User:Born2cycle/You can't change the guideline first

Sometimes arguments are presented in discussions that are contrary to policy or guidelines. In such cases, a common retort is, change the guideline first. Essentially they argue that if you think the policy/guideline is wrong or inapplicable, you should convince a consensus to change it first, then make the change in question accordingly. However, this doesn't work, because change on Wikipedia normally occurs bottom-up, since the guidelines and policies tend to reflect behavior more than they dictate behavior.

There are several reasons for why you can't change the policy or guideline first, but probably the most important is that we rarely have a true quorum deciding anything. Even on policy talk pages most decisions involve a handful or two of the thousands of editors working on Wikipedia. No one discussion can really establish true broad consensus. So it makes sense to change things one article, or a few articles, at a time. Then, if a trend is established, one can propose a change to the corresponding policy, guideline, MOS or whatever to reflect the new trend which establishes true broad consensus.

Another important related reason for allowing change at the article level contrary to guidelines (for good reason per WP:IAR) is that requiring policy/guideline/MOS change prior to change at the article level creates a Catch-22 situation: you can't change at the article level because doing so is contrary to the guidelines; but you can't change the guidelines because the guidelines accurately reflect what is going on at the article level.

So a proposal being out of line with policy/guideline/MOS is not in and of itself a good reason to object to that proposal, especially when someone proposing the change has given good reason to invoke WP:IAR. This is not subverting the rules, or being dishonest or irresponsible. It's the standard way to change things in WP. And, yes, it means inconsistencies during the transition stages, which can last months or even years.

That said, a consensus of those participating need to be persuaded at each step. Any controversial change - and going against policy/guideline/MOS is almost always by definition controversial - requires a discussion and establishment of consensus of those participating. It's just that in a discussion about a proposal properly based on IAR, any oppose argument solely based on the change being against the guidelines should not be given much, if any, weight.

Now, if changes contrary to guidelines or MOS are being made unilaterally, then that's a problem, though even then at least at first one can probably defend his actions per WP:BOLD. But once some objection is established, yes, discussion and consensus are required... on the individual change, not necessarily on the broader rule change issue. Consensus for a rule change typically does not happen until consensus is established for some number of individual changes, establishing a trend that shows broad consensus for the rule to reflect the new changes.

So, we need to persuade a consensus of those participating at each step. This applies even when there is a massive base of applicable articles, but we only need to take a few steps, maybe 2 or 3 articles, before we can discuss changing the guideline to reflect this change. Without that, we simply have no basis to change the guideline.