QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 16th May 2008, 3:15pm)
QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Fri 16th May 2008, 9:41am)
While you could analyse Guy as to what motivates him to come up with his decisions, I doubt very much whether he consciously thinks things through — he sees things and he "knows".
How typical would you say that characteristic is of Wikipedians in general?
Do you consider that characteristic to fall short of
best practices?
I think that describes the thought processes of a vast majority of the human race. The stupid thing about Wikipedia is not that there are a few irrational beings screwing it up, it is the failure to recognise that just about every Wikipedian is a human being with a full set of human foibles, and the kidology that somehow Wikipedianism transcends the human spirit drags it down into the stupid illogicalities of everyday Wikipedian behaviour.
It is like a recent exchange I had on Wikipedia when a young sprog had the temerity to suggest that my criticisms of Wikipedia must be false because policy said that the things I claimed to be the case were against policy, therefore could not be true.
As another example, everyone who evaluates the ID Crowd rationally should come to the conclusion that they are an abusive crowd. Yet is seems, through some perverse Wikipedian logic that Wikipedians are able to rationalise that small group's abusive activities as acceptable.
Best practices need to recognise that Wikipedians are imperfect human beings and policies and processes need to recognise that it is run by a bunch of irrational amateurs, rather than the pretence of high minded perfection. I guess that means no to your second point.