Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules/Archive 5

Logical inconsistency

Other policies such as WP:No original research specifically state that they are not superceded by other policies.

This leaves you with a case where two policies each say the other is wrong. One says that you can ignore all rules if they prevent improving Wikipedia; the other one says that it must always be obeyed and that the "ignore all rules" policy cannot change that.

This is a contradiction. Ken Arromdee 18:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

You are correct; this is a logical inconsistency. But, to put it in logical terms, consider the premise that certain other polices may not be superceded by any other policy to be, in effect, false. WP:OR is not superceded by other policies except this one. So, therefore there is not a contradiction. I wouldn't suggest noting this on any other policy page, though. It would just clutter it up, and maybe even suggest breaking the rules. AdamBiswanger1_{R.I.P. Steve Irwin} 20:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

And you are also supposing that adding original research to Wikipedia qualifies as "improving Wikipedia". —Centrx→talk • 20:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I fail to see how anyone could use WP:IAR in exuse to breaking WP:OR.--KojiDude ^{(viva la BAM!)} 20:37, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest Wikipedia_talk:No original research#Pool Forge Covered Bridge and OR as a place where WP:IAR is a reasonable excuse for breaking WP:OR. Ken Arromdee 05:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Two things: First of all, for other editors looking for the comment, it is now located at Wikipedia talk:No original research/archive13. Secondly, I agree that the above makes a decent case of IAR coming into play, after reading the whole bloody thing. I also agree that with WP:V coming into play there, it gets troublesome, what with someone suggesting getting their bit published in the local newspaper. That also seems a good case of throwing not only WP:OR out the window, but also WP:V as well under IAR. I have my own issues with WP:V, but, as Bruce Williams would say, "That's another program." SchuminWeb (Talk) 09:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

No original research is superseded by several rules. If the no original research page claims different, then that should be corrected (again!). Part of the reason we have ignore all rules is because this kind of sillyness happens, (one hopes by accident.) It allows you to work on the encyclopedia without worrying too much. Kim Bruning 20:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok fixed. And the fix is non-negotiable :-P Kim Bruning 21:11, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The reason for WP:IAR is not so that old hands can use it as a justification for breaking the other rules. It exists so that newcomers can add content without feeling that they have to learn all the rules first. We are all responsible for our edits whether we ignore the rules or not and WP:POINT makes it clear that we should be called out for doing outstandingly bad work even if we are following policy to the letter while doing it. WP:IAR basically makes the accompanying point that we should not be called out for doing outstandingly good work even though we do not follow policy to the letter while doing it. That is the spirit in which WP:IAR should be read. -- Derek Ross | Talk 18:55, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, come on now. WP:OR says it can't be superseded by other rules; this rule says it can supersede any other rule, including WP:OR. That's a contradiction. You're basically saying that it's not a contradiction because this rule doesn't actually say what it says.

WP:IAR certainly is there so that old hands can use it to break rules when needed. For one thing, consider the common sentiment that you should be breaking the rules knowingly--your "newcomers interpretation" would be meaningless here. Ken Arromdee 00:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem may be in thinking of them as rock-ribbed rules at all, rather than as guiding lines. Even in the policy pages on the most fundamental principles, someone "improving Wikipedia" is certainly following the principles assiduously, they may just not be following the text on the policy page that no one noticed was added a month ago. —Centrx→talk • 00:54, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Your comments are close to the mark. Policy did indeed start out as loose guidelines rather than rigid laws. While its rules have become more rigid with the growth in WP and the introduction of the ArbComm, the idea is still to follow the spirit of the rules, rather than the letter. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

How do you follow the spirit, not the letter, of a rule which says "follow the letter, not the spirit"? Ken Arromdee 15:27, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Simple. Apply WP:IAR. That's just common sense, <grin>. -- Derek Ross | Talk 20:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm basically saying "who cares whether it's a contradiction or not". On Wikipedia people are more important than rules. If we end up being judged it will be for whether we have behaved sensibly or not, and not for whether we have slavishly followed the rules. That's why it doesn't matter whether WP:OR and WP:IAR contradict each other. Old hands may well use WP:IAR as "justification" for their behaviour but the fact is that like the rest of us they are (or at any rate should be) judged on their motivation and their behaviour, not on their rule-following ability. If it is sensible in one situation to follow WP:OR, then follow it. If it is sensible in another to follow WP:IAR, follow it. Either way you will be held responsible for using commonsense, not for following policy. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Judging people on their motivation and behavior is one of the things that WP:OR says you may not do. WP:OR explicitly says that it may not be overrruled by consensus of editors, and it will be a consensus of editors that judges your motivation and behavior. Nothing overrides WP:OR--not agreement that it is being applied in a resoundingly stupid way, not "motivation and behavior", not common sense--nothing. If you think that editors should be judged on their motivation and behavior, then fix the rule, because the rule says that they shouldn't.

Or can editors' consensus overrule the part which says not to use editors' consensus? Ken Arromdee 15:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this is invoking apples when looking at oranges. IAR is about behavior. NOR is about content. The conduct of any editor is subject to the censure of the community. As has been discussed extensively, IAR is not a "get out of jail free" card nor a license to do whatever one wishes. If an editor invokes IAR to justify violation of NOR, the community consensus will (or at least should) find such conduct to be unacceptable. NOR is about content. And the statement in NOR about not being superceded by other policies or guidelines specifically (at least presently) indicates that it is the principles upon which NOR is based that are non-negotiable. The specific details of what is or is not OR is not as clear-cut as some try to make it out to be. There are many gray areas, which sometimes result in seemingly inconsistent outcomes. older ≠ wiser 15:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

In that case, there's still a contradiction, just a different one. Now the OR article is correct and the IAR article is wrong. It should say "If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore them--except for the rule saying that the principles behind WP:OR must be followed."

You can't get around the fact that there's a contradiction. If WP:OR really does mean there's something which is non-negotiable, fine--but then WP:IAR has to be changed to say that not everything is negotiable.

And even then, you've assumed that following the principles means avoiding OR. While that's usually true, I'm not convinced that that's true 100% of the time. Ken Arromdee 04:19, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

1) Violating the fundamental principles of an encyclopedia is not improving Wikipedia. 2) Ignore all rules does not mean the same thing as Break all rules. No rules conflict with IAR. —Centrx→talk • 04:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

The only way to ignore a rule is to either

1) do something that by coincidence fits with the rule anyway, or

2) break it.

Assuming that by ignoring rules you don't mean 1), it follows that ignoring rules mean breaking rules. They're basically the same thing. Ken Arromdee 06:21, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

No, most of the time if you are doing the right thing it coincides with what's written down. That's half the point with IAR. —Centrx→talk • 21:12, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

If logical inconsistency between the rules worries you, please ignore it and get on with improving the encyclopedia. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

You're asking me to ignore a contradiction that's *about what we're allowed to ignore*. That isn't logically possible. Ken Arromdee 20:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Now that's just thinking TOO much :D --PopUpPirate 21:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

You certainly can ignore inconsistencies in rules. Worrying about them is definitely a bad idea, so Ignore all rules applies. --Tony Sidaway 19:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I thought this section was going to discuss: "Ignoring all rules means to ignore ignoring all rules, and then ignore ignoring ignoring all rules and...." ad infinitum. —Malber (talk • contribs) 17:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• If "Ignoring all rules" prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. Yes, it is paradoxical; the point is that the encyclopedia comes first, the rules second (or possibly after that, depending). Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. >Radiant< 14:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It's only "paradoxical" because nobody will fix it. Look, I'm not talking about the cutesy paradox that other people have suggested (you should ignore the rule which says to ignore all rules, which leads to a contradiction because if you ignore all rules you don't, etc.). I'm pointing out a contradiction in the ordinary sense: OR claims to be the final word, IAR says it's not. Each rule implies that the other one is wrong.

We have no business producing contradictory rules and making people have to figure out that IAR is the one which really takes precedence. Especially since quite a few people look at them and conclude that IAR *doesn't* take precedence. It really is impossible to figure out from the text of the rules whether OR can ever be ignored.

If our rules don't make sense together, they should be fixed so that they do. Refusing to fix broken rules on the grounds that IAR lets you get around them is questionable at best; and it's even more questionable when one of the broken rules *is* IAR. Ken Arromdee 17:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, each rule implies the other is wrong. And what happens is, when we are in a real situation, we'll decide which one applies. As a community. But we don't need to decide that now, because as far as I can see, nobody has brought an instance where it matters here. Hiding Talk 18:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, just above is the link to the covered bridge example, where someone had to violate NOR and Verifiability and had to invoke IAR in doing so. Or did you want examples where someone actually said "too bad I'm not allowed to ignore this rule"? I think it's unreasonable to demand the latter sort of example, because someone who reads the rules that way probably isn't going to write anything. Ken Arromdee 01:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I see what Ken is getting at. Put it this way: it used to be "Ignore all rules" was the first "rule to consider". Now there is no ordered list, and furthermore something claims to take precedence over everything. You know some people are going to hear "ignore all rules except NOR, which you must take as written, even if common sense and 'consensus' tell you otherwise". However, WP:NOR looks like it is going to be reworked into WP:ATT, which doesn't have the offending sentence. 66.230.200.227 18:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Who says we can't produce contradictory rules? --Tony Sidaway 19:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any logical contradiction. If you're ignoring WP:NOR anyway, you can always ignore WP:NOR's instruction that you not ignore it. See also WP:COPYVIO ("Wikipedia has no tolerance for copyright violations in our encyclopedia") (emphasis added). The only thing the strong language in WP:NOR and WP:COPYVIO accomplishes is to make it more difficult for editors to achieve consensus to ignore those rules, which may be appropriate in those cases. TheronJ 19:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but why, pretending you aren't an experienced wikipedian for a second, would you decide that you could get away with ignoring WP:NOR at all? "No tolerance" is very far from "this supercedes everything including other policies and consensus". Put another way: what do you think would happen if I tried to explicitly write "this supercedes IAR" into NOR or "this defers to NOR" into IAR? But, again pretending you're not an experienced wikipedian, isn't that what's already written? 66.230.200.227 19:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I was addressing the argument that there's a logical contradiction. As to whether the semantic conflict makes it more difficult to use WP:IAR, sure. However, (1) I want it to be difficult, but not impossible, to use IAR to ignore important policies such as NOR or COPYVIO, and (2) the last think I want to do is encourage inexperienced users to use IAR. (Suggesting that new users should start ignoring core policies because they think it would be for the good of the encyclopedia smacks of WP:BEANS, and will probably get plenty of them banned). TheronJ 21:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The perfect wiki would have no rules, of course. So the closer we are to that, the better, imo --PopUpPirate 23:07, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with your (2), TheornJ. Of course new users should use be bold and ignore all rules. That's usually the least controversial way to use of it. 192.75.48.150 15:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

