The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Wikipedia. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss on the talk page. Always remember to keep cool when editing. Changes to this page do not immediately change policy anyway, so don't panic.

This is the page for discussing the Ignore All Rules policy. Policy • Talk • Workshop • WIARM • UIAR • Versions	Shortcut: WT:IAR
Discussions on this page may escalate into heated debate. Please try to keep a cool head when commenting here. See also: Wikipedia:Etiquette. WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia Spoken WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaTemplate:Talk Spoken WikipediaSpoken Wikipedia articles v • d • e The spoken word version of this page is part of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, an attempt to produce recordings of Wikipedia articles. To participate, visit the project page. The Ignore All Rules page is frequently reverted in good faith. Don't be offended if your edit is reverted: try it out on the Workshop page, then offer it for consensus here, before editing the actual project page.
v • e

Archives (Index)
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7 Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12 Archive 13 Archive 14 Archive 15 Archive 16 Archive 17 Straw poll (permanently active) This page is automatically archived by MiszaBot II. Any sections older than 20 days are automatically archived.

Contents 1 Suggested addition to this policy. 2 Towards consensus 3 Wow. 4 Experiment 5 Listen to this policy 6 Ummm

[edit] Suggested addition to this policy.

I suggest adding the following text,

Users of this policy are expected to provide specific sound reasoning for why they acted that way, and should be prepared to be overturned and expect consequences should the community decide that the action was disruptive.

For two reasons... One, IAR as written often leads people to try and use it as a defence when the do something so stupid it ends up at AN/I or ArbCom. And I've never seen it accepted as a defence, so we should warn them that there might be consequences for abuse of IAR. For instance, you're not going to be able to use IAR to get out of a 3RR sanction unless you provide a really really good reason.

Second, some times IAR gets used without a clear explanation of why, leading to all kinds of trouble even if it was a correct use. We need people to know they're expected to explain their actions, and may be overturned. We don't want people using IAR without stopping to think good and hard about it first. --Barberio (talk) 10:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support: In my opinion, if an editor takes an action with the intent of improving the project, they should be expected to explain why they thought that action would improve the project. Unomi (talk) 11:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I am satisfied that WP:UCS would counter my concerns. Unomi (talk) 11:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose per KISS. Garion96 (talk) 12:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support: although I might replace the "be overturned and expect consequences..." part with "be overturned if the consensus prefers observing the rule" or somesuch. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. We're actually having this discussion again, and we've gone straight to voting?
  Editors should be able to explain any action if questioned, but there is no obligation to formulate or announce a special rationale when applying this policy. In fact, a major element of the policy is that one needn't worry about learning every rule (and determining whether it's necessary to ignore it) before editing. The notion that "we don't want people using IAR without stopping to think good and hard about it first" directly contradicts this longstanding principle.
  The policy already plainly states that rules are to be ignored for the purpose of improving or maintaining Wikipedia, and anyone who believes that this describes the type of problematic behavior mentioned above requires far more education than we can provide on the page. Other users intentionally abuse the policy and will continue to do so (regardless of its wording). —David Levy 14:16, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose You don't even need to know the rules to edit here, much less provide a sound reasoning for ignoring them. There is only one reason to ignore the rules anyways, and that is that they "prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia". Any reason other than that and you are better off seeking consensus at the policy talk page. ^Chillum 15:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - by invoking IAR intentionally, a user should (and most would) be prepared to provide reasoning, but not expected to do so, and it is assumed (since this is a wiki) that their actions can be overturned. Let's keep it simple please.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail} 18:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment directed to the Oppose votes above. I point out Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Disturbing_trend_in_Admins_to_rewrite_policy.2Fguidelines_by_fiat.3F where someone claims that IAR allows admin to change the rules arbitarly and without providing reasoning. Clearly, there are people who are long term editors who don't understand the limits to IAR. --Barberio (talk) 18:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Context is provided in the linked essays. KISS, Creep, Zen, Mu. etc. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose - IAR is fine as it is. It does not need any explanation or exegesis. And under no circumstances does IAR give admins carte blanche. Rather, as admins are much more familiar with the Byzantine complexity of Wikipedia rulecruft, they are much more likely to engage in wikilawyering and much less likely to invoke IAR. // Internet Esquire (talk) 20:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

• Any editor who invokes AIR should be prepared to respond when challenged. However, they need not justify their actions in advance. The best uses of AIR are the ones nobody notices because everyone thinks "good edit" and thinks nothing of it afterwards. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Could we PLEASE not have "suggested', "support" and "oppose" on IAR, at least? It's precisely the kind of bs that IAR is supposed to prevent :-P

Oh and by the way, this is already explicitly stated at WP:WIARM ;-) And it's not just "users of this policy". *ANYONE* can be questioned at ANY time, and they will need to provide a good rationale. If they quote a policy page verbatim, and the policy page just doesn't cut it at the time, they're toast anyway :-P . --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:27, 3 December 2009 (UTC) Boy, can I tell you stories!

