Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means

This is an explanatory essay about the Wikipedia:Ignore all rules policy. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

Shortcuts WP:WIARM WP:IAR? WP:IARMEANS

This page in a nutshell: Editing Wikipedia is all about making improvements, not following rules. However, WP:IAR should not be used as a reason to make unhelpful edits.

"Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind."

— Douglas MacArthur^[1]

"Rules are for fools."

— (As used by coaches/motivators)^[2]

"By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist."

— Robert Bringhurst^[3]

"The code is more what you call 'guidelines' than actual rules."

— Captain Barbossa^[4]

"The rules are only barriers to keep children from falling."

— Madame de Staël^[5]

"Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum."

— Darwi Odrade^[6]

"Be a sinner and sin boldly"

— Martin Luther^[7]

"Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men."

— Douglas Bader

"This policy, at its core, exists so that editors can make contributions and implement decisions that will undoubtedly improve or maintain Wikipedia, and without having to worry about every single rule, guideline, standard, esoteric courtesy, norm, nook, or cranny that might stand in the way. Following Wikipedia's policies, rules, processes, and guidelines is a very important thing to do. However, situations will arise that, given its impact or urgency, will absolutely warrant those rules to be given significantly less weight or no weight at all when it comes to stepping in and taking appropriate action. If a reader sees an abusive, threatening, or malicious edit to a page that outs another editor, we'd obviously want them to remove it, right? I'm not going to care if the edit accidentally broke a template, set the formatting of a section to be off, or wasn't styled correctly...

This principle applies to situations far and beyond urgent situations involving abuse. This policy has allowed me to make enormous changes, improvements, and other fixes to many Wikipedia policy changes. Without it, I'd still be stuck on the talk page waiting for someone to respond to my proposal. It would take months if not years to make it through all the red tape so that I could make those improvements. In the end, rules are important and necessary when used within the right context and environment. This policy gives us the power to prioritize improving or maintaining the project over the need to follow 100% of the rules on here..."

— Oshwah