In response to Theronj, it isn't so much that it would be difficult to gain consensus to ignore the copyright policy, it's that if by some act of collective insanity you managed to get such consensus, this would of course be ignored. We do not and cannot put Wikipedia policy (even consensus, which I think is an excellent and in general one of the more useful Wikipedia policies) before our legal obligations. --Tony Sidaway 20:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Would original research count as improving an article? If not, there's no contradiction in saying that the NOR has precedence over IAR. Yahadreas 10:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Improved Audio -- Male, hi-fi

Chek it out. Heavily produced, including things that maybe shouldn't be written. I left the date in the filename, because Wikipedia raised a warning that left me thinking it might not be equipped to do versions of a file. I considered taking out the orijinal. I did not consider that maybe the audio should not lead the article. If I were writing it in HTML, it would be an <embed>. Brewhaha@edmc.net 20:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I can't listen to it now as I'm at work and don't get much of a chance to check in with Wikipedia at home these days. From your description, I'd have to respond that the spoken Wikipedia articles should not be "heavily produced" and should absolutely not contain anything that isn't explicitly written (excepting front matter such as the article title etc.). They also should have the Wikipedia URL included as a matter of policy. If you propose to change things like this, I'd suggest taking it up on the recording guidelines discussion page. -- Laura S | talk to me 21:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as production goes, I think that depends on the importance of the article. People come here for encourajement, so it should be convincing. Rhetoric is the art of being understood and remembered. There's also a prayer that I'm taking a break from working on. If I can fix the end of it, then I might even be able to do three (or four) parts.

The part about drunkenness is hilarious, but the echo of the thing is painful to hear. So yeah, please never have me sit through that again. -- Drostie 18:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

That isn't an echo (until the end). It's simulated stereo (phase offset), although if you downmix it to mono, then it will be like an echo (Nero's wavedit calls their realistic one reverb). Omitting the title was a significant error. THAT should perhaps be in harmonic stereo with transposed channels between the beginning and the end. BTW, I probably would've considered this sooner if you addressed me by e-mail. I can actually correspond in voice-e-mail with a dialup account. Work like horny sled dog for that privilege, too. Brewhaha@edmc.net 13:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Process improvement

I nominate Process_improvement as the piped link for the word "improving" in the project guideline so as to give thoughtful readers and editors insight into some of the deep and subtle meanings of how "improving" something can be done in a logical and orderly manner so as to not let the overriding objective of "improving" Wikipedia be used as an excuse for the bane of lawlessness. Samuel Erau 15:38, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

No, the improving is improving the encyclopedia, not necessarily improving processes. —Centrx→talk • 18:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

You're right Centrx. The link would not directly represent how the word "improving" was used in the context of the sentence of policy. I had already felt that to be the main weakness of my suggestion. And in that weakness it probably does not fit proper guidelines for the usage of double bracket links. So never mind linking "improving" to Process_improvement.

When an editor finds themselves held back from improving and maintaining Wikipedia because of existing rules, what may be better than chaos is something similar to what in industry is called process improvement. There are many models that can be emulated for the refinement of rules for the purpose of the eventual objective of improvement. I imagine that perhaps it was a rejection of some of those models that led to the IAR policy. So now I suggest that we consider a model that is similar to the industry model of process improvement. I do not endorse it as the best choice. - Samuel Erau 10:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

People who have issues with improvements can state them below and I will happily answer them

If you have any helpful suggestion on what to change, please post them here. 128.226.160.124 18:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, anonymous IP user, here's an issue with your self-declared improvements - What exactly does the "summary of Jimbo's essay" (not actually an essay but a brief 4 paragraph musing which the "summary" repeats like 75% of... but whatever) add to this policy page. Even if I imagine I were an WP:IAR supporter, I don't see what it adds, as the full text this 75% summary is already linked from this page (plus Jimbo's opinions are already highlighted). What the "summary" does add is the POV editorial comment and intepretation. The Jimbo "essay" does not mention IAR at all, and it can be straightforwardly intepreted as an argument for rules to protect against mob vs mob opinion/the weight of numbers (and what's with the bolding of "10 years" that doesn't appear in the original). The "essay" comes from a page about the IAR debate and does not obviously show Jimbo's support for IAR. You could give it the title "Rules trump mob rule on Wikipedia" and it would make more sense Bwithh 19:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah well, the whole thing's been reverted by another editor. Moving along... Bwithh 19:13, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I was bemused by the idea in the IP's edit that those who would end controversy by casting an article in a truly neutral point of view might "gain the upper hand" over tendentious partisans being introduced as, "the dangers of leverage". I'm pretty certain Jimbo was identifying a possible good ideal there, rather than warning of a danger. His statement could be paraphrased "Wikipedia is different from silly usenet groups where arguments never end, because here we can step outside the argument, and satisfy all parties." That's a "danger of leverage"? Huh? -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Remove or amend this policy

This policy is "abuse waiting to happen". For example, authors will ignore the three-revert rule and will start edit wars because they think that it will be "the best for Wikipedia". --Ineffable3000 05:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I inserted language in the Wikipedia:Ignore all rules/Brainstorming page at one point that attempted to discourage this, saying that NPOV and consensus would ultimately rule the day, but that language has since been removed. So we have kind of touched on it, even if it didn't last for long. SchuminWeb (Talk) 07:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's been a while since you made attempt at editing brain storming. Why not take another swing at it? -- Isogolem 19:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Not really. If they're not improving the encyclopedia—and edit warring does not improve the encyclopedia—they are going to be blocked for edit warring no matter how much they exasperatingly refer to their peculiar interpretation of this policy. —Centrx→talk • 19:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

People that obviously need to be blocked will never be able to cite this policy as a defense be and listened to. --Lord Deskana (talk) 19:33, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

No. If I'm edit-warring and my version is superior then I'm improving the encyclopedia, the person reverting to the inferior version is not. You may say that by continuing the edit war I'm negatively impacting the community or environment of the encyclopedia but that's not the same thing. Haukur 23:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Which I'd have to agree with. Ignore all rules, really does mean ignore all rules. That also means blocks and block evasion. If someone is putting an inferior version of an article in place, following this often cited policy, you'd be well within your rights to go so far as to hack the servers to remove all opposition to make sure the proper version was in place. I don't think anyone who supports this policy really has any idea what it actually means. If you have to ignore all rules in order to improve the encyclopedia there is a bigger issue that needs to be addressed.--Crossmr 23:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If the servers are being hacked, that's a problem far beyond anything policy can address. Aside from that, you are arguing from a rule-centric point of view; but Wikipedia is not and never has been primarily rule-driven. It is consensus-driven. If the consensus of editors regards a particular action as vandalism or antisocial behavior, it doesn't really matter whether the rules support that action or not. The consensus will support reversion, and if that doesn't work the consensus will support blocking. And once again, if the consensus of editors is consistently supporting antisocial behavior, that's a problem far beyond anything that a policy can address. -- Visviva 02:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

consensus is a rule around here. There is a quote "If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie". Consensus doesn't necessarily mean its better for the encyclopedia. It may be wise to let consensus rule to avoid future fighting and issues, but that is exactly what this policy addresses.--Crossmr 23:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Consensus isn't always right, but it's all we have. Top-down changes don't work in a wiki system. -- Visviva 07:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Your edit-warred version is not going to be implemented. The only effect of the edit warring is to clog up and crowd out legitimate edits and get people angry. If in fact your revision was cemented in the page because of your edit warring, and ignoring the collateral effects of edit warring, then it could be seen as improving the encyclopedia, but that's not what happens with edit warring. —Centrx→talk • 02:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

You assume everyone who edit wars isn't making legitimate, article improving edits. What is edit warring? Breaking the rules. What does this policy address? Breaking the rules to improve the encyclopedia. If its not okay to edit war to improve an article, than this policy doesn't really mean that you can ignore all rules to improve the encyclopedia, and obviously there are exceptions to this, hence why it needs to be amended or removed. Exactly which "rules" is it okay to ignore to improve the encyclopedia?--Crossmr 23:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

