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This page in a nutshell: Common sense takes precedence over any policy. Be reasonable. |
If you feel that a rule hinders your ability to improve the wiki, use common sense and disregard the rule if necessary.
Guide
Rules are supposed to help improve the wiki in most cases, but they do not cover all cases perfectly. If your common sense tells you that ignoring a particular rule would benefit the wiki, then go ahead and ignore it. As a rule of thumb, if ignoring the rule goes against common sense, then do not ignore it!
Particularly, some editors tend to follow a policy simply because it is a policy, not because it makes more sense in a particular case. Remember that all rules are really just generalised guidelines, and you do not have to follow them all the time if you really think it is not improving the wiki.
Examples of when to use common sense
- User A has vandalised excessively. While waiting for an administrator to show up and handle the situation, User B may apply this policy and revert User A's edits, as long as they are vandalism. A rigid interpretation of the rules will run into trouble, especially if User A repeatedly vandalises the same page, as continued rollbacks would be a violation of RS:3RR. However, UCS would allow User B to remove the vandalism. This is common sense.
Examples of when not to apply UCS
- User C has just made a proposal that was rejected in the Watercooler. User C should not UCS and override RS:CONSENSUS, and perform that action anyway. This is also common sense.
- UCS should never be used to justify your viewpoint when others disagree with you. Your position might not sound very sensible to them.