QUOTE(Lar @ Wed 11th March 2009, 3:44pm)
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For the most part, policy at Wikipedia is descriptive. If enough people civilly disobey current perceived policy, et voila, the project has a new policy. Many people have (rightly) pointed out that this makes policy making a game, a form of mob rule, whatever flash mob can form, can get what it wants, at least for a while (local consensus). Often that local consensus sticks, though. And as long as it's within the very broad outlines of Foundation policy, which IS prescriptive, that's all well and good as far as the rules of the game go.
So it's not really demanding things. Except from ourselves.
Well, here's what happens if we go all Nike on this: it gets brought up at ANI, the prevailing view there is that the protections were taking place outside of consensus, somebody decides to unprotect on the basis of ANI discussion, and we're no further ahead than we were when we started. We could wheel war over it, but then there's an arbitration case, I can't see Arb Comm prescribing smie-protection of BLPs absent a consensus to do so.