No, read my comment again. No matter how good the revision, edit warring is not going to result in that revision being part of the encyclopedia—in fact it may even prevent foment animosity against it. —Centrx→talk • 23:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I read your comment and understood it. That is a rule. This policy specifically states to ignore that rule. You see the problem. You claim edit warring has never benefited the encyclopedia, but edit warring takes two, or more. One of those versions was appropriate, and they were being fought over in an article. One side was obviously in the right. If there truly is a consensus that edit warring never improves the encyclopedia, then it should be amended into this policy, because obviously not ALL rules are meant to be ignored if one believes it would improve the encyclopedia. This policy requires personal interpretation. Just because you don't think edit warring improves an article doesn't mean user X thinks the same thing.--Crossmr 06:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why "one side was obviously in the right." In my limited experience, most such disputes are best resolved by finding a third option which everyone can live with. That's why we have mediation. For the exceptional cases, where one party is clearly acting in bad faith, there are established remedies. -- Visviva 07:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Lets say for example I make a wide sweeping change to an article that I believe makes the article better. You disagree and change it back. I revert. You revert. I revert again and someone else shows up and reverts it. We're edit warring. Either the original version that is being reverted to, or my new version is better. One of those people doing the reverting is "right". One of those versions will be kept, and eventually improved upon. The crux of this "policy" is that its personal interpretation. If you want to do something to improve this encyclopedia and its against the rules, ignore them. An admin would have no issue giving me a warning and a block at that time. But here I am, just following standing policy, so how does that work? It doesn't. If what I was doing was obvious vandalism "Bill Gates is a doo-doohead!" and fighting over that, but if what I was fighting over was perfectly fine sourced content, then I should be well within the bounds of wikipedia policy to edit war all day to make sure the version I think that improves wikipedia stays in. This is my point. Its quite obvious that IAR is not meant to actually mean "ignore ALL rules". As you said above consensus is all we have, well its still a rule, and this policy still says to ignore it if it prevents you from doing something that you think will improve wikipedia. You're giving license for any random individual, without knowing their motivations, to do whatever they think is necessary for improvement. This is great if everyone has exactly the same goals and ideas. Its not a great idea when you've got so many users with so many motivations and goals. That is why we have the rules in the first place. You and I may have slightly different ideas on what will improve the encyclopedia and basically this trumps all. No matter what you do, if I don't agree with it, I can say nothing because the response can be a generic "IAR".--Crossmr 16:13, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Geez, I think you people are getting carried away with extreme examples and literal interpretations of a rule meant to solve the problems caused by extreme examples and literal interpretations. IMO, this rule serves one major purpose: to allow knowledge to be added to the encyclopedia without requiring an exhaustive search for "official" sources. If I know from my job or history what chemical causes permanent markers to smell like permanent markers, I could type it up in an article without having to find a book somewhere that says the same thing. Someone may come along and claim WP:NOR or similar to delete my addition to the Permanent Marker entry, but WP:IAR overrules them -- the burden is on the person deleting content to prove that it should be deleted, not on the person adding content to prove that it should be added. If that were the case, we could delete about half of this encyclopedia because most of it comes from people just typing from the top of their heads and citing sources mostly as a way to resolve two conflicting stories. If two stories conflict, the one with better references wins. If neither have references, or both have equally credible references, then both stories stay (as is the case in many military related articles, where casualty figures are disputed). If there's only one version and nobody has another version, then WP:IAR basically means "some information is better than no information at all" and it can stay until someone can demonstrate why it needs to be deleted. I could use the rules to delete the entire Permanent Marker entry, because hey, where's their book citing proof that the ink is generally water resistant?? I could slam the rulebook on them and delete that whole thing. But that would be "being a dick", and indeed, when in doubt, don't be a dick; we can let the entry stand under WP:IAR. --TheCynic 20:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you need to have a good long look at WP:V under burden of evidence. On wikipedia the burden of proof lies with the editor wishing to add or re-add to the article the information, not the other way around. Otherwise we'd have all kinds of outlandish claims in articles. IAR is certainly not written to allow editors to jam half-baked theories and opinions into articles.--Crossmr 23:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Self-Reference

This article refers to itself, and I added the appropriate sentence. I don't think there is any reason this shouldn't be in here, since other similar wikipedia related articles contain the same sentence. Flying Hamster 03:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

OK I see the self-reference notice is only for categories, my mistake, srry Flying Hamster 03:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

"Self reference" typically doesn't mean articles referring to itself, it means more like articles saying "This article will cover" or something like that. The article should basically read like it is from an encylopedia, with no references to it being an article on Wikipedia, online. Aside from this, anything outside of the main namespace (for example, Help:, Wikipedia:, Talk: etc) is exempt from this rule, as they are not articles. So this rule doesn't apply here anyway. But thanks for your effort to improve Wikipedia. Good luck! --Lord Deskana (talk) 04:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia

This policy desperately needs to include the assertion that Wikipedia is an encylopedia in its statement - as a minimum protection against misunderstanding e.g. the revised version could be "If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia as a reputable encyclopedia, ignore them." Way too many people don't see Wikipedia as an encyclopedia but as the dumping ground for whatever kind of info they fancy. Wikipedia's identity as an encyclopedia is official key policy no.1 and its "singular common goal" as stated in WP:POLICY Bwithh 19:15, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. In my view -- which is perhaps a bit eccentric -- this and all the other core policies derive fairly directly from the definition of Wikipedia as "a free encyclopedia which anyone can edit." Making that clear can only be a good thing. -- Visviva 07:01, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

... added: although all in all, I'd prefer to drop the word "reputable" there. Prone to misinterpretation. -- Visviva 07:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Example of Abuse

A person might start illegally uploading copyrighted images to Wikipedia. He is still improving Wikipedia but he is ignoring the copyright rules. --Ineffable3000 02:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

However, once found—and they are found, and copyright holders do complain—someone who could otherwise have been contributing to the encyclopedia has to go through and delete them all. A more egregious case is with text copyright infringement. Someone uploads some great text making a great article but then after it is found all subsequent edits and improvements to it have to be deleted; that's a lot of people's work thrown away because of uploading copyrighted text. This is also assuming no one gets sued. None of this ultimately improves Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 03:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, illegally uploading copyrighted images doesn't at all constitute "improving Wikipedia" on the still-important idealistic level, we are trying to create a free encyclopedia, so it would be hard to defense going against one of our core concepts as doing something that improves the project. --W.marsh 03:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think what we see here is that a lot of people don't realize the unwritten rule is that you don't just claim you're improving Wikipedia to successfully ignore a rule, other people actually have to agree that you're improving Wikipedia, otherwise citing IAR won't do you much good. I've tried to include this in the page occasionally but been reverted. --W.marsh 04:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Is it really necessary to spell out that "improving" and "pretending to improve while actually jeopardizing" are different things? I guess I'd agree that the insistence that this page remain precisely one vague sentence is a little bit pathological.... it's like one of those Wikipedia mysteries: The IAR that can be explained is not the true IAR! Still, I don't see the distinction between "improving" and "subjecting to legal liabilty" as something that really confuses many people or needs to be detailed.

I guess better than adding material to this page would be to write an essay about it, and see whether people start linking to it. That's probably the best way we have to modify policy - write better policy, call it an essay, and then let others promote it as actualy policy when they realize how brilliant it is. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Evidently it goes over a lot of people's heads. I'm not talking about writing an exhaustive novel here on the concepts of ignoring all rules, just adding a simple second sentence to correct the kneejerk misconception 50% of people seem to have upon first reading IAR. And yes I realize all instruction creep starts out as "just adding one simple sentence"... --W.marsh 04:45, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I doubt it would help. People who wish to abuse IAR in this way will do so whether or not we try to tell them not to. Maybe I'm just claiming sour grapes because this page is notoriously un-sticky as far as such edits go. I'm curious, though... what would this one sentence say, exactly? -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that we need a good definition of improve. --Ineffable3000 05:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Improve is a well defined word. The purpose of Wikipedia is also well-defined. —Centrx→talk • 06:36, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The fact remains that if someone tries citing this as a reason for illegally uploading images, they'll get blocked anyway, and told to shut up. Whether this is written down or not makes no difference. --Deskana talk 11:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:IAR

If WP:IAR prevents me from improving Wikipedia, I will ignore it. --Ineffable3000 05:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Was this policy ever actually legitimatly used? Can you give an example? --Ineffable3000 05:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It is used frequently, such as any time someone wants to make a change but doesn't want to look it up in a rule book. —Centrx→talk • 06:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

How does IAR prevent you from improving wikipedia? — Seadog 22:45, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

because other editors use it as an excuse to make changes to an article you don't agree with?--Crossmr 06:08, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Any changes must stand or fall on their merits. If the community accepts the changes, they stay; if not, they go. I don't see how this page makes any difference one way or the other, except that it makes it clear that no rules are absolutely binding; but in the wiki context, that's a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one. If you are having problems with the specific editors active on a specific page, there are a wide variety of options available to resolve the disagreement. Cheers, -- Visviva 06:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggested alteration

Add "An exception is neutral point of view, which is absolute and non-negotiable and should never be ignored."

This policy, as it is, contradicts the NPOV policy because it says all rules may be ignored, while NPOV states that NPOV may not be ignored.

There's a similar problem with original research, but there's no need to bother with that since it will probably be merged into Wikipedia:Attribution without the contradiction. Ken Arromdee 08:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

No, writing POV articles would not be improving the encyclopedia. —Centrx→talk • 09:21, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

This may be a minor point, but I have to point out that nowhere in the current text of WP:NPOV does it say that it may not be ignored by individual editors. It does say that it's absolute and non-negotiable, but that has more to do with whether the community can decide to override or fundamentally change it by consensus (which is clearly not allowed).

Now, I'm not saying that it would be acceptable to deliberately violate NPOV (that wouldn't exactly be ignoring the policy), but it may occasionally be constructive for an editor to be bold and push forward with a set of improvements to an article without thinking about NPOV... Indeed, whether we care to admit it or not, Wikipedia is full of contributors who make valuable contributions while falling seriously short of (and presumably ignoring) NPOV; their contributions are fixed by other editors, who might not have been able to make the original contributions themselves. That's why we all work together... At any rate, I don't really see a contradiction between the two policies. -- Visviva 09:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure you can interpret the two policies to be consistent, but the hair-splitting you need to do to do so is one that nobody who just reads the two policies is going to come up with. On the face of it, IAR says that everything can be ignored and NPOV says that is not true. Claiming that "non-negotiable" isn't the same as "may not be ignored", or that "deliberately violating" isn't the same thing as "ignoring", or that IAR only applies to improvement and POV articles are by definition not improvements solves the contradiction only in a very legalistic kind of way.

