Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules, except for the one about consensus

I created this because it's my opinion and it seems to be the opinion of a number of people on Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules.

my 2 cents

um...coming from an IAR perspective, i wouldn't be too big of a fan of exceptions. JoeSmack ^Talk 05:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The whole point of IAR...

...is that it's short, simple and to the point. Of course there are exceptions — consensus isn't the only exception, nor is it even the most important — but if you start listing them all, it gets stupid. Compare:

Ignore all rules.

with

Ignore all rules, except when there is consensus not to do so, or the rule in question is NPOV, or copyright issues are involved, or the Foundation tells you not to, or Jimbo tells you not to, or the Arbitration Committee tells you not to, or it's against the law to do so, or you're just doing so to be disruptive, or...

See? – Qxz 08:49, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

"Consensus" really is the only exception, all the rest come under the heading of "improving or maintaining Wikipedia". Consensus prevents you from doing something you think is improving or maintaining Wikipedia, but really isn't. —Ashley Y 09:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

What if there appears to be a consensus on including libellous unsourced information against the biography of living persons policy. While if you took the time to get other editors involved, you may eventually get a consensus to remove it, surely it would be better to remove it straight away. This would be ignoring consensus for the good of the encyclopaedia (i.e. reducing the change of Wikipedia getting sued). Trebor 11:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

If there is consensus that information is not both libellous and unsourced, it should be left in. If that hasn't been discussed yet, then it should be removed until consensus on this issue has been obtained. —Ashley Y 19:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but if there is consensus among the participants to the discussion so far, perhaps because they misunderstand policy or just want to be disruptive, then it is still worth removing. Even if other people come in later and agree it should be removed, you'd be acting against consensus at that time, but it would be for the good of Wikipedia. Trebor 19:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

This sort of thing is discussed on WP:Consensus:

"At times, a group of editors may be able to, through persistence, numbers, and organization, overwhelm well-meaning editors and generate what appears to be support for a version of the article that is actually inaccurate, libelous, or not neutral, e.g. giving undue weight to a specific point of view. This is not a consensus."

—Ashley Y 21:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, fair enough. In that case, I pretty much agree with the essay; I think ignoring rules should be done consciously and with general consent. Trebor 21:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The whole point of IAR is to encourage WP:BOLD. If every editor had to check with other editors to make sure an edit does not go against consensus, nothing would ever get done. Yes, it's common curtsy to check about something, but not mandatory. When an edit gets reverted, that is when you check for consensus. Yes, that means we have to constantly revert AGF attempts at removing the Jyllands-Posten cartoons even though there is a huge consensus on keeping them. That does not mean that we should ban people that removing them once.

(On a side note, I wanted to write something along this line of thought, except it was "WP: Ignore all rules, but not laws", as laws are really the only thing that can't be ignored)--Rayc 06:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Very true, but nothing in this essay says otherwise. —Ashley Y 08:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

hmmm...

This page in a nutshell: If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, and there's no consensus against it, ignore them.

...this sounds like WP:BOLD almost exactly. JoeSmack ^Talk 22:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

A different proposed revision

I have posted a suggestion on WT:IAR, which kind of goes to the same point as this. It dodges the criticism about "IAR should be short," but provides an important call for consensus that the present WP:IAR simply doesn't have. My proposed revision is:

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

The insertion of the word "objectively" linked to WP:CONS seems to make it clear that consensus is important and improvement is an objective quality to be assessed by the community.

I ask that any comments or criticism of this idea be redirected to its thread on WT:IAR, to keep the body of comments all in one place.

-- Drostie 01:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)