No Kim, IAR is certainly not meant to prevent discussion, opinion, polling, or even short bold summaries of your position in a debate. It is meant to allow you to ignore rules that prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, and that is all it means. There is nothing wrong with the format of this discussion, I also don't think it is "bs". In fact I would say this discussion is has been productive and useful. ^Chillum 14:12, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

For a "discussion", there has to be a 2-way dialogue (note the "di" prefix ;-)). For a debate, similarly you do need to have a 2-way dialogue.

Of course, wikipedia is not a debating society. We're here to reach consensus and move on.

Most people putting their "vote" here have simply put down some words, and then walked off, not remaining to see what the response has been to their position. There has been very little attempt at dialogue, no attempt to reach a compromise, and thus 2 of the requirements for consensus have simply not been met.

It should be trivially easy to prove me wrong. If you are correct, simply point out:

• What changes have been made to the page.
• Which compromises have been reached.
• Which positions have been accepted by the participants on this page.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 21:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

You are presenting me with a false dilemma. It is entirely possible for productive communication to occur and there be no changes made to the page, nor a compromise reached. The position that has been accepted seems to be that the addition is not warranted. Also there is 2 way dialogue, someone has proposed something and people are responding to that proposal. The lack of threaded discussion is most likely due to everyone agreeing with each other. ^Chillum 20:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

So your position is that everyone is agreeing with each other; that is to say: there is unanimous consensus to not alter this or any other page in the manner proposed at this point in time?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 02:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Almost. Obviously there are a couple of people in support, but my point was not that but rather that the lack of back and forth discussion was likely due to the general agreement. What exactly are we talking about now? ^Chillum 03:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

So you agree that the supporters failed to initiate a continued dialogue, correct? --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:13, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, in answer to your question "what are we talking about now", let's write out some meta details. (you did ask for it ;-))

To me, reaching consensus is when people try to work together to find a position that is acceptable to them both. Even if some proposal or action is really bad, typically, it should be possible for someone gently explain to the proposer what the issues with his proposal are, and how to bring their actions more in line with common sense. I don't see any of that here, so to me it is fairly obvious that there is no consensus.

I'm using several methods to reach some form of consensus with you, as to which methods can best be used to, ah, reach consensus. My hope is that I can convince you (and possibly others) to use methods that are both more productive and that enfranchise more editors. On the other hand, I do not dismiss out of hand the possibility that you may have a point as well (people often do ;-).

As a first step, I'm determining where our positions differ, to figure out if and where compromise might be possible. At the same time, I've already explicitly stated how you can convince me of the merits of your current position; so should your position have merit, you ought to have an easy time of framing it to make it acceptable to me.

We have not yet established what your requirements are for methods-for-reaching-consensus, and how you measure successful-discussion, so that might be a priority in the near future.

If all parties are good at establishing 4 basic questions, I've found that consensus can usually be found in a relatively small number of posts (amounting to mere hours or days) . The 4 basic questions are: 1. What do I want? 2. What do(es) my peer(s) want? 3. What can my peer(s) say or do to convince me? 4. what can I do or say to convince my peer(s)?

I am currently systematically working on clarifying question 2. I have the impression that you believe there to be no issues, based on your current criteria. I think those criteria may be inconsistent or flawed, so I'm carefully approaching them using logic.

So that's the meta explanation for what I'm doing. Shall we continue? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a bit too "meta" for me. I don't think there is much need to continue. The consensus on this matter is abundantly clear, the proposal was rejected. I don't think every consensus requires a compromise, nor does a consensus require that all parties are satisfied, sometimes all that is needed is for a decision to be made. ^Chillum 06:19, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've been nice about this *so far*, but the fact of the matter is:

1. WP:POLL clearly states that polls do not form or represent consensus on their own.
2. That you are therefore currently, demonstrably, explicitly unwilling to work further towards reaching consensus, despite point 1. May I assume that that is not really what you want?

