User:TransporterMan/Sandbox/2

{{essay}} IAR and policy: reality check

Reading the most basic principles and policies of Wikipedia can lead an editor to believe that he or she is authorized to blithely ignore Wikipedia policies and guidelines and that Alister Crowley's principle of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" is the guiding principle here. In reality nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that the fate of an editor who on a daily basis tries to edit just using common sense and without knowing and conforming to Wikipedia policy is likely to be much like the result of the conflict between the laws of nature and human pollution portrayed in Tom Lehrer's satirical song, "Pollution":

Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly...
But they don't last long if they try.

The elements of this discussion

• The No Firm Rules Pillar, the fifth of the Five Pillars of Wikipedia, Wikipedia's five most fundamental principles, states:

Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Rules in Wikipedia are not carved in stone, and their wording and interpretation are likely to change over time. The principles and spirit of Wikipedia's rules matter more than their literal wording, and sometimes improving Wikipedia requires an exception to a rule be made. Be bold (but not reckless) in updating articles and do not worry about making mistakes.

• The title of that section links to the Ignore all rules policy:

If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.

• The Be Bold guideline says:

Be bold ... is best summed up in three words: "Just do it!" ... Wikis like ours develop faster when everybody helps to fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure wording is accurate, etc. .... This does require some amount of politeness, but it works. You'll see. Of course, others here will edit what you write. Do not take it personally! ... Don't get upset if your bold edits get deleted. ... Instead of getting upset, read WP:Assume good faith and WP:Civility, and be bold again, but after a deletion of a bold edit, you might want to be bold in an edit on the talk pages so as not to start an edit war.

• The Free Content Pillar, the third of the Five Pillars, makes it clear that every edit by every editor is subject to being changed:

Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute. ... Since all your contributions are freely licensed to the public, no editor owns any article; all of your contributions can and will be mercilessly edited and redistributed.

• The Civility Pillar, the fourth of the Five Pillars, requires the use of consensus as part of the requirement to be civil:

Editors should interact with each other in a respectful and civil manner. Respect and be polite to your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree. Apply Wikipedia etiquette, and avoid personal attacks. Find consensus, avoid edit wars....

• The Consensus policy goes on to say that while you need not obtain consensus to make an edit that if your edit is changed or challenged that you must obtain consensus to retain it:

Consensus refers to the primary way in which editorial decisions are made on Wikipedia. ... All editors are expected to make a good-faith effort to reach a consensus that is aligned with Wikipedia's principles. ... Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus. Should that edit later be revised by another editor without dispute, it can be assumed that a new consensus has been reached. ... When there is a more serious dispute over an edit, the consensus process becomes more explicit. Editors open a section on the talk page and try to work out the dispute through discussion. Consensus discussion has a particular form: editors try to persuade others, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense. The goal of a consensus discussion is to reach an agreement about page content, one which may not satisfy anyone completely but which all editors involved recognize as a reasonable exposition of the topic.

• The Policy policy (not a typo) is too long to set out here, but the parts which are relevant to this discussion are:

Wikipedia policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia. There is no need to read any policy or guideline pages before starting editing. ... Although Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules, Wikipedia policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-known practices. ... Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense.

Policies have wide acceptance among editors and describe standards that all users should normally follow.

Adherence: Use common sense when interpreting and applying policies and guidelines; there will be occasional exceptions to these rules. Conversely, those who violate the spirit of a rule may be reprimanded even if no rule has technically been broken. Whether a policy or guideline is an accurate description of best practice is determined by the community through consensus.

Enforcement: [I]ndividual editors (including you) enforce and apply policies and guidelines. In cases where it is clear that a user is acting against policy ..., especially if they are doing so intentionally and persistently, that user may be temporarily or indefinitely blocked from editing by an administrator. In cases where the general dispute resolution procedure has been ineffective, the Arbitration Committee has the power to deal with highly disruptive or sensitive situations.

