 | This is an essay on Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and Wikipedia:Consensus. 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: Everything in our policies and guidelines came from an editor. Attempting to dismiss a long-standing rule because it was added by a particular editor, or to dismiss that editor's views because they were the one who inserted the rule, are not valid arguments. You are not mystically able to divinate consensus better than everyone around you. But editors experienced at shepherding our policies probably do better understand potential negative effects of your drive-by change and reverted it for good reason. |
The fallacy of the revelation of policy is the presentation of an argument that seems to suppose that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, or other principles and processes, are a form of holy wisdom mystically granted to and imposed upon the editorial community through divine revelation by an amorphous demigod of consensus. While no one actually believes such a thing, of course, it is quite frequent for someone trying to win against another editor to (sometimes cleverly) gin up logically weak but emotive and distracting arguments that ignore how policy and guidelines (P&G) are actually formed and why.
These facts have several necessary consequences that should be obvious; failure to notice and understand them (or, here and there, a desire to hide or skirt them) leads to a number of frequent but fallacious arguments that one should avoid making on Wikipedia.