(And I may add, we don't do this in other cases. For instance, I'm sure you can think of applications of IAR when we *do* ignore by deliberately violating.) Ken Arromdee 16:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

No, anyone may ignore the rules. That does not mean they can get away with doing whatever they like nor does it equate to a get out of jail free card nor exempt them from community sanctions if their actions are seen to be not in the interests of improving the encyclopedia. older ≠ wiser 16:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Nowhere in the policy does it say you have to have consensus to IAR. Consensus is a rule. No one who ignores all rules in good faith should ever have to face sanctions for their behaviour, otherwise there is something seriously wrong with this policy.--Crossmr 16:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course -- but all too often individuals claim to be working in good faith, but in reality have a separate agenda. What I meant by saying they are not exempt from community sanctions are those cases where individuals know full well that their actions are controversial and attempt to hide behind IAR as a flimsy justification for their actions. older ≠ wiser 17:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Consistency is no virtue... but in any case, I don't understand how consensus is a "rule" exactly. WP:CON is about consensus building, which is rather different. Everyone is free to ignore all rules at any time; that is not a prescriptive statement in itself, it simply describes the nature of a wiki. After rules have boldly been ignored, the consensus of the community will judge whether or not a person's boldness was a) in good faith, and b) wise. If a & b, the changes will stand; if not b, the changes will be adjusted or reverted; if not a, the user will be subject to warning or sanction. -- Visviva 17:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I should state it more clearly: This policy is not meant to apply to the community as a whole. The community can change its mind, but in that case the relevant policy is WP:CCC, not IAR. This page applies, fairly clearly, to the actions of individual editors (i.e. "you"). NPOV, like the other content policies, does not apply strictly to the actions of individual editors (see Wikipedia:Editing policy); it defines a community norm which articles are expected to meet. In that respect is, and should be, non-negotiable and inflexible. It is up to the community to decide whether an editor has or has not acted in good faith by failing to abide by NPOV, or any other policy. I don't see this as splitting hairs; I honestly do not see a contradiction here.-- Visviva 17:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Whether its a rule, policy, or "good idea", this policy addresses ignoring everything if you feel what you're doing is best for the encyclopedia. That can even mean consensus (which I've seen admins do). That can mean, NPOV, OR, V, etc. I've seen IAR used to ignore all of those in the name of improving the encyclopedia. I don't see the necessity for anyone to ignore all rules to improve the encyclopedia. Because if the encyclopedia can't be improved within the confines of the rules you either have a problem with the rules (which need to be changed), or what you're doing really isn't going to improve the encyclopedia. I'd like to see IAR go from Ignore all rules, to Improve all rules. Ignoring all rules inevitably ends in conflict, while improving the rules results in consensus building then making the improvements within the confines of those newly improved rules.--Crossmr 18:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

If a rule frequently needs to be ignored, then it should be changed. No doubt about that. For your other point, anyone is free to ignore consensus and face the consequences. The canonical example of this would be Ed Poor's infamous deletion of Votes for Deletion back in 2005; while I and a few others held that this was a brilliant example of using IAR to fix a serious problem in the encyclopedia, it was roundly rejected by the community. Ed's actions were greeted with general opprobrium, and I believe he was hit with various sanctions. This shows the usual pattern: 1. An editor ignores policy. 2. The community decides how to respond.

It seems to me -- and perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions -- that you're trying to make Wikipedia into a rule-governed system; but that is explicitly what Wikipedia is not. Normally, rules follow practice, not the other way around. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy; decisions are not made by rules, but by people working together. When people fail to work together, that's a problem, but it's not a problem that any rule can solve. -- Visviva 04:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

And in our case, all of our rules have come about by consensus building. The community has already decided that this is how we should act at this time. If someone feels a change is in order, its better to build a new consensus (rule) rather than to unilaterally decide you need to fly in the face of existing consensus to make an improvement. Reaching the consensus first is always the better idea. I can't imagine anything that is going on on Wikipedia that is so time sensitive that we can't build a little consensus first.--Crossmr 06:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Wiki growth is a constant dialectic between consensus and boldness. This rule-that-is-not helps ensure that that process remains alive. -- Visviva 17:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

How about, instead, adding text to WP:NPOV saying that though it's absolute and non-negotiable, it may still be ignored by individual editors?

I find the current state of the rules to be absurd. Just because we can interpret the rules to be consistent or just because Wikipedia isn't supposed to be governed by rules is no excuse to have rules whose most straightforward reading is a contradiction. Even if rules don't cover everything, the rules that we do have shouldn't contradict. Ken Arromdee 16:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Absurdity is the spice of life. If this were widely being used and accepted as a basis for abusive, anti-wiki behavior, I could see your point. But as far as I can tell, this hasn't caused any serious problems in Wikipedia's first several years of life, and isn't causing any problems now. On the other hand, without it, I would imagine that WP:BB would quickly lose its meaning, and that wikilawyering would take hold even more forcefully than it has done already.

Back to the first point -- any rule may be ignored by any editor. WP:NPOV doesn't need to say that any more than any other page does. Such openness is, frankly, the whole point of a wiki, and a big part of why Wikipedia has been so unexpectedly successful. IAR's presence as a policy here only helps to ensure that we don't forget this, and that people won't follow their first instinct and treat Wikipedia like it was some kind of bureaucracy that has to have a rigidly consistent set of policies. ;-) -- Visviva 17:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Saying that Wikipedia isn't a bureaucracy may be a good excuse for having rules that don't cover every situation. It isn't a good excuse for having rules that contradict. Ken Arromdee 22:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

But it is not really a contradiction. The actions of any individual ignoring NPOV will sooner or later get corrected or reversed by other editors (or at least that's the theory behind Wiki and having many editors participating). Their ignoring the rule (deliberately or otherwise) is irrelevant to the long-term goals of Wikipedia, in which NPOV is a cornerstone. And those individuals who deliberately persist in "ignoring" rules such as NPOV despite being informed of the importance will face community sanctions. I don't see the contradiction. older ≠ wiser 02:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

That's still "because you can interpret it in this very non-obvious way that doesn't contradict, there's no contradiction".

The *straightforward* reading of IAR is that ignoring any rule may be *acceptable*. Claiming that there's no contradiction because you can ignore NPOV, you'll just always be reversed, adheres to the literal wording of IAR but twists it into nonsense. It's like a store with a big sign saying "you can buy widgets for $5". By your reasoning, if the sign actually meant "you can buy widgets for $5 if you want to get arrested", it would be perfectly sensible. Ken Arromdee 18:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

And that is exactly the problem with this. No one should ever fear reprisal for following the rules. If you ignore WP:NPOV, Consensus, WP:V, WP:BLOCK, WP:3RR or WP:OR 10 chances out of 9 you're going to get reversed on it, and possibly get ripped on it or start a fight of some sort. If the straightforward literal translation leads to an issue, then it needs to be fixed. I don't see anything this "policy" does that "Be Bold" and "Consensus" don't already achieve. Besides the potential for headaches.--Crossmr 18:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

? How does this policy threaten anyone with reprisal for following the rules? -- Visviva 07:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Because, this clearly says if you want to do something YOU believe will improve wikipedia and a rule prevents you, go ahead and do it. Yet if you do it, and consensus (a rule) is against you, you could face reprisal for doing it. There is no other rule I know which following it leaves you open to possible persecution for editing within its confines.--Crossmr 14:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd say the straightforward reading is correct. For you, the editor, to ignore any rule may be acceptable. Then again, it may not. Consensus will be the judge. That doesn't -- or certainly shouldn't -- contradict anything else in our ridiculously overgrown set of policies. -- Visviva 07:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

But that already contradicts. "It may or it may not" be acceptable depending on consensus, contradicts a rule which says that it's always unacceptable and consensus is not considered. Ken Arromdee 16:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I feel oddly like I'm repeating myself, but there is nothing in WP:NPOV which says it cannot be ignored by individual editors; it does say that it cannot be revised or changed through consensus. NPOV binds the community to respect it. To put it another way, it restricts the scope of WP:CON, not WP:IAR. Even actions which are notionally based on NPOV must stand or fall on their merits. -- Visviva 05:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Would you want to be running around proving consensus every time you told someone something? Our rules and policies basically are an "official" record of previously accepted consensus. Every time someone came around and called me a name, I would not have to have a debate on whether or not that was acceptable. If we're saying Consensus rules all then IAR does not. IAR is written in such a way to make the reader think it does rule all though. Hence why I think it should be changed from Ignore all rules to Improve all rules. Rules are just consensus, and in the spirit of IAR I should be well within my rights to move the page to Wikipedia:Improve all rules but wouldn't that create a bit of a catch 22?--Crossmr 16:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course you're within your "rights" to do so, and I would be within my "rights" to revert the move. But most rightly of all, we would (I trust) both be warned and then blocked for engaging in a lame and unproductive edit war.  ;-) -- Visviva 05:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

But that illustrates a larger issue of consistency. Consistency is very crucial to being "newbie" friendly. New users who come here and find a dichotomy in the rules often become confused on how to act, and what they should do, and it makes the initial experience unpleasant. I think we can all recognize the need to keep a record of previous consensus in rule or policy format, but ensuring those are all uniform and consistent leaves users much less susceptible to making a mistake. What we get from WP:POINT and WP:CON is that consensus really should rule all. No matter what. With that being the case, should anyone ever need to IAR? No. they should only ever seek consensus, and once its achieved make their desired change. I still don't see the need for this concept to be here, let alone be an official policy which can be misleading to the unexperienced editor.--Crossmr 08:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Newbies getting confused is a good reason for this rule. Newbies come here, get rule-paranoid, and we hope this rule assures them they can go about their business. WP:POINT is not really about the way rules are made at all. It only mentions "consensus" in the context of "making a direct statement is the best way to get agreement". WP:CON... makes my head explode. It does have an excellent observation at the bottom, though: "consensus" is used to mean just about anything. I personally try to avoid the word. 192.75.48.150 19:33, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Who says editing within the confines of the rules doesn't leave you open to reprisals? See WP:POINT, which can be viewed as a special case of the converse to IAR: if the rules don't forbid you from harming Wikipedia, don't do it anyway. The current version of WP:POINT also has another relevant observation: "[Wikipedia] is inconsistent, and it tolerates things it does not condone. These are arguably not defects." 192.75.48.150 18:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, that's how I've always read this part of Wikipedia policy: rules are neither necessary (IAR) nor sufficient (POINT) to justify any action. Any action that is found to be injurious to the project may be subject to reversion, and perhaps to additional remedies. Everything, including the rules, is secondary to our core mission: to build a free and open encyclopedia. -- Visviva 05:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Use of Rule

For everybody asking about whether this policy has ever been used, I thought I'd offer up the example of Template:Blackwater, which certainly doesn't fall within the rules of Template useage, but greatly improves Wikipedia's ability to accurately and NPOVly report on this event, in the many articles it sees near-identical references within. Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 20:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

• And which is on WP:TFD at the moment. >Radiant< 11:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • More specifically, for everybody asking about whether this policy has ever been used, check Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. >Radiant< 11:56, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Faulty logic. I would never, ever use this stupid, misguided policy, but I've surely linked to it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:34, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I never said that all of the whatlinkshere was usage of the policy, merely that it could be used to find such usage. >Radiant< 09:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
      • You are using it every time you don't bother to look up the proper formatting in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, etc., unless you have memorized all the policies and guidelines. Disregarding rules is a second aspect of IAR, but the first aspect is solid and absolutely necessary. —Centrx→talk • 23:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