Content: Policy and guideline pages should: [B]e clear. Avoid esoteric or quasi-legal terms and dumbed-down language. Be plain, direct, unambiguous, and specific. Avoid platitudes and generalities. Do not be afraid to tell editors directly that they must or should do something. [B]e as concise as possible—but no more concise. Verbosity is not a reliable defense against misinterpretation. Omit needless words. Direct, concise writing may be more clear than rambling examples. Footnotes and links to other pages may be used for further clarification. [E]mphasize the spirit of the rule. Expect editors to use common sense. If the spirit of the rule is clear, say no more.

• As suggested above, but as more explicitly noted in this additional selection from the Consensus policy, policies constitute the standing consensus of the community:

Policies and guidelines reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community. As a result, Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policy than on other kinds of pages.

Analysis

The principles that "there is no need to read any policy or guideline pages before starting editing," that you should "just do it," that "Wikipedia does not have firm rules," and "if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it," do not mean that you have the right to make edits which contravene established Wikipedia policy and insist that they be retained. It means instead that you have the right to type them on your computer and press "save" without having to justify what you're doing before you do it and without substantial risk of getting in trouble for it. (Indeed, if you're a newcomer, there is even some additional protection from being harshly criticized for it.)

If your edits are challenged, deleted, or changed, however, you will then have to justify them by either obtaining consensus for them or by asserting that policy says that you are right and the challenger is wrong (and, even then, perhaps obtaining consensus that you're right about that assertion). If instead of doing that, you simply keep putting your edits back and either the nature of your edits or your repeated reentries violates policy, those principles also say that you'll not be penalized without being warned. But once you have been warned, you're not just free to "ignore all rules." At that point, you have to either obtain consensus to change the policy or obtain consensus to make an exception in just this one case (a "local exception" or an "IAR exception"). Thus, "Wikipedia does not have firm rules" does not mean that there are no rules or that the rules do not have to be obeyed, it means that the rules are nothing more than standing consensus and consensus, and thus policy, can change or a local exception can be made, but in either case that change must come through community consensus, not just because you think that it should be that way or want it to be that way or that it's just common sense.

That's also the reason that the Policy policy can say that "Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules" while at the same time saying that in "cases where it is clear that a user is acting against policy ... that user may be temporarily or indefinitely blocked from editing by an administrator." If you can be blocked for violating policy, then that sure seems like a hard and fast rule, doesn't it? The reason is that they're "not hard and fast" in the sense that they're not really rules and you're at liberty to violate them willy-nilly, but instead that they are "not hard and fast" because they can be changed and because local exceptions can be made. But both of those require consensus building and, until you get it, you're not free to insist that you have the right to violate policy, even though "ignore all rules" would seem to suggest otherwise. Thus, they're not hard and fast in the same sense that the laws against marijuana possession are not hard and fast. Those laws are not hard and fast either, because the legislature has the right to make possession of marijuana lawful and because the legislature might make a local exception for, say, medical use of marijuana, but until they make it legal or you get a prescription, you're breaking the law if you have it. (The difference is, of course, that with most Wikipedia policies, you won't be penalized unless you're warned first or have a history of breaking that policy in the past, whereas with marijuana you probably won't get a warning first in most jurisdictions.)

Now, if that makes it seem that the ideas that "Wikipedia doesn't have firm rules" and that you can "ignore all rules" are illusory, and cause the notions that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit," that "there is no need to read any policy or guideline pages before starting editing," and that you should boldly "just do it" to be fraught with peril and nothing more to lure the unwary into a troll-manned trap, well, you're entitled to that opinion. I, personally, would rather think of them as ideals that the Wikipedia community is encouraged to live up to through happy, satisfying, collegial editing by users who WikiLove each other, but as such I see them with a place at the end of a newcomer's introduction to Wikipedia, not at the beginning.

Moreover, when policy is being applied or discussed the notion that "the spirit of Wikipedia's rules matter more than their literal wording" can be easily misleading because when policies are drafted the "literal wording" of the rule should be presumed, according to the Policy policy, be a concise statement of the spirit of the rule. Appeals to what the rule is "intended to do" or "means" are generally only going to have any weight when an editor is attempting to interpret the rule in a way that is plainly different than what it "says."