On Tue, 26 May 2009, Fred Bauder wrote:
You're preaching to the choir. Often when we want
to do the right thing,
we are confronted with a demand for a rule, or presented with one,
typically "no censorship". There is no substitute for doing what is
appropriate in the circumstances. Trying to codify that principle is
futile, although Ignore all rules comes close.
IAR is particularly subject to wikilawyering in this situation. It says that
it applies when a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia.
This can be easily interpreted to mean that any use of IAR must improve
Wikipedia itself, and that considerations outside Wikipedia (such as BLP
and other issues related to avoiding harm) are ineligible for IAR.