In a nutshell

I (and some other editors) are trying to use the {{nutshell}} template on this page. User:Centrx opposes it as "mindless standardization". Using this template emphasizes the policy text over the messagebox, "see also" and footnotes. Since the policy is so short, it makes sense to make it stand out on its own page. It's not "mindless" to put every policy in a nutshell because it helps people coming to the page find and understand it as quickly as possible. —Dgies^t c 23:22, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

The text is there and just as easily understandable without the nutshell. Actually the nutshell is misleading in that it implies, as is on any other page that uses, that there is something that was summarized by the nutshell. A nutshell cannot be a whole policy. If there is a problem with other parts of the page crowding out the text, change those other parts of the page, such as by reducing the section header size or making the other templates less loud. —Centrx→talk • 23:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Even putting it in a little box of its own, without saying "policy in a nutshell" would be better. —Centrx→talk • 23:26, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

From a page layout point of view, don't you think your version makes the critical text fairly un-emphasized? Are you opposed to highlighting it, or just the naming "In a nutshell" for a policy summary equal to the (brief) policy? —Dgies^t c 23:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

The "policy in a nutshell" is the blatantly erroneous part. Having it in a separate box would, I think, be an aesthetic problem—and I think I corrected the problem you had with the previous version, without using a box—but it would not be factually erroneous. —Centrx→talk • 23:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, if you have reasons for making an edit, put them in the edit summary. —Centrx→talk • 23:26, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Huh, what? I thought I did. —Dgies^t c 23:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

And edit summary of "in a nutshell" just says what you did, which is probably good to include, but which does not explain what the reason for doing that is. Just saying "in a nutshell" implies that the only reason for doing it is "policies have nutshells", which would be mindless standardization, which says nothing about concerns about the text being visually crowded out, and which does not help anyone making future edits to correct the problems with the change. —Centrx→talk • 23:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

"reducing the section header size or making the other templates less loud" Are you serious? You're suggesting I modify templates used on dozens of pages in order to fix the layout on a single page. Isn't is far less disruptive to simply fix the page that needs fixing? —Dgies^t c 23:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

No, just on this page, exactly as I did, [1]. —Centrx→talk • 23:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's silly to have a "nutshell" summary of something that is the summary. Putting the text in a box might not be a bad idea, but edit warring over it is a bad idea. Calling something a "nutshell" summary, when there's nothing longer being summarized, looks stupid to me. Please let's not do that. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:39, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Well we need something to emphasize the text. From a lorem ipsum point of view, the actual content is completely buried by the formatting and other templates. Centrx's attempt was not much of an improvement. —Dgies^t c 23:43, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

It is better than putting in a nutshell box, and it addresses the problem you identified. What do you propose instead? Given that the long-standing version agreed by everyone else who has been involved with or visited this page in the past several months trumps the new contested version proposed by you, the two options as of now are the long-standing version or the the Centrx version. —Centrx→talk • 23:48, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I like my version :p. It's pleasantly absurd, but not offensively so, in my entirely subjective opinion. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I liked that version too... Pleasantly absurd, like the policy itself. :-) -- Visviva 11:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that GTBacchus' version was amusing, I don't agree that the policy is any type of "absurd," nor I do I believe that we should make it appear humorous (which might lead people to mistake it for a joke). —David Levy 12:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a valid point. I fear you're right that many would fail to distinguish between a funny policy and something that's just a joke. I should clarify that in my eyes absurdity is no vice, just as consistency is no virtue. (Indeed, the whole Wikipedia project is rather absurd, delightfully and constructively so.) -- Visviva 14:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I certainly didn't mean "absurd" in a bad way. Thanks for understanding that, Visviva. I also fully expected that my version wouldn't "stick". There is an unfortunate tendency for people to think that things that are funny aren't also serious. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, I was addressing Visviva's reference to the policy itself as "absurd." —David Levy 17:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Understood - I find the policy pleasantly absurd, too. I also think it's fantastic that we have it at the core of our !bureaucracy. I think the best ideas in life are pleasantly absurd. As far as not making the policy appear humorous... that'll be tricky. It's going to remain humorous as long as it's a "rule" that says to ignore rules. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

If the page merely instructed users to "ignore rules," I would agree. Given the fact that it instructs users to ignore rules when they "prevent [them] from improving or maintaining Wikipedia," there really isn't any contradiction.

Of course, people do sometimes parrot "ignore all rules!" without understanding the policy's meaning, but that stems from far worse confusion than the belief that the page is a joke. —David Levy 17:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry. I still find it humorous, but I don't mean anything bad by it. (I also didn't say there's a "contradiction", as such.) This policy is absurd in the same sense that love and beauty and hope are absurd. Please don't imagine I'm advocating some facile misreading. I know what you mean about there being "no contradiction", and yet, the only "rules" worth anything in life take the form of paradoxes. I'm not saying anything actionable; please feel free to ignore my Discordian musings. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you need to summarize a policy that's essentially a one-liner. >Radiant< 09:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Risk of exploitation

I recently told a user that her refusal to abide by WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:WWIN is unacceptable. She responded with this: [2]. The policy needs to be clarified and re-worded so that it cannot be used as an excuse to violate the fundamental policies of Wikipedia, as in the aforementioned example. Certainly it was not the policy-makers' intention to have this policy exploited in such a manner. -- WGee 01:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Good luck. That's the inherent problem with this "policy." --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd think the best response to such a citation of IAR is to talk about why the edits in question are or are not improvements. Provoking us to discuss how to improve the encyclopedia in a context that takes us outside of mindlessly following policies and procedures is probably just what the policy-makers had in mind. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Inform this editor that no one whose name isn't Jimbo is entitled to unilaterally override other people's opinions of what constitutes "improving or maintaining Wikipedia." As GTBacchus noted, such matters often requires discussion —David Levy 04:22, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why I should have to waste my time explaining to someone the no-brainer that verifiable, factually accurate, non-libellous information is more desirable than factually inaccurate, slanderous original research. And if I were to respond with your suggestion, David Levy, she would probably just claim a stalemate, a lack of consensus between us as to what improves Wikipedia; then progress would be halted. The purpose of having policies is to ensure the smooth operation of the encyclopedia, but the way this policy is currently worded only vindicates problem editors and thus obstructs progress.

Moreover, people are free to discuss how to improve the encyclopedia on discussion and user pages and exercise this freedom routinely, so there is no culture of mindless subordination as you suggest, GTBacchus. If I want to discuss the legitimacy of a certain policy, I will do so at my own leisure; but I should not be forced to do so whenever some POV-pusher creates a disruption. I should be able to edit an encyclopedia without having to constantly stop and explain to problem editors that verifiable information is better than unverifiable information. If this policy causes me to have to constantly argue with editors about such ridiculous things, then it is actually preventing me from maintaining and improving Wikipedia and is therefore defeating its purpose.

I have no problem with editors ignoring petty rules or technicalities about style et cetera that discourage them from editing, but fundamental rules such as WP:V and especially WP:BLP should be absolute, for obvious reasons. (Imagine someone using this policy to disregard WP:BLP, to permit the propagation of libel; then Wikipedia could be sued into bankruptcy.) Simply put, the current wording of this policy opens up a dangerous can of worms. It needs to be elucidated using examples to protect both this encyclopedia and its well-intentioned users. What objections do you have to this?

-- WGee 10:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

WGee, I have a couple of replies to this post... You say "if I were to respond with your suggestion, David Levy, she would probably just claim a stalemate, a lack of consensus between us as to what improves Wikipedia; then progress would be halted" I would suggest that's why there are more than two people editing Wikipedia. As soon as two people reach an impasse, the best next step is to involve more people. Many, many disputes are resolved simply by bringing more voices to the discussion. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

As soon as two people reach an impasse, the best next step is to involve more people. True, but it can still take a tremendous amount of time to resolve the dispute if the problem editor is ardent enough. Even if ten people believe that one person's interpretation of IAR is inappropriate (which is rarely the case; many disputes don't get that much attention), that one user can still cause disruptions—I've experienced it first-hand. Sure, the user can be blocked for causing disruptions to an article, but only after arbitration: at the admins' noticeboard, unfortunately, most refuse to intervene in any conflict they perceive to be remotely related to content. If the mechanisms to block those who exploit IAR were more efficient, then this policy (as it is currently worded) would be less of a problem. But the dispute resolution process can be rather arduous, and it puts off editors who are interested in writing an encyclopedia rather than lawyering. -- WGee 02:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Come and get me when next time this comes up. Seroiusly. I know how to handle these situations, and I won't refuse you on the grounds that it's content-related. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

You also said, "people are free to discuss how to improve the encyclopedia on discussion and user pages and exercise this freedom routinely, so there is no culture of mindless subordination as you suggest, GTBacchus". I certainly didn't intend to suggest that there is a culture of mindless subordination. I think you may be casting this issue in more polarized terms than necessary. If someone cites IAR, they either have a reasonable point, or they don't. If they don't, all it takes is two or three other people seeing the dispute, and it gets sorted out. If they do have a point, then it should be discussed, then and there, rather than stopping the discussion at "dem's the rules, sorry." -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

If they don't, all it takes is two or three other people seeing the dispute, and it gets sorted out. Similar to what I said above, that is an idealistic vision and is often not the case. Ardent POV-pushers can defy the opinion of the (super-)majority and cause weeks of disruption before they are blocked. Therefore, I say that we should give them less of an opportunity to cause disruptions in the first place by clarifying this policy. -- WGee 02:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Ardent POV pushers can cause weeks of disruption with or without IAR. In my experience, they don't tend to cite this policy, but rather to claim that they're following NPOV and that everyone else is part of a POV conspiracy. Most of the ardent POV pushers I've dealt with think this policy is insane, and don't cite it at all. Ardent POV pushers tend to be people who think in black-and-white terms, which means they think of rules as well-defined and unmoving, and they try to game them in those terms. IAR is much more often used to cut through their attempts at rule-gaming than it's used by POV-pushers, in my experience anyway. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