I will grant that the poll shows that proponents will likely need to dilute their position considerably for it to be considered acceptable. Either that, or they may be granted an alternative or be educated about an alternative. The idea is that we try to make sure they go home happy too. Surely you can't disagree with that? :-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 18:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with vote counting, people have made cogent arguments and a clear conclusion has emerged. As for point 2, you this is part of a pattern in your last three posts to me where you put words in my mouth. "So your position is that everyone is agreeing with each other", "So you agree that the supporters failed to initiate a continued dialogue", "you are therefore currently, demonstrably, explicitly unwilling to work further towards reaching consensus"

Here is a hint, if I mean to say something I will say it. Please don't attempt to infer points of view that I have not expressed. These loaded questions are not really helpful in our dialogue. I am not unwilling to work with others to find a consensus, in fact I have worked with them to find a consensus.

The outcome of the discussion is clear, there is a strong consensus against the proposal. Considering you have not even taken a point of view on the debate I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want the same people to express the same opinions in another manner? ^Chillum 18:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• If you pay careful attention to what has already been said by participants, you will note that the "proposed" text is actually already part of our body of policy and documentation; albeit stated at other location(s) in slightly different words. So far I have not seen any consensus to remove it.
• My stated position/point of view, both at the start of this conversation and re-stated and summarised in the section below (&&If you pay attention and check page history, both statements were written before your 18:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC) post.) is that the proposal is already part of of our best practices, but that I am certainly open to options on how to make this policy much clearer. I have also put forward some ways in which you can convince me otherwise, or ways in which cooperation might be possible to improve the wiki.
• I can find no clear conclusion or consensus that may have been reached. Perhaps I have missed it, please provide the relevant diff(s). I can then discontinue my own attempt at same.
• Paraphrasing someones position in ones own words is part of a common listening technique. Should I summarize or surmise your position incorrectly, the intent is that you can then correct me. This way we can cooperate to come to a good understanding of your position together. Perhaps you are accustomed to using (a) different technique(s) to reach an understanding? If so, I am patient, and willing to learn. --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Kim, your desire for leaving everyone happy is commendable. However, the initial proposal was to change this 12 word policy to something 4x longer. That seems to slightly miss the point.

Additionally/contextually, this thread was started based on a misinterpretation - nobody (afaict) has invoked IAR at the pages that led to Barberio starting the VPP thread..

Lastly (hopefully ;-), you objected earlier that there had been no dialogue. That would require Barberio to respond to any of the replies that were given to his proposal. Not only has he not responded to any, he (essentially) ignored the responses that had been given: David Levy had already stated "Other users intentionally abuse the policy and will continue to do so (regardless of its wording)." when Barberio made his 2nd&last comment: "[...] Clearly, there are people who are long term editors who don't understand the limits to IAR."

Discussing everything until every participant is satisfied is a good ideal to strive for, but this particular situation seems like a poor suspect for attempting to go to these lengths for. (read that vpp thread, if you haven't and are still in doubt). -- Quiddity (talk) 21:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I see. The VPP discussion branches out to several talk pages too. I'll read that all before posting back here. Thanks for calling my attention to that. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Kim, I am not sure what you are looking for. Something was proposed, adding some text to this policy, and the community rejected that idea. If you cannot see the consensus above then I am not sure I can help you see it. You are welcome to seek clarification from those involved, but as far as I am concerned the community has come to a decision and the issue is resolved. ^Chillum 21:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Towards consensus

@Barberio, JHunterJ (et al):

I wonder if we could still make you happy somehow:

Might you be willing agree that Use common sense covers your concerns, or otherwise that What Ignore All Rules Means covers your concerns? If not, how can they be altered to match your concerns? If so, could we subtly update WP:IAR to link to one or the other more prominently? --Kim Bruning (talk) 18:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

What Ignore All Rules Means would only work by being promoted to policy, or at least a guideline. Existance of this essay is cited as a reason why we don't need to add the commonly accepted limits to IAR to the page, but at the same time there's opposition (on frankly dodgy ideological grounds) towards making the essay into a guideline that people would actually accept. IAR does not really mean what the IAR page says it does in practice, and people who use IAR based on what it can be read as often find themselves in hot water. It's unfair to inexperienced admin to tell them they can "Ignore All Rules" when really they can't and if they do so they're going to find themselves in trouble.

The problem lies in ideological hangups about using the specific language Jimbo used, the "if we write it down then it's admitting we have a Bureaucracy" meme, and desire to "Keep things simple" even when the simple version is actually wrong.

All policy and guidelines should be clear and easy to understand. IAR REQUIRES you to read several other essays, none marked as guideline or policy, to understand what the IAR policy really means. And people refuse to make it easy to understand because they want to keep it simple?

I'd like everyone to read the page as is, and ask themselves a simple question. Reading this policy, and nothing else, would I be able to understand how the IAR policy works in practice on Wikipedia? Currently, the answer for me at least is a flat no. --Barberio (talk) 18:33, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wow.

