User:Silence/What is a policy

Wikipedia policies are not Wikipedia's goals or ideals
Policies do not tend to accurately or explicitly codify the ends, or goals, of the encyclopedia; rather, policies focus on the means for attaining those ends. For example, Verifiability is not in fact a primary aspiration of the project &mdash; accuracy and usefulness of information are. An encyclopedia that only cared about maximizing 'verifiable' facts would become little more than an atlas collating data from secondary sources. Wikipedia tempers its desire for verifiability with its desire to be useful (hence it does not demand usually that truly obvious facts be sourced) and truthful (hence it does not treat all secondary sources equally, but invents a concept of "reliability" of sources by which it tries to consistently exclude sources that are more likely to be misleading and inaccurate). This is because verity and utility are two of Wikipedia's true highest goals, and policies like verifiability only exist as tools to attain those ends.

The reason Wikipedia does not have many 'philosophical' or 'idealized' pages, and instead places its emphasis on practical policy, is because Wikipedia's goals are often so broad and sweeping that they people's interpretations and implementations of those goals would differ widely. On an Age of the Earth article, for example, some users might decide that the best way to be "truthful" is to quote their preferred sacred text verbatim, while others will consider scientific accounts to be more accurate; on the issue of benefiting people, if the inclusion of a controversial image of Muhammad is being debated, some might consider it Wikipedia's humanitarian obligation to suppress the images to prevent possible further loss of life, while others might argue that censoring the image causes readers more harm than good. There would be no obvious way to adjudicate between these opinions, without debating people's world-views at such length that everyone finally comes to complete agreement despite their radically different cultural backgrounds.

Policies sidestep world-view entirely, by setting forth a legalistic code of conduct rather than making all its philosophical and moral principles explicit. And the sole reason this is done is pragmatic: Users edit Wikipedia for a wide variety of reasons, and few have a set of priorities and values which exactly mirrors Wikipedia's aspirations in every respect. By an act of misdirection, Wikipedia fools editors of all different world-views into furthering Wikipedia's own goals, by authoritatively demanding compliance with certain rules rather than trying to reason with people until they accept all of Wikipedia's goals as their own.

Wikipedia policies are not descriptions of current behavior
Policy pages are an attempt by a relatively small group of editors to codify what general practice on Wikipedia should be. They are only partly guided by actual editors' behavior, and even then only because they are pragmatic devices, and must be tempered by the facts in order to avoid becoming uselessly unattainable idealizations.

No substantial efforts have ever been made to do a sociological study of what really goes on in Talk pages &mdash; and if such a study were done, it would be nearly useless for constructing policy, since policy is not a neutral description of Wikipedian activities, but rather a prescription for how Wikipedians should act. One would hope that there is a great deal of overlap in these two aims, i.e., that Wikipedians usually do behave as they are supposed to; however, for the purpose of constructing policy, this is almost entirely beside the point, since a policy that is violated frequently does not thereby become any less binding than one that is rarely violated. In fact, a policy that was almost never completely followed would still bear no less authority as a result.

Wikipedia policies are heuristics
Wikipedia policies are heuristics, or rules of thumb, designed to provide shortcuts in editorial discussions so that disputes may be quickly and easily resolved. Rather than re-arguing for neutrality every time a dubious point of view is advocated, editors are able to invoke a magical formula, the barely meaningful words "N P O V", to coerce compliance.

Wikipedia policies are mantras
As conceptual shortcuts, Wikipedia policies serve as reminders of proper conduct. When an editor cites a policy, she is reminding both other users and herself of the proper modality of editing. In this sense, policies are mantras which guide good behavior by their formulaic repetition.

There is no expectation, for example, that editors will be able to consistently or unequivocally assume good faith about people who they have never met. However, by continually reminding themselves and others of this "assume good faith" mantra, their behavior becomes at least somewhat more civil and charitable, which diffuses many potential conflicts. That this is simply a psychological device, and not intended as a factual description of reality, can be shown by the fact that "good faith" is not necessarily something that all new users will be operating under. The goal of a mantra is not to repeat a fact so frequently that one learns it by rote; the goal is to repeat a behavior-guiding idea so frequently that one acts more appropriately.