You said, "I should be able to edit an encyclopedia without having to constantly stop and explain to problem editors that verifiable information is better than unverifiable information". I would submit that you can do that. Do you actually find that you "constantly" have to stop and explain basic principles? I think it's much closer to "occasionally" than to "constantly", and that occasional stopping to explain is precisely how we educate new users as to the finer points of Wikipedia custom. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right, I don't have to "constantly" stop, but the potential is there for me to have to do so as Wikipedia attracts more and more polemics. Also, maybe it is not so much the frequency of such conflicts as their duration. Either way, it is horribly time-consuming, stressful, and obstructs editing. Further, it is very difficult to get some new users to realize that they are not "in the right" with regards to this policy. They may choose not to heed my interpretation of it unless that interpretation is part of the policy. -- WGee 02:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The next time you see someone abusing IAR, come and get me. I'll show you how to handle it in a way that's not "horribly time-consuming". This is a completely sincere offer. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Finally, you say "Simply put, the current wording of this policy opens up a dangerous can of worms." I would suggest that it does so potentially, but I don't see any evidence that we're swamped with spurious applications of IAR. I've seen people cite it in ways that are clearly wrong, and they get corrected by a half-dozen more experienced Wikipedians immediately. That's a valuable interaction, both for the person being corrected, and for anybody witnessing the conversation. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

but I don't see any evidence that we're swamped with spurious applications of IAR. This policy is relatively new and unpublicized, so it not being abused tremendously right now. But we have to be proactive and not reactive regarding the potential problems this policy poses. -- WGee 02:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Relatively new and unpublicized? It's the single oldest rule on Wikipedia. The very first time anybody (Larry Sanger, it turns out) wrote down rules here, this one was #1 on the list. I can find the link if you're interested. If it were going to be "abused tremendously", it's had its chance. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The link you're looking for is right on the IAR page itself. Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 20:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

This page even states that the policy "a deep and subtle meaning." How is one to understand this idiosyncratic "deep and subtle" meaning without an explanation? -- WGee 10:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Experience. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Well let us confer that experience onto new users by incorporating what we have learned into the policy. It is much more logical to do it that way than on a case-by-case basis. -- WGee 02:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be cool, if it were the kind of experience that's easy to summarize in a few paragraphs. It's not. Some lessons have to be learned by each individual. This policy has been in place for years, and literally thousands of Wikipedians have figured out how to deal with it. I don't believe that the sky is suddenly falling, if it hasn't fallen by now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I see that virtually all of the other Wiki's that employ this rule have some sort of clarification. For example, the French IAR policy names a set of rules that are impossible to ignore ("La base"): WP:WWIN, WP:NPOV, WP:C, and WP:CIVIL. The French IAR policy also has the following clarifications, which, along with others, are very sensible and should be transported to the English Wikipedia:

• "Il est acceptable de ne pas connaître ou suivre chaque règle, mais les ignorer délibérement pose problème." ---> It is acceptable not to know or follow each rule, but ignoring them deliberately is problematic.
• "Contribuez d'une manière qui respecte l'esprit des règles." ---> Contribute in a manner that respects the spirit of the rules.
• "'Ignorer les règles' ne veut PAS dire 'briser toutes les règles'. Cela signifie simplement : vous n'avez pas besoin d'avoir appris par coeur toute les règles de Wikipédia pour y contribuer." ---> "Ignore the rules" does NOT mean "break the rules". It simply means that you do not have to know all of Wikipedia's rules by heart in order to contribute.

These clarifications and others would help to prevent the exploitation of IAR. -- WGee 11:17, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as peopel believe they're benefiting the encyclopedia, they can cite this. That's the inherent problem, and we don't need a bunch of thing to contradict a policy that's already contradictory. If we could junk this entirely, it would solve more problems than this discussion can. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:57, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the discussions generated when people cite IAR in the belief that they're improving the encyclopedia ara a Good Thing. It's better to talk about specific cases where editor X made action Y in "violation" of poicy Z, than to just talk in abstract terms about whether policy Z should be phrased one way or the other. Constantly reconsidering our policies in the light of actual situations is good, and if IAR provokes such considerations, that's good. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the problem, to be honest. If I pulled someone up with violations of WP:NOR and WP:V and they responded with WP:IAR, I'd probably block them (assuming they refused to stop of course). If they moaned about it, they'd learn IAR can't be used that way. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 14:05, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

So you'd block someone for following policy? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

That's twisting IAR far beyond what it is intended for. Most vandals aware of the existance of IAR realise if they tried to use IAR to justify what they did, they'd be ignored. That's just the way it works. It's not about "blocking people for following policy". --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 14:24, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Another point is that following policy isn't as important as creating the encyclopedia that is Wikipedia. That is what IAR is about. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 14:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, if someone invokes IAR, claiming that they intend to "improve" the encyclopedia, but are not able to explain how they are an improvement or why it is necessary to IAR in order to make the said improvement, I'm inclined to see such actions as more disruptive than helpful. older ≠ wiser 14:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Funny, that's not what it says, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Which is back to the personal judgement call. What you see as disruption may be another man's improvement. Someone has been trying to work some essay into the levitation article for some time coming from a set of IPs all in a range. He quite possibly believes he's improving the article by doing so. The policy doesn't say "If everyone agrees its the right thing to do, just go ahead and do it". It says if the rules prevent YOU from impproving the encyclopedia ignore them. If they were preventing a group of editors who'd formed a consensus you wouldn't need to ignore the rules, you've formed a consensus, which is a rule. So really this is something that has to be looked at from your point of view. You viewed it as an improvement, you ignored the rules to make it part of the encyclopedia, and maybe you got blocked over it. Hence someone getting blocked over following policy. I'm not sure why people can't just admit this doesn't really mean ignore all the rules and put in a list of obvious exceptions that can never be ignored. As someone pointed out, the french version already does that. Or change this to an appropriate policy which really addresses the issue. If the rules prevent you from improving the encyclopedia form a consensus for their change or exception.--Crossmr 19:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. The fact is, all of you who oppose clarifying this policy have to philosophize just to explain what it entails, and each of you came up with your own idiosyncratic interpretation. Not everyone who views this policy is going to interpret it so contextually; many will claim that it means exactly what it says. I've already presented one example, yet still someone says, "I don't see the problem." The problem is that it is virtually impossible and ridiculously time-consuming to argue with someone that this policy does not actually mean "ignore all rules." And if I were to attempt to interpret the policy in my own way, as people are doing here, those who wish to abuse the rule would claim that my interpretation is worthless, because the policy is explicit.

Once again, this page states that the policy has "a deep and subtle meaning." How is one to understand the intended meaning without an explanation? A myriad of problems will arise when editors begin to quabble over the correct interpretation of this meaning. So why not clarfiy it? What justification is there for not doing so?

-- WGee 23:26, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Deskana, you said, "If I pulled someone up with violations of WP:NOR and WP:V and they responded with WP:IAR, I'd probably block them (assuming they refused to stop of course). If they moaned about it, they'd learn IAR can't be used that way. It may be very simple for you, an admin, to block someone who exploits this policy, but for the majority of users, who are not admins, they have to first argue with the abuser on discussion pages and then start a new discussion on the administrator's noticeboard—quite a nuisance. All of this gets in the way of well-intentioned users maintaining and improving the encyclopedia; thus I say again that this policy defeats its purpose. Moreover, I think it is much more logical to prevent the exploitation of this policy in the first place by clarifying it rather than punish those who are able to abuse it, hoping that they will learn their lesson. Is it not more logical to deal with the source of the problem (the wording of the policy) rather than its effects (the problem editors who are only exploiting a loophole)? For comparison, does it not make more sense to target the drug traffickers rather than the drug addicts? -- WGee 23:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Every time I enter into a debate I am genuinely impressed with the manner in which people can have essentially conflicting views to mine, and yet clarify them in such a way as to make an enticing argument. I must say, well done WGee :-). Now, to answer your point: Perhaps some clarifiction is necessary. It's hard to decide on what clarification is necessary, though. Perhaps something along the lines of what I said, something like "If you blatantly damage the encyclopedia and invoke this rule, you will likely not enjoy much success"? --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 20:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

To WGee, what practical difference would there be in your scenario if IAR did not exist? Editor A does something they see as improving Wikipeia, you point out to them that it violates various policies. If they disagree, what recourse do you have other than to alert others to the problem and try to seek some consensus. If they persist in defying consensus, they get blocked. Essentially the same steps whether they attempt to invoke IAR or not. Removing IAR, does not prevent people from doing dumb or misguided things or from arguing that such dumb or misguided things are actually good for the encyclopedia. older ≠ wiser 22:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm looking at your example. Edits were done in good faith, and the matter was settled by discussion. IAR was only (explicitly) invoked when someone tried to use policy acronyms as ultimata of some sort. I see no exploitation here. 192.75.48.150 16:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah... I've just been thinking... IAR, although tautologically being affected by the manifestation of its own policy (if that makes any sense), also seems to violate WP:BITE through this 'deep and subtle meaning' that remains a mystery to newer users, and indeed myself.--HisSpaceResearch 21:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The Common Sense Global MetaRule

Understanding and applying a set of rules ALWAYS requires people to use common sense. This is the case for everything in life, not just Wikipedia! I think the intended meaning and application of IAR is perfectly clear from a common-sense perspective. Individuals who are lacking in common sense and try to claim that vandalism is permissible because of IAR are poor editors because of their lack of common sense or cooperative spirit, and would vandalize and make bad edits no matter how the rules were worded. If IAR was eliminated, they would just claim that cleaning up their edits was violating NPOV. "My point of view is that 'asdfdkfjdkjf' is a perfectly proper topic heading, why is your point of view any better than mine?" I believe that IAR has great psychological value in encouraging people who can make valuable contriutions, but are intimidated by the thought of actually making changes in an encyclopedia. It's very easy to see the problems caused by vandalism and careless editing; but there are also invisible problems caused by people who could be making improvements who are not. A lot of errors are spotted by readers and not fixed because they are nervous about 'breaking the rules' in some way. I think IAR does way more good than harm. Because of its very nature, it is inappropriate to believe that IAR can be understood in a precise, logical, legalistic fashion. Wikipedia's rules are not computer code, they are guidelines to be understood holistically by intelligent human beings.Ben Kidwell 00:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Have you ever heard the saying "common sense is no longer common these days"? That certainly applies to this case. Most reasonable human beings, including me, can derive a coherent meaning from this policy. But there are many editors in this encyclopedia who lack this "common sense", who are not here to write a factually accurate encyclopedia but to push their POV. There is a reason why criminal codes or copyright laws, for example, are written straightforwardly, leaving little to interpretation: it is because we cannot assume that everyone will have a similar interpretation or that people will not maliciously try to exploit the vagueness of the law. Similarly, we don't rely only on broad constitutions to govern society; we also rely on specific laws, by-laws, and historical precedents, in order to apply the constitutional principles to everyday life. -- WGee 01:49, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