This is a good, simple rule that I never thought it would survive to 2010. Perhaps there is hope after all. Sto lat! --99.245.206.188 (talk) 16:58, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, sure. "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." And be prepared for a lot of grief! Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 19:03, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

This causes a lot of grief sometimes, yes.--Father Goose (talk) 19:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Experiment

Okay ... my reading is that this will be uncontroversial, but tell me if I'm wrong. Without fiddling with the policy status, I'd like to add the Category:Wikipedia basic information subcat to this page, the one that WP:5P is in, since this is the 5th pillar. - Dank (push to talk) 19:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Works for me. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Listen to this policy

I'm wondering if we could consider removing the "Listen to this policy" box from this page. Partially because it rather overwhelms the page visually. Primarily because the recording itself consists of 40 seconds of audio, only 8 seconds of which is actually reading the policy text (the rest being preamble, date, url-location, and license). I believe these issues detract from the intended simplicity of this page.

Background: The only discussion I could see in the archives (from a cursory search) was Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules/Archive 5#Improved Audio --_Male, hi-fi. It was first added here. The sound file is listed at Wikipedia:Spoken_articles#Wikipedia-related, and the only one of those that is as short, is File:Theres no common sense.ogg (40 secs, currently unused anywhere).

Thoughts? -- Quiddity (talk) 20:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps a shortened version. Maybe,

 Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at E N dot wikipedia dot org.  Recorded on <date> by <username>.   This page documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.  If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. 

--The New Mikemoral ♪♫ 21:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a lot of purpose for this sound recording, whether shortened or not; it seems to me to be rather a gimmick. There is also the fact that it announces a date in the past for the version it gives, and refers us back to the page for the current version, which is circular. I am fully in favour of removing it. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't figure out what they are in aid of either. Anybody who's blind will use a decent speech synthisizer which will give the current version. Dmcq (talk) 11:25, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it is not needed. Audio playback makes plenty of sense for articles, but anyone who is reading policy pages must be participating in a talk page somewhere and thus have some means of reading text or they would not have gotten that far. It does overwhelm the page. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

That's an excellent point, and I don't care for the recording (particularly the confusing pronunciation of "en" as "n" and reference to a project page as an "article"). So yeah, let's remove it. —David Levy 16:20, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thinking about it I suppose it is furthering wikipedia's mission if people can listen to the article pages. I'm sure though that would be better done on the fly by a special browser like blind people use. I suppose one might want to do something special for featured most important articles but that's about it as far as I can see. It has made me wonder about a special browser which 'translates' for illiterate people though. Dmcq (talk) 16:30, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ummm

Could an administrator clarify: is this page a joke?
"Rule:Ignore all rules!"
Should I earmark it for deletion?
Even if this is actual policy and this is considered spam then ... well...it isn't because I was following the ignore all rules policy.
Mod mmg (talk) 04:28, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

You obviously have misunderstood the policy. Did you read no further than its title?

I suggest that you read the actual policy (all one sentence) and Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means. —David Levy 04:40, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I know the actual content of this policy is very long, but the title alone is not enough reading to get this. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 07:36, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Not spam; just a misunderstanding. This is so far from being a joke; it's one of Wikipedia's five pillars. It's how we got here. -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:43, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

So.... like.... It is a real policy?

Mod mmg (talk)

Indeed.

• One of the take home messages is that policies aren't rules. (if they were, the policy would be self-contradictory, and thus that particular interpretation is logically impossible. It's a western-flavored-zen thing).
• "if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia..." ,Another take home message is that it is our objective is to make a wikipedia, and (in some versions) to be nice to people. Our objective is not to follow rules.

We certainly sometimes use rules, policies, best practices, etc, but they are not our objective; that would be putting the cart before the horse. People sometimes get confused about which is our objective (seriously!); hence the need for clarification. --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree, and agree(different parts). Ignore all rules is not about our rules not being rules. If you flout them then you end up with a block based on that rule, you can say they are not rules whatever you call them the end result is the same. Ignore all rules is about ignoring rules if they prevent you from improving or maintaining an encyclopedia. You say self-contradictory, logically impossible, zen... but I ask how can a rule that allows you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia itself prevent you from improving or maintaining the encyclopedia? If one only read the title then yes I can see why one might see a contradiction, but if you read the content you will see the simple condition required by IAR that the ignored rule be preventing you from improving or maintaining and encyclopedia prevents this contradiction. The basic idea is that the rules are there so that we can create and encyclopedia and as such they should never be put before the goal of creating an encyclopedia. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 03:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)