 | 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. |
 | This page in a nutshell: The rules are a communication device written by you, not a textbook written by someone else Wikipedia works best when everyone makes an effort to follow the rules, including and especially those they don't like |
In that all pages belong to the whole project, any user may edit this one. But it's generally more helpful (and polite) to discuss the proposed change on its talk page first.
Wikipedia has policies, guidelines, documentation on use of templates etc. and lots of other things that might be seen as rules. But Wikipedia's strangest and perhaps most important policy is Ignore all rules. What! Then why even have them?
We have them because these rules are useful in building an encyclopedia. And on closer inspection it's not as strange as it seems, mainly because the Consensus policy is stranger still (see wp:Creed#consensus). And these two, supported by Assume good faith and No personal attacks have proved remarkably successful. Not perfect, but definitely towards that top end of the scale that runs all the way from perfect right down to useless.
This usefulness would be reason enough to have the rules. But it goes further. The smart money is, the rules are essential. Those four rules in particular:
- Consensus.
- Assume good faith.
- No personal attacks.
- Ignore all rules.