Wikipedia:Interpret all rules
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
Wikipedia is, primarily, an encyclopedia. The community exists to develop rules and guidelines to limit abuse of editing privileges, improve the quality of articles, reduce conflict, and streamline and write the encyclopedia. These policies and guidelines are important, and much thought and debate go into each one. These rules exist in order to further the encyclopedia. It's acceptable not to know or even follow every rule, but deliberately ignoring rules is problematic.
One should always interpret the spirit of a rule. Those who make the rules (or guidelines) do not necessarily have the power to predict all possible cases, and in any case they might be wrong. Edit in a way that best achieves the goal of each policy, although that may sometime mean going against the letter. Even if a contribution violates the precise wording of a rule, it might still be a good contribution. Similarly, just because something disruptive is not forbidden in a written rule doesn't mean it's a good idea. Bad rules should be changed or struck down, never ignored.
Invoking the principle of "Interpret all rules" on its own will not convince anyone that you were right, so you will need to persuade the rest of the community that your actions improved the encyclopedia. A skilled application of this policy will achieve agreement, even if someone notices that you violated a particular clause of a rule.
