User:Oblivy/tempsandbox

"I get the desire to purge content that comes from seemingly impure origins, but we are here to build an encyclopedia, not a monument to our personal discernment or high standards." Visviva

Are we supposed to do when rules run interfere with building an encyclopedia? Ignore them:

Ignore All Rules is policy. It's been policy since 2002.

Guidelines encourage us to occasionally Ignore all rules when dictated by common sense. Every guideline starts with the following note:

Even though WP:IAR, in discussions about whether an article should be included in Wikipedia, is may appear that it's not highly valued. These processes are often thick with acronyms for different rules and norms, each shorthand for a policies, or a guideline, or an essay. Participants often quote an essay about arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, which discourages arguments not grounded in policies or guidelines. So an argument based on ignoring those rules, while perhaps successful in extreme cases, may not be treated with much respect.

So why don't we celebrate Ignore All Rules? Are we afraid that Wikipedia will buckle under the weight of all sorts of nonsense articles which common sense says to include, but policy says to exclude? Are we afraid that arguments based on common sense will be too unwieldy to manage and close? What's the worst that can happen?

Ignore All Rules is a policy that is part of the fabric of Wikipedia, having existed in essentially the same form since 2002. It recognizes there are good reasons not to treat policies and guidelines as a monolith:
 * Policy and guideline drafting is a human endeavour and reflects human limitations. Even when a wording is adopted after thorough discussion it may be poorly drafted, or may be drafted in a way which overemphasizes certain aspects of the outcome.  This may be even more true where the discussion was contentious - the editors whose position was unsuccessful may have little interest in continuing to discuss wording, leaving the winners to draft the spoils.
 * Interpretation of policies and guidelines can be subjective. While some words are capable of just one meaning, that’s the exception rather than the norm. People reading a rule bring their biases about the meaning of words, and this can be magnified when an editor feels strongly about the suitability of an article, or a class of articles, for inclusion in the encyclopedia.
 * Policy is static, Wikipedia is dynamic - as the encyclopedia continues to expand and develop, situations arise which were not originally contemplated when the policy was drafted. While policies do evolve over time, the process can easily get bogged down by factionalism and intransigence among editors, resulting in imperfect wording being retained long after it has been shown to be flawed.

Some people say deletion is a good thing. We don’t need articles about petty things. But almost every article on Wikipedia is petty to someone, and common sense should dictate that the things people talk about, are the things people look for in encyclopedias. And we are here to build an encyclopedia, not a monument to our good judgment in purging articles we think don't meet rigid standards for inclusion.

So let's celebrate Ignore All Rules. Not so we can keep the vanity pieces, the rumors, the soapbox rants, and the fringe theories. But because we want to create an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia anyone can edit. An encyclopedia people want to edit. And a community that makes people feel like it wants them to edit.