Wikipedia:Dynamic tension
 | 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. |
On Wikipedia, we have many policies and guidelines. Dynamic tension is the concept that these social mores are not meant to be treated on their own, but as a group. Sometimes one guideline might seem to be more relevant, sometimes another. Sometimes two guidelines, such as Wikipedia:Build the web and What generally should not be linked, seem to advocate diametrically opposite goals. This is not intended to cause confusion, but to provide boundaries within which editors may use their own good judgement to improve Wikipedia. To ensure that editors are aware of these boundaries, it is highly desirable that such apparently conflicting guidelines appear together, on the same page. It is detrimental to the project to allow separate pages to develop which deliberately present only one side of an issue, as this is likely to mislead anyone reading these pages, and be abused in discussions when people "cite" such distorted guidelines to support their own arguments.