could chime in here and summarize it for Kubanczyk, including it's status as an 'emerging' consensus. For the record, I see consensus as virtually established. This version has been submitted to the village pump, other versions argued to death (including mine, death here), and now a version with stability. -- Len Raymond (talk) 01:11, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal was rejected

Please read through the talk archives and arbitration. No consensus could be reached and it was rejected. The idea of a rejected proposal is that after a reasonable amount of time if consensus can't be reached we acknowledge the failure and move on, so we don't have perpetual circular discussions. See WP:Policy for the policy specifics. Thanks! --Kevin Murray (talk) 02:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

After some reflection, maybe there is a better solution. I retagged this as an essay for now. A lot of work went into this process not long ago and I am very concerned about reopening the same can of worms. But the proposal seems to be in good faith and a slightly different tact than the last, although the idea of a subjective signpost was also rejected. If it is proposed to be a signpost, then it is not really a proposal for a policy or guideline. Let's talk a bit before reopening this as a proposal and leave it tagged as an essay for now. --Kevin Murray (talk) 02:59, 15 June 2008 (UTC)