"Individuals who are lacking in common sense and try to claim that vandalism is permissible because of IAR are poor editors because of their lack of common sense or cooperative spirit, and would vandalize and make bad edits no matter how the rules were worded." I'm not talking about vandals necessarily, but rather people who ruin articles more surreptitiously, like POV-pushers. Some have claimed (I've provided one example) that this policy gives them the right to deliberately ignore certain fundamential policies. With this policy clarified, problem editors might still make tendentious edits, but they would know that they are not morally or legally justified in doing so. If you give problem editors a leg to stand on (in this case IAR), they will argue for days that they are justified. I say take away the leg so that we don't have to listen to their nonsense about how their crap is within the bounds of Wiki's policies. Make it explicit that no one is allowed to either deliberately or unintentionally ignore the three fundamental policies of Wikipedia (in other words, everyone must know them and abide by them): WP:NPOV, WP:CIVIL, and WP:C. Let's follow the lead of the French. -- WGee 03:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this policy could be much clearer, maybe a sentence or a short list of positive examples would help avoid such abuse. Let's forget admins, I assume their application of this rule is not a problem. But for regular editors, the key would be to somehow stress that the goal of this policy is to help the community improve articles and reach consensus on the talk pages. For me this rule means that Wikipedia values consensus over policy. There is an important sentence in WP:DICK: "Being right about an issue does not mean you're not being a dick. Dicks can be right — but they're still dicks; and, if there's something in what they say that is worth hearing, it goes unheard, because no one likes listening to dicks, no matter how right they are." Having said that, I think all invocations of this rule on talk pages must be quite self-defeating, since the true spirit of this rule is to ignore the rules and explain why the change is useful! (Fortunately, I haven't seen anybody invoke this rule as a defense in any argument so far) --Merzul 23:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

In short, my proposed amendment is

The essence of this policy is that Wikipedia works by building consensus, not by proving others wrong. It follows that if you catch yourself citing this policy in a discussion, instead of explaining the benefit of your edits, you have clearly not understood to ignore all rules.

I think the idea is good :) But of course, all my ideas are always good, but the wording could be improved. To be precise, I think the idea of saying that, if you cite WP:IAR then you are breaking WP:IAR is a good way to drive home the point that this should not be used to refuse citing sources etc. --Merzul 00:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

This is of course a good idea, too good to be mine, though: "I now pleasantly ponder the paradox encountered by those who seek to rigorously follow this rule." (Jimbo Wales). However, I also looked at a few of the actual invocations of IAR on some of the real talk pages that "link here" and very few were even near harmful, so I'm not sure this is a problem, really... --Merzul 00:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Because its a problem/headache waiting to happen? This is a living encyclopedia and shouldn't follow the "If it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Things can always be improved. Which is why I suggested above renaming this "Improve all rules" and changing the word to something like "If the rules prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, seek consensus and improve them". That is the real intent of this "rule". We all know consensus trumps all, and unless you have consensus ignoring the rules usually ends in a fight and someone possibly getting blocked. Also just because something doesn't link here, doesn't mean the spirit of IAR hasn't been applied on pages poorly. Lots of people have been blocked for disruptive editing, how many do you think might have actually been thinking that they were improving the encyclopedia in their mind?--Crossmr 03:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I would disagree with "If the rules prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, seek consensus and improve them". That implies a fetishization of rules, in which the rules are given more importance than the project that they exist to support. I don't want to tell people that they should stop working on the encyclopedia in order to spend time on bureaucratic rule-tinkering. Just do what seems best, be open to communication, and the rules will sort themselves out. They have for years; why should they stop now? -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank-you for offering your assistance, GTBacchas; I will truly not hesitate to contact you. :-) But I still don't see how the clarification of this policy can do any harm. Is there any case you can think of in which it would be acceptable to violate WP:WWIN, WP:NPOV, WP:C, or WP:CIVIL (whether by "consensus" or not)? If not, then let us explicitly tell people that these policies impossible to ignore, so that people will not be misled by the wording of this policy.

You say that the theory behind the policy has been successfully applied for years, and I'm inclined to agree. But it appears, to me at least, that Wikipedia is attracting a greater proportion of polemics than it would have, say, four years ago because of its tremendous popularity. Probably only the most "purely motivated" of people would have bothered to religiously edit this online enyclopedia when it was unpopular and uninfluential, but as Wikipedia becomes quite the opposite, more people will attempt to use it as a soapbox (perhaps a Wiki-veteran could attest to the veracity or lack thereof of this trend, but it seems logical). They will use whatever policy they can to justify themselves, and IAR is currently the most easily exploitable one. -- WGee 05:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia is attracting, and will continue to attract, more "POV pushers" than it has in the past, largely because of its popularity and increased trust vested in it by Internet users. Also, I can't think of an example where it's a good idea to ignore WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, WP:C or WP:CIVIL.

Nevertheless, I don't think it's necessary to expand this policy. I'm not convinced there's a problem that needs to be solved, and I think that, once we start adding hedges and exceptions and various "if"s, "and"s, and "but"s, we open the door to instruction creep. This policy's power lies, in part, in its simplicity. I don't see a compelling reason to open the door to arguments about which rule is or is not an exception to IAR. Every Wikipedian eventually reaches a point where they understand what this policy is about, and then it's really not a problem.

I haven't seen a singe example of someone trying to use IAR to get around those fundamental policies you name. It would be quite a trick to argue that one is improving Wikipedia by contradicting its basic mission, by violating copyrights, or by being rude and uncivil. Should someone try to make such an argument, it would be very easy to answer them, and you could do so with the confidence that every experienced Wikipedian would back you up. Should we become flooded with such arguments, then we might have a reason to start adding explanatory text to this policy, but that would be a sad day that I don't see coming anytime soon.

When I tell my non-Wikipedian friends about this policy, they say "Wow, I didn't realize Wikipedia was that cool; I thought it was uptight and bureaucratic," or something like that. I don't want to have to tell them that this page has started go grow fine print and legalistic mitigations and exceptions. This policy is, in a sense, the heart of the whole "Wiki way" - let's let it be that. -GTBacchus^(talk) 08:01, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggested revision of policy

It seems rather odd to simply ignore rules that are quite possibly defunct and detrimental to the encyclopædia, instead of altering or deleting/nullifying those obsolescent guidelines, or establishing them as such without community discussion - something this project is based heavily, if not entirely, upon. As it stands (as has been mentioned), there are a few cases in which this rule becomes rubbery, and might encourage vigilantism - something that really only causes more problems than solutions.

Therefore, could the policy be changed to something a little less self-empowering? The last thing we need is a one-man army. Blast 25,01,07 1714 (UTC -5)

This rule causes problems. It's also how a lot of people Learn to Stop Worrying and Make a Free Encyclopedia. I believe that as we come closer to finishing, the problems will start outweighing the benefit. But it doesn't need fixing yet. Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 17:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

"Finishing"? No. Wikipedia, like all encyclopedias, and like much content online, is never "finished". It's always growing and evolving... SchuminWeb (Talk) 17:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree, but it's not important. "If we ever were to come closer to finishing, the problems would start outweighing the benefit. But it doesn't need fixing now." Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 18:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Consensus and IAR

The consensus issue gets raised so often in relation to IAR, I wrote this essay: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, except for the one about consensus. —Ashley Y 00:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems that people frequently get scared by this particular rule. However, a person trying to invoke IAR has to put together some amount of his own argumentation to do so, so it is very rare that core policies would ever be ignored. Anyhow, it would seem to me that a proposal to ignore a consensus would have to have consensus itself, thus consensus is inherently immune. Thanatosimii 00:45, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure there are cases where consensus can be ignored. For example, with a fast growing user-base, the newbies will always outnumber the people who understand through experience which things work well. Stephen B Streater 12:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Since consensus is usually "rough" anyway, it is reasonable to dismiss the comments of people who are acting in good faith but clearly don't know what they're talking about in favour of the more well reasoned experienced users. IAR doesn't need to be used at all. --Deskana (request backup) 12:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe doing something on Wikipedia when there's a consensus that you shouldn't always leads to pain and suffering. —Ashley Y 04:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

IAR and COI

Should we amend IAR to accomodate WP:COI? Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 22:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Oops, it appears Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, except for the one about consensus already does that. Forget about it, Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 22:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Is this a valid application of IAR?

Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#General criteria #8 is "talk pages of pages that do not exist". I created Talk:New York and Long Island Traction Company with some notes to be useful for anyone who writes the article. Is this a valid way to ignore the CSD? See also Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 January 28#Talk:Long Island Electric Railway. --NE2 13:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I suppose, but why would you? It takes all of thirty seconds to make a decent stub as a placeholder if nothing else, and then you can note yourself all day on the talk page relatively confident in the fact that you won't get speedied. SchuminWeb (Talk) 15:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't even see how creating a talk page of a non-existent article is "ignoring" the CSD. There's no rule saying that talk pages of non-existent pages must be deleted, simply that if they're to be deleted, an AfD isn't necessary. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 January 28#Talk:Long Island Electric Railway: a similar page was deleted. --NE2 16:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I've commented at the DRV. It seems people are reading "may" and taking that to mean "must". On the other hand, it's quite easy to write a short stub and avoid the whole problem. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:21, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess that's a good point - I could simply say "The New York and Long Island Traction Company was a streetcar company in the U.S. state of New York." Or would that be too little to avoid a speedy? --NE2 16:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Add a reference, an external link, a few categories, a stub template, and maybe an infobox (if you can) and I can't imagine anyone trying to speedy it. --Deskana (request backup) 17:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

This is invoking lazyness

Recently, User:UtherSRG reverted my edit with the rollback link here and has outright claimed to use WP:IAR as the reason here:

Ah, but WP:IGNORE. I dislike having to manually edit the edit summary when there is a nice simple one-click "revert" capability.

In Stacey's case, she is, IMO, abusing this rule to avoid typing edit summaries by outright being lazy. Improving wikipedia is great and all but it's absolutely clear to me that this user is abusing this rule to avoid having to type edit summaries because of lazyness. A look at her contributions makes it abundantly clear that she doesn't use them and I'm sure she would invoke this for each and every one of them. (I dare not think how many other rules she ignores in suit with her lazyness.)

