Wikipedia:Policy dispute

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This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is kept primarily for historical interest. If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you should ask for broader input, for instance at the village pump.

A policy dispute occurs when an agreement cannot be reached regarding a policy or guideline.

An accepted or operational policy or guideline can not be declared "in dispute" unilaterally, compare: Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point:

• If you wish to change an existing procedure or guideline...
  • do set up a discussion page and try to establish consensus
  • don't push the existing rule to its limits in an attempt to prove it wrong, or nominate the existing rule for deletion

Which means declaring a policy or guideline to be in dispute can only be effectuated

1. if it can be demonstrated that there has been a reasonable effort to establish consensus;
2. if it can be established that there is a consensus that the best option forward is to declare the policy in dispute. This means broad consensus, for policy even very broad consensus.

All other attempts to declare a policy or guideline in dispute after it became accepted or operational will be considered vandalism or "highly disruptive egregious disruption".