[WikiEN-l] Can sweet reason still work on en:wp? Occasionally.

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/10/20 Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>:
> This is an important point. A proper application of IAR should go unnoticed
> -- at least, by everyone except the "rules are rules" folks who memorize the
> laws and are ready to deliver citations for all your transgressions whenever
> you step a quarter inch out of line. If what you did was a good idea and
> everyone agrees it was a good idea, nobody should even notice that it was
> against the rules or that IAR was necessary. Explicitly announcing that you
> are invoking IAR rarely accomplishes more than triggering "rules are rules"
> responses and starting up another round of the perennial IAR interpretation
> debates. (See what has happened in this very thread?)

In an ideal world, that is how things would work. We don't live in an
ideal world. What actually happens is people complain that you having
followed the rules and never get as far as reading your explanation.