Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules/Draft1

I think enumerating in detail the finer points of this policy goes against its spirit. Slac speak up! 04:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. The beauty in this policy is its one-sentence description. SchuminWeb (Talk) 10:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

agreed. -- Chris is me _(u/c/t) 18:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Likewise. This new draft is intolerably vague and may give the impression that only the given interpretations are valid. Lots of the content is common sense anyway, and due to the good "see also" links on WP:IAR, this larger version seems redundant. --Kizor 21:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Please explain what this "spirit" is, and why

Whenever someone tries to add anything here, people invoke that the spirit of the policy prevents that. I want to know what this spirit is, and I want to know why it should be blindly followed. -Amark moo! 00:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, the point isn't that "we want people to disregard rules in certain carefully enumerated circumstances under strict monitoring". The point is "at a point which can't accurately be predicted by rules, it's going to be advantageous to the project to pretend that they don't exist". What the rule is trying to get away from is "blind following" - it's emphasising that we shouldn't take detailed discussions on operations too seriously. Instead, we should just go ahead and use common sense. The essence of WP:IAR is that rules can't, and shouldn't, guide us to building the perfect encyclopedia. People who try to explain how they can't are sort of missing the point. WP:IAR doesn't say "don't focus on rules too much, except when . . .", it says "don't focus on rules too much". What too much is can't be defined by anyone as a rule, not without defeating the whole sentiment anyway. "Too much" is a deliberately vague and open definition - anything else means that we don't have an effective "ignore all rules" policy at all, just a set of rules. Slac speak up! 01:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, it obviously defeats the point to say "here is when you may ignore the rules", because then you're not really ignorng them. And this does fall short there. But just pointing out that you can't ignore the rules whenever you feel it would improve the encyclopedia is not doing that, it's just preventing people from citing IAR to ignore consensus. (And if IAR is supposed to be applied against consensus, that scares me). So why is that not allowed, or anything more than a single sentence? -Amark moo! 01:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

But IAR doesn't say "disregard rules whenever you feel like it". It says "don't let the rules stop you from improving Wikipedia". Ignoring consensus does not generally improve Wikipedia (although it might conceivably, and Jimbo doesn't consider himself bound by consensus over the best interests of the project). We have a whole suite of pages that tell you how to behave in the project's best interests. That's what they're for. That's not what this policy is for.

Anything more than a single sentence is the classic example of policy creep, because we start saying "X is an improvement to Wikipedia, but Y is not". And then we're back into enumerating rules and we've just lost the practical effect of this policy. Slac speak up! 01:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

We should be explicitly stating that you can't ignore consensus, at least. -Amark moo! 01:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Then lobby support for a new policy that says "Ignore all rules, except when it comes to consensus". This would be a different policy to the one we have now. Slac speak up! 01:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it's me, but "Ignore all rules, except when it comes to consensus" seems like institutionalized mob rule. I don't think that would be a positive change. Caknuck 21:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Um... lobby support? Why would I need to? People are regularly blocked for ignoring consensus in attempts to improve the encyclopedia. This is really just a matter of codifying what happens. -Amarkov moo! 00:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The policy as it stands admits that consensus can be detrimental to the project. That's why Jimbo doesn't "abdicate" his powers totally. People who are blocked for ignoring consensus may think they are improving the encyclopedia, but it's pretty obvious to most people that they're not - hence the consensus. But consensus isn't perfect - as Caknuck states, cliques, mob rules and oligarchies are possible - that's why any policy should be applied with generous helpings of common sense. See Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, except for the one about consensus, which is essentially what you're arguing. WP:IAR views consensus as value-neutral, like all other rules. Slac speak up! 05:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

But that doesn't work. If you can ignore consensus, then it is entirely arbitrary to decide when you should enforce consensus against anti-consensus. You could try to get a consensus decision about consensus... but wait, people will ignore the consensus if they don't like it. And Jimbo has pretty much abdicated his powers totally; unless acting under WP:OFFICE as a representative of the Wikimedia Foundation, he's stated that his opinions should be given no more weight than any other editor's. The only way to possibly be able to ignore consensus is to have these oligarchies that you don't like, or there's nobody to decide when to ignore it. In some ideal universe, that would not be true, but in reality, falliable humans thrown together with the ability to ignore everyone else if they think they should does not work. -Amarkov moo! 05:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)