November 27

Are government policies the same thing as organisation policies (I.e. Policies which defines the way an organisation functions - I suppose a bit like Wikipedia policies)? 2A02:C7D:B946:A000:F9F8:FC21:38F4:D028 (talk) 00:50, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See

Government policy. Government policy generally refers to decisions on how to influence conditions or entities outside of government, rather than how the government itself functions. Loraof (talk) 01:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply

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But they're still basically the same thing right? Policy, organisational policy, public policy, Wikipedia policy. 2A02:C7D:B946:A000:F9F8:FC21:38F4:D028 (talk) 01:38, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In the same way that cows are the "same thing" as animals. Some policies are government policies, some policies are not government policies. Wikipedia policies are not the same as government policies. United States government policies are not the same as Saudi Arabian government policies, and I'm pretty sure that both of those are rather distinct from North Korean government policies. None of them are like the policies for the Church of Scientology, Alcoholics Anonymous, or Toys for Tots, which are organizations that have organizational policies, but not governments (and so do not have governmental policies, even if they may be affected by them to varying degrees). Ian.thomson (talk) 01:47, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(EC. Lord, I hate ECs.) Well, they're all policies of one sort or another. Loraof's answer seems to point to the nub of the difference between the two classes of policy. It's difficult to understand what you're wanting by way of an answer to the question. If you want a trite policy=policy, then we're done. If you want to start digging in a little more, there's lots that might be said. I suspect a central problem is that this is an ill-posed quesiton :( --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:49, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I do think there is a real dilemma here, in that while it has been government policy to regard policy as the responsibility of Ministers, and administration as the responsibility of officials, questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the administration of policy and the policy of administration, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts or overlaps with responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy (Sir Antony Jay, Yes Minister). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:12, 27 November 2016 (UTC) [reply]

A good comparison is that a foreign office (like the US State Department) might have a "sex discrimination policy", a "whistleblower policy", and a "policy towards Russia". All of those are government policy (in that the government sets them), but the first two are policies for how the office does its job, whereas the "policy towards Russia" is a political agenda based on what the government wants to do. Blythwood (talk) 14:18, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article Whistler's Mother, referring to the painting officially titled Arrangement in Gray and Black No.1, says that "The sensibilities of a Victorian era viewing audience would not accept what was apparently a portrait being exhibited as an 'arrangement'; thus the explanatory title Portrait of the Artist's Mother was appended."

What did Victorian viewing audiences expect an "arrangement" to be? Arrangement (disambiguation) doesn't appear to link to any articles which cover "arrangements" as paintings. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:21, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whistler frequently used musical terms to describe his pictures - see, for example,

Arrangement (music). This was to emphasise their status as "Art for art's sake", and to escape the constraints of the traditional Academic genres of painting. Tevildo (talk) 10:07, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply

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