User:MarkGallagher/Wikipedia:We need a policy to deal with policy

As a general rule, policy in an environment like Wikipedia is a Good Thing. It means people get to know what to expect, those comparatively few users with power over other users are kept accountable, and a bunch of other fine things. Thanks to policy, users can comfortably contribute to the encyclopaedia knowing that they are protected by English law, as is their birthright.

Wikipedia has a few basic, overarching, dreadfully important policies. I like to call them "principles", because that distinguishes them from the policies that aren't important:

• we are an encyclopaedia
• we write from a neutral point-of-view
• we don't abuse Wikipedia to publish our own theories
• we treat each other with civility and respect and do our very best to assume good faith and not behave like dicks and disrupt the project
• we respect copyrights
• anything that is not on this list is negotiable

Somehow, however, this list is not sufficient. People start to look at our principles as a game of Nomic: "Wikipedia could be really cool, if only it weren't an encyclopaedia."; "This article is about X, so of course it's going to be written from X's point-of-view. Anything else is crazy!"; "Why should I need good sources? You're just trying to censor THE TRUTH!"; "I didn't know edit warring was wrong."; "We have consensus on the talk page to go with the first image, and not the free version"; "We should get rid of Ignore All Rules, it just encourages anarchy". These statements look awfully familiar, don't they? They're all real.

Now, we clearly can't rely on our basic principles for day-to-day dealings. There's too much potential for abuse: sure, NPOV, but how NPOV? What does NOR mean, anyway? Why should admins be allowed to decide who is and isn't being disruptive? So we have to define, and define, and define, over and over again, in a never-ending bid to create the Grand Unified Policy of Everything. If we don't have an exact definition, people won't know what to expect ... and that's tyranny! But there are no perfect definitions, and there are always gaps in policy. Admins who fall back on basic common sense to deal with stuff that falls into such a gap are rounded on by policy wonks and wikilawyers: "can you point to the policy that forbids [dickish behaviour]? Then why should I not be allowed to do it? The First Amendment says I can!"

Whenever we run into an unexpected situation, the first cry heard is always "we need a policy to deal with this!" As the amount of policy increases, the feeling that we need to strictly adhere to policy also increases ... until we cannot do anything unless there's a policy to back it up. Which, in turn, makes the gaps in policy gape all the more broadly ... which leads to yet more cries: "we need a policy to deal with this!" Seal that gap! What does one put into a policy-shaped hole except policy? Every gap in policy proves that we need more rules ...

If "don't be a dick!" is insufficiently enlightening as to what is and is not acceptable in a collaborative environment, then there's probably no hope for you in mountains of policy guiding social interaction, either. And our reaction to anyone who triumphantly proclaims the discovery of a loophole in our policy should not be to say "oh, no! He's right! We can't touch him!", but rather to reply with something like "well done! You're still banned, though."

It seems we can't trust ourselves to do the right thing, to use common sense, to work within broad guidelines. Why on Earth not? Are we afraid of making mistakes? Doing the Wrong Thing, with policy support, can never be considered a mistake: we were just following the community's orders, Jimbo! And if we need a Byzantine collection of poorly-understood, constantly-shifting commands and definitions to cite as authority for any argument, then so be it. At least we can't be blamed for anything!

All Wikipedians, in particular admins, should be attempting to do the Right Thing. We should be willing accept the plaudits if we get it right, and apologise if we don't. So long as we're level-headed and honest with ourselves, we can't go wrong! Mistakes can be forgiven, and their effects will not last long; the same cannot be as easily said about process fetishism. Remember when people discussed what was best for the project, rather than what was most likely to fit in with policy?

See also

• Wikipedia:Be reasonable
• Wikipedia:Frequently misused phrases
• m:Instruction creep