To make my point succinctly: this rule should not be valid for edit summaries over contended content. Content disputs, by nature, are heated issues and the incivility instilled by "ignoring all rules" shouldn't be tolerated.

More broadly: this rule should not be valid as an excuse for pure lazyness which I think Stacey is clearly

Though I'd sure like to have a perpetual "get out of jail free" card like this in real life! Man, that would make life so much easier. Cburnett 15:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI: I am male. Please don't be using female pronouns for me. :) If you look at my edit history, you'll see that I do way too much revert editing to put a manual edit summary in for reverts. The rollback feature performs this nicely for me, and more complete than my manual edits would be. (If you want me to manually enter them, you'll see more comments along the lines of "rvv", "revert", "I disagree", etc. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Your role as an administrator doesn't entitle you to revert other editors' good-faith, non-test edits without explanation (especially via the administrative rollback function, which is not to be used in content disputes).

Your citation of this policy is invalid, unless you can explain how your abuse of the administrative rollback function is necessary for "improving or maintaining Wikipedia." This page isn't called "Ignore all rules whenever you don't feel like following them."

I'm surprised to find myself saying this to someone who's been a Wikipedia sysop for almost three years. —David Levy 18:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've always thought manual edit summaries for edits that aren't basic vandal-whacking were understood to be mandatory, "per WP:CIVIL", in other words, that it's the polite thing to do. I'd be uncomfortable ignoring that "rule". -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, administrative rollbacks are automatically labeled "minor." As "a minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute," use of this tool in a dispute obviously is improper. —David Levy 02:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

My apologies on using the wrong pronoun. Cburnett 00:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed revision - Add the word "objectively"

I'm aware that the community will probably not tolerate a WP:IAR that is more than one sentence long. But we still need to incorporate the idea that this isn't a "subjective valuation" escape clause. As far as I can determine, that's the entire point of several of the present criticisms -- e.g. the people using WP:IAR for laziness/vandalism, or the and the IAR except consensus essay. To this effect, I propose that we insert the word "objectively" into the mix, linked to Wikipedia:Consensus:

"If the rules prevent you from objectively improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore them."

I think it would make it very difficult to exploit this rule, and would provide the checks of consensus on the quixotic landscape of personal opinion. After all, the claim can no longer be "I thought I was improving Wikipedia" -- it now has to be "I was improving Wikipedia." Thoughts? (I'd imagine there are some postmodernists out there who don't take kindly to the word "objectively," but hopefully they'll see mirth in the fact that the wikilink makes it a consensus reality.)

-- Drostie 18:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

As I've said before, IAR is not the same thing as a blank check to do whatever you feel like, and it never has been. It's a simple statement that the improvement of wikipedia takes precidence over the rules. If, however, we add one clause here to deal with consensus, we'll add another clause there to deal with whatever other problem, and then another word here and sentance there, and then the rules will take precidence over IAR. To prevent rulecruft, we need a simple philosophy without an "if this" or "but that" inserted. But as to your concerns about consensus, to invoke IAR you need to make a compelling case anyhow, so it is inherently impossible to validly invoke IAR to override consensus. Thanatosimii 20:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that we should formalize your policy of "to invoke IAR you need to make a compelling case anyhow." The rule doesn't say anything about compelling cases. It doesn't say anything about it being inherently impossible to override consensus. Those are our traditions, perhaps; but they are not part of the extant written policy. Someone is well within the terms of the current IAR policy if they decide to ignore consensus simply to improve Wikipedia -- and they are not required to seek consensus on what constitutes "improvement." -- Drostie 01:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand the desire to stay away from policy creep but this definitely needs to be better explained as my post in the previous section indicates and said by Thanatosimii above. This is not a blank check to do as you please but Stacey, a long standing admin, clearly has interpreted it as such.

If the single sentence must be maintained then may I suggest examples of what does not count?

• IAR is not an excuse to be lazy
• IAR is not an excuse to ignore content dispute procedures
• IAR is not an excuse to be incivil

Any of those fly? Something needs to be added to indicate this is not a blank check policy as it plainly reads. Cburnett 03:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

It plainly reads "improving or maintaining Wikipedia". —Centrx→talk • 03:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

And "improving" is very subjective. Cburnett 03:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Adding the word "objectively" does not make it any less subjective. In order for it to actually be objective, you would need to conceive a list of rules about how to "objectively" improve the encyclopedia. Linking to WP:Consensus is equally murky, and "improving or maintaining Wikipedia" must be the basis of any consensus. —Centrx→talk • 21:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's goals are pretty clearly stated. If within that context "improving" is subjective, we're using such a postmodern interpretation of language that all communication is pretty much impossible. Thanatosimii 04:35, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

If that's the case then I welcome your input on this example. Users like User:Oden and User:Ed g2s remove fair use images pretty much wherever and on sight. That's peachy for things that can be found with free licenses (pictures of living people) but what about non-free things like tv shows. Their claim is that fair use images hurt WP from being free while people like me contend that an image (regardless of legal status) improves an article and a single image per episode can be considered fair use (thus free as in beer & speech). So which is the "real" improvement to WP? All I can say now is that I wish this question were as simply as you flatly state that it should be because MANY hours have been spent (wasted?) on this very issue. Cburnett 05:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, you're right. I've had similar disputes with other people, and they raise the point that all nonfree images hurt wikipedia, and it's a foolish position. However, if they want to make a IAR claim about it, they have to provide an accepted reason why what they do improves the specific articles, and gashing a hole in one won't fly. Wikipedia's goals nowhere indicate that free images must be wiped out like that, therefore wiping them out cannot be justifiable improvement and thus good reason to invoke IAR. Thanatosimii 17:55, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

How would that be a foolish position? Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, and the producers of these television shows, and for many other kinds of articles, do wish to have a clean, pretty article on Wikipedia about the show, etc. and in some cases would release these images under free licenses. You may disagree with the position, but calling it "foolish" is itself quite foolish. —Centrx→talk • 21:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I am referring specifically to the position which views all unfree images as evil. There are times and places where there will never be a free version of a vital image. But then again, this is neither here nor there... Thanatosimii 21:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

My point was that "improve" isn't as clear as you make it out to be. None of the "anti-fair-use crowd" have invoked IAR — to my knowledge — but both sides heavily debate "improve" in a not-so-direct way. Cburnett 19:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I can see your point. Yet, I still believe that those are objectivly incorrect uses of the word "improve," given wikipedia's core principles. However, I can see why many wish to have some sort of conditions on this rule. IAR exists to stress the spirit of wikipedia over the letter of it's rules. Thus, I still think that we shouldn't insert small clauses into the rule itself, but I am not opposed to the notion of an exposition on the spirit of IAR, somthing like,
"IAR exists to deal with cases where following the letter of wikipedia's policies might damage certain articles. It is not an excuse to enforce your own opinions upon disputed content or perform any other acts in bad faith." Somthing like that?
However, I can also see that there are reasons to not have an exposition like that... the more complicated this rule is, the more likely people who prefer the letter to the spirit will take it literally and thus abuse the whole point of this principle. Thanatosimii 20:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Snipping from your comment and modifying the existing IAR:

The spirit of Wikipedia trumps its written rules and if the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia then ignore those rules as necessary to maintain its spirit.

Short, concise, and instills the idea that its not a blank check because being incivil, ignoring consensus, etc. goes against the rules and the spirit of wikipedia. Cburnett 21:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

If that were accepted, spirit would also have to link to Wikipedia:Five pillars, so that the term spirit of wikipedia is not abused in the same fashion as you fear improve may be abused. Thanatosimii 21:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Fine with me. Cburnett 21:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: removal of meta:Don't be a dick

This has been removed three or four times now on the grounds that dick is "profanity" and that using it is, as per the last edit summary, immoral. If this became an edit war, it would most definitly be on the "lamest edit wars ever" page, but there are a few points to make clear.

1) WP:NOT censored. Profanity is to be avoided if unnecesarry, and in this case the impact is quite neccesary to make a point on occasion with thick headed editors.
2) Moreover, if there is an issue with use of that word, take it up with the essay itself and propose a move. If you have a dispute over whether said essay's content is relevant to this page, you have a reason to believe it should be removed. If you don't like the name, get that changed.
3) It is ironic that it is the IAR page itself wherein this dispute is happening. I have always understood that part of IAR meant that if there was dispute over the usefulness/applicability of a rule, you adress it on the talk page, instead of repeatedly citing it in edit summaries. Or perhaps that's just me.

I'm not getting into a revert war, however in my experience said essay has been , when used very sparingly, the only thing capable of making certain editors get the picture that part of IAR means that they aren't allowed to ramrod their own views onto other editors by wikilawyering. Thanatosimii 20:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanatosimii, I'm with you. I think that the "don't be a dick" piece is highly appropriate for the IAR page, since it's one of those things that brings things into perspective again, as perspective so often can get lost on here. If someone can find a more eloquent way to phrase the sentiment, then more power to them. I think that they'll be hard-pressed to find one. SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:43, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

A pig, after having been cleansed, returns to its mire. Samuel Erau 09:39, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

In response to Thanatosimii, 1. It is not necessary, due to reasons that are somewhat explained on the talk page of the linked to article; 2. I have no real problem with there being profanity and even some unnecessary profanity distrubuted throughout Wikipedia, except where it comes to the point where I and other users have to view it in the normal process of examining the rules, policies, and guidelines of Wikipedia. Even though it is not clarified elsewhere, there should be a higher standard for those latter types of pages. And I suppose that this discussion might be the first to confront that need.; and 3. That may have been a rule ignorance liberty on my part regarding not resorting to this talk page sooner. I'm sorry if that bothered you. Samuel Erau 11:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The content of the other page is necesarry for this page, however, regardless of if you think the name is not. Sometimes the only thing that'll make a dense person understand is a good shock, and if you can suggest a better way to completely reorient someone's philosophy on editing to get them to understand that unhelpful behavior is not ok, feel free to object over there, but not here. Thanatosimii 20:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored - there's really no other way around it - well, except for ... uhh ... this page. Using WP:IAR to edit WP:IAR - interesting Daniel()Folsom |\^T/|\_C/|\^U/|^{(Can you help me with my signature?)} 00:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)