Wikipedia:Fallacy of the revelation of policy

The fallacy of the revelation of policy is the presentation of an argument that seems to suppose that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, or other principles and processes, are a form of holy wisdom mystically granted to and imposed upon the editorial community through divine revelation by an amorphous demigod of consensus. While no one actually believes such a thing, of course, it is quite frequent for someone trying to win against another editor to (sometimes cleverly) gin up logically weak but emotive and distracting arguments that ignore how policy and guidelines (P&G) are actually formed and why.

These facts have several necessary consequences that should be obvious; failure to notice and understand them (or, here and there, a desire to hide or skirt them) leads to a number of frequent but fallacious arguments that one should avoid making on Wikipedia.

A policy or guideline is not invalid because a particular editor added it

Our rules did not come out of nowhere, and their appearance is not unknown. Every single word in our policies and guidelines came from the virtual pen of a Wikipedia editor, clearly identified in the edit history and usually with an edit summary explaining the addition, and more often than not a talk page record of consensus-building in support of the addition. The idea "That's not really policy since you wrote it" is simply nonsense thinking.

An editor's views about a rule are not invalid for having written it or part of it

This follows from the above, of course. Remember also that there are no "owners" or "vested editors" of any particular pages or material in them, and editors experienced in policy crafting are more aware of this than average. If an editor with more experience than you at a particular P&G page is defensive against your drive-by changes, assume the good faith that the editor has the project's stability in mind, and likely has a broader and more experienced view than you do about the potential impact of such a "pet peeve" change.

A policy or guideline is not bogus just because it isn't from Wikipedia's earliest days

Our PG&G material changes a little almost every single day. It's an organic, evolving system of self-governance. It is by no means a precondition of validity for a rule to descend, though mystified depths of ancestor worship and euhemerization, from the earliest editors in the start-up days of the wiki's existence. What matters is whether the policypages are "faithfully reflecting the community's view". (That means in the aggregate, not your personal view just because you're part of the community.)

A policy or guideline that documents actual practice isn't invalid for lack of an RfC

Wikipedia has nothing like an ecumenical council, determining by fiat what the wiki-Truth is. RfCs are not holy writ. Because of the large number of watchlisters of our P&G pages, stupid or self-serving changes to them generally do not survive, while provisions that do survive more than about a year presumptively do enjoy and represent consensus. If you attempt to remove one after about that long, the BRD burden is on you, not on whoever added the well-accepted line item you don't like. Remember that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and neither has nor needs an overly formal legislative/parliamentary procedure. Common sense is our guiding principle. While major new rules, and certainly entire new pages of them, are not created without some formal proposal, minor line items and clarifications to them come and go more organically and boldly. What matters is whether something in the P&G is faithfully documenting best practices that "reflect the consensus of the community", or is trying illegitimately to change those practices and consensus.

You and a few others disbelieving in a policy or guideline doesn't indicate a lack of community faith in it

Wikipedia is not a place for grandstanding by self-declared heretics or any sort of campaign for revolutionary reformation. We have the "Levels of consensus" (WP:CONLEVEL) policy for a reason, and it is frequently upheld and applied by our Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). If something has been in a P&G page for some time, odds are it represents far more editors than you and your friends from some topical wikiproject, which is apt to have some kind of specialized style it would like to employ that isn't actually appropriate in a general-audience encyclopedia. The community has been over this many, many times before. Not getting your way on some nit-pick is not cause for an RfC (much less multiple attempts to get what you want, which may be considered tendentiously disruptive). Remember this from the intro of the Wikipedia:Consensus policy: "Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity ... neither is it the result of a vote."

Refusal to abide by a policy or guideline just because you reject its premise or interpretation is apt to result in sanctions if your behavior is disruptive for other editors. Our most mis-cited policy is Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, an instruction that isn't taken as valid except when ignoring the rule is necessary to objectively improve the encyclopedia (i.e., in a way that other editors are mostly going to agree is an actual improvement). That meta-policy is an escape valve for when a rule has been poorly written, has not kept pace with actual consensus, or can't logically apply to some particular unusual case. It is not an excuse for doing whatever the heck you want just because you feel like it or because it better suits your viewpoint.

A related fallacy is belief that because you disagree with a P&G line item, and some other cluster of editors also disagrees with it, for completely different reasons, that you are "natural allies" against the P&G and represent proof that the P&G doesn't have consensus. This is just "battleground" thinking, and is irrational. Criticism A of something is not magically strengthened by an unrelated criticism B; they are severable matters. E.g., if you think that local-interest news stories should be good enough to establish notability of a subject, and someone else thinks that material that does not have significant, in-depth coverage of the subject should also count toward notability, that does not mean our notability guidelines are broken. It just means you're both wrong for different reasons, which the community will be glad to explain to you.

Someone else having written part of a policy or guideline doesn't mean it's your turn to preach your gospel

Wikipedia policies and guidelines are not places for schism or for staking out what The Real Truth must be. The community does not permit outright policy-forking at all and will resolve any conflicting editorial instructions through merger or deletion quite promptly. Even user essays that contradict widely accepted P&G material are typically deleted at MfD.

More often, someone wants to edit the content of an extant P&G page to reflect their own views and preferences (either idiosyncratically personal, or topically focused and probably tied to a wikiproject). But writing policy is hard; any change to a P&G page has the potential to affect millions of articles, and it requires experience to think such changes through, as to their rationales, their clarity to others, and the minimization of unintended consequences. If you would like to get involved in this aspect of Wikipedia, it is advisable to watchlist various P&G pages and participate for months on their talk pages, until you have deeply absorbed how they all interoperate. See also WP:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance. It is permissible for anyone to edit a policy page, but seldom a good idea, and most changes get reverted. The more messianic the tone of the would-be changer, the more likely and strongly other editors will resist. Our policies are grounded in reason and practicality, not passion.

Wikipedia's guidelines and policy also have experienced an instruction-creep problem (especially in the Manual of Style). For this reason and because after almost two decades Wikipedia has already worked out most of what it needs to address in its P&G, the community is today much more resistant to adding new rules than it was in the past. Most of the nonsense and the redundant rambling has also already been removed from them. There isn't much of a provision left in them that has not repeatedly withstood consensus challenges.

Some counter-points

• Just because a rule is old doesn't mean it's necessarily still exactly right. Consensus can and does change over time, and the encyclopedia has to adapt and evolve along with changes in its technology, in editorial community norms, in reader expectations, and in response to other factors.
• There's no exact deadline for acceptance as valid P&G material. While a year is usually a good bet, there have been cases in which some minor guidelines (e.g. narrow, topical naming-conventions pages, some of which might need to be re-classified as wikiproject advice essays) were edited without discussion and no one who cared noticed for longer than a year. Such drive-by changes usually get reverted eventually, and it's a sign that the changes never represented consensus when no one questions their reversion even months later. In a few cases, the erstwhile rule has gained enough attention or support in the interim that an RfC is necessary. In such cases, the questionable material usually ends up being removed anyway, since a rule should not be in a P&G page unless it represents a broad consensus of editors, either implicitly through observable editorial practice, or explicitly through an RfC or other proposal process.

See also

• Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines – the policy about policy
• Wikipedia:Consensus – the policy on how this all really works
• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid – an index of similar essays
• Wikipedia:Don't be a fanatic – an essay on actual instead of pretend zealotry