PolicyPolicy

 * Policy policy
If Wikipedia achieves its potential there will be thousands of people writing and editing articles.  There is no system in place that would allow all of this activity to be monitored by some central authority to insure compliance with various editorial policies.  With this in mind, we should not try now to lay down policies as if the project is easily controlled.  We should assume that policies will emerge from use and experience.  We should not try to anticipate what the lessons of experience will be. - TimShell

I don't think this is necessarily so.  Even if policies can't be enforced, making some guidelines and some reason for the guidelines clear to any visitor will undoubtedly influence their writing style.  And, more importantly, people will probably model their contributions to a fair extent after what is already here.  So in this formative period we have a good opportunity to set the course, even though the ship may turn later. -- JoshuaGrosse

Good question.  But I'd agree with Joshua.  Though I think you're right in many cases, Tim--experience is the best guide.  Surely the case of NuPedia shows that the best policy is discovered through a combination of "a priori" policy-setting in the beginning, to be modified later in light of experience. -- LarrySanger