User:SoWhy/Not everyhing is due to philosophy

With any large project, such as this Wikipedia, there comes a huge amount of people working on it. Since everyone doing so is a volunteer, there is no shortage of different philosophies on how to handle certain problems and situations and there is a good reason to have a plurality of philosophies since we are a constantly changing community. The most prominent and often (mis)applied philosophies are probably inclusionism and deletionism, i.e. philosophies about the amount and detail of encyclopedic content, although many many more about almost every aspect of the project exist. Unfortunately, not everyone knows where and when to apply philosophy in the daily proceedings.

When to argue based on philosophy...

Abstract policy discussions

Wikiphilosophies are broadly written attempts to summarize a certain viewpoint into a platform that can appeal to many others without having to deal with details that may separate those who otherwise share a certain viewpoint. As such, they are designed to be applied on an abstract layer of discussion, i.e. on discussions about abstract subjects. As such, one can argue based on philosophies when it comes to community discussion about the very basic rules, for example a brand new guideline without prior influences or a new policy that is not the result of existing rules. For example, when it comes to discussing whether notability or verifiability should be more important, an inclusionist might argue in favor of verifiability and a deletionist in favor of notability and no one is "wrong". The point of abstract debates is to find community consensus after all.

When policies or guidelines cannot fully resolve a question

Imagine a deletion discussion on a marginally notable subject. We have notability guidelines that tell us how to handle such subjects. They are the result of the aforementioned discussions. But sometimes users will apply the same guideline to the same subject but end up with different results. In those cases, if no other policies or guidelines can resolve this conflict, the guideline fails. Now the question arises, how to argue in this discussion? A deletionist might favor a delete outcome, based on the fact that we should err on the side of caution and remove information about subjects that are not clearly notable. An inclusionist might instead favor a keep outcome, based on the thinking that it's better for the project to preserve the information if it's not clearly to be removed. In such a discussion, one can validly argue based on philosophy and the consensus may be achieved after all despite a question that cannot fully be resolved by policies.

...and when not to argue based on philosophy

Subject-related discussions

The reason we have rules is that a large project cannot resolve all questions with a new discussion on abstract matters - in most cases the questions are already solved and then codified as policies and guidelines in order to solve further questions of the same kind. As such, philosophy has no place in a discussion if the discussion about a policy or guideline has already taken place. Instead, in this new discussion about a certain subject, one should only argue based on those policies and guidelines that exist.
For example: In a deletion discussion, you favor keeping a subject X. The relevant notability guideline does not allow keeping it.

Wrong way to deal with it: Arguing to keep it nevertheless because the guideline conflicts with your inclusionist-philosophy

Right way to deal with it: Admitting that the guideline conflicts with your personal view but that it does not allow it - and possibly trying to change the guideline in question.

Using it as a label

• Never ever label anyone as the follower of a philosophy they do not follow just because they disagree with you. Someone who argues to delete an article is not always a deletionist, someone who argues to keep an article is not always an inclusionist. Just because they take a certain stance on a specific subject, it does not mean that they follow a certain philosophy. And even if they do, they usually argue based on policies and guidelines, not based on philosophy.
• Never label any project or group of editors as being followers of a certain philosophy. The membership of certain users in the group does not mean that everyone in this group is follower of the same philosophy as they are. Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion is not a group of deletionists nor is Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron a group of inclusionists.
• Not every good faith attempt to improve the project in certain way means it's philosophy-based. A project to study incorrect speedy deletion taggings is not a inclusionist-project and a project to remove unsourced biographies of living people is not deletionist per definition. In most cases, people do not even consider philosophies when working on such a project and neither should you.

Requests for adminship/bureaucratship/etc.

We have many users and lucky for the project, a certain number of dedicated users request membership in a certain group of users, for example administrators, in order to help the project further by doing jobs that normal users cannot do. This is great and as such they should be encouraged to do so. Unfortunately, not every long-time user is a good choice for such additional userrights. In order to determine this, a candidate's contributions will be checked by the community making the decision and they do so in order to see whether the candidate is able to carry out the tasks attached to the role. But it's important to remember that the candidate running will not share your viewpoints in all details or may even follow a vastly different philosophy than you do. If this lead them to make mistakes with the policies and guidelines, then you can oppose them but you should do so based on the mistakes, not on their conflicting philosophy. But if they demonstrated that they can follow the "rules", don't oppose them just because they don't share your viewpoint.