Wikipedia:Ignore rules, not consensus
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: When closing a discussion, realize how much policy, guideline, and practice supports your action. How much you are ignoring all rules should guide just how flexible or firm you are if the close is challenged in some way. |
On Wikipedia it is policy that If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.
(formatting in the original). We, rightly, celebrate editors who go about boldly changing the encyclopedia. However, Wikipedia is not designed around anarchy; it is designed around consensus. As a closer of discussions you are, at times, sitting at the intersection of those two policies. The solution that's best for the encyclopedia might not strictly be what the policies, guidelines, and procedures suggests and such times call for ignoring all rules.
In general the way to know you've successfully ignored all rules is that your action goes without being commented upon. It's no different when closing discussions. However, it's important when ignoring all rules to know just how many and which rules you're ignoring. The more you are following traditional policy, guideline, and practice when closing a discussion, the more you can, and should, stand your ground if challenged. Conversely, the more you are ignoring rules the readier you need to be to walk that close back if challenged.
This doesn't mean you ignore consensus and impose your opinion when closing a discussion. If you have something truly valuable to add to the discussion, the solution is to participate rather than close the discussion. However, as you evaluate the consensus formed you can change the consensus reached when you write the outcome. For example, maybe most participants in a deletion discussion about an album voted delete, but one late person suggested a redirect to the musician instead. Because there is policy behind redirecting rather than deleting, you are on pretty firm ground in invoking the fact that it's not a vote and closing the discussion as redirect rather than delete. Alternatively, if a discussion on an album comes to the conclusion that it's not notable yet but might be one day and should thus be deleted, you might be able to successfully ignore all rules by closing as draftify even if no one suggested it. However, you've not got nearly as much policy, guideline, or practice behind you with that close, and so if challenged you need to be prepared to undo your close without too much disagreement.