User blog:Pelinal Whitestrake/The Necessity of breaking Policies to ensure they will not be broken in the Future

Hello. As many users of this wiki already are aware of the fact that there is a large discussion about the future of this wiki, espescially in regards to it's current and future governments, policies and the actions necessary to enforce them, I have decided to provide a blog about the situation in which I will also state my opinion on the matter in reflect to surrounding situations and opinions. The entire current affair's reason for existance can be tracked back to the resignation of the only active system operators, Ghost Anubis, EbonySkyrim and TombRaiser and the controversial blocking of the user SuperSajuuk conducted by the administrator Kennyannydenny and based upon the repeated breaking of policies stating the requirements and terms for the Admin-nomination, something which has been publically frowned upon.

Background
As I mentioned above, the situation reaches back to the sudden and unexpected resignation of the above mentioned administrators, Ghost Anubis, EbonySkyrim and TombRaiser and the controversial blocking of the user SuperSajuuk.

On the 16th of January, the users Ghost Anubis and EbonySkyrim unexpectedly resigned, with reasons stated as being due to lost interest. Shortly after that, the administrator TombRaiser resigned as well. This came as a shock for the community, as those administrators were the only ones who were clearly active (except in the case of TombRaiser). Before this, both administrators were extremely stressed out, due to them single-handedly conducting a revision of the entire wiki's functions, including the policies.

This, naturally, led to the community becoming concerned about the future leadership/government of the wiki and the continuation of earlier mentioned reforms and revisions. Eventually, several discussions in the wikis chat concluded that the lost admins had to be replaced as soon as possible to prevent the wiki entering a state of leadership stagnation and potentially Anarchy, as the lack of any active authority capable of placing users into new staff member roles would in the short-term cause the leadership of the wiki to stagnate and therefore become less flexible, while in the long-term more and more current staff members would leave until barely anyone with the capabilites of enforcing the policies of the wiki is left, causing a state of Anarchy.

Following those agreements, the user ShawnHowellsCP suggested a nomination for the position of administrator to the user SuperSajuuk, who agreed to it. Due to timezone issues, however, was ShawnHowellsCP unable to create said nomination by himself, which made SuperSajuuk conduct that step. The created nomination was broadly supported by the community, followed by seven support votes and only one oppose vote.

A day later, the administrator Kennyannydenny went unexpectedly active after a three months lasting period of inactivity, removed SuperSajuuk's nomination to the post of Administrator and blocked him for the duration of two weeks, with the reason being stated as: " For breaking three site policies whilst nomination yourself for admin."

This was followed by a public outrage about the blog, partially conducted on the talkpage of the admin, the wiki's chat and partially on the recently created Consensus Thread for the removal of Kennyannydenny's admin rights.

Necessity of breaking (illogical) Policies
The discussion about the future government of this wiki shifted from that topic to the potential necessity of breaking policies, espescially due to the more recent events involving the user SuperSajuuk being blocked. Personally, I am an avid supporter of the idea to break, in reflection to the events surrounding the current situation, 'illogical' policies in order to ensure that those policies can be effectively and publically enforced when the situation has calmed down.

While it may seem, at first, to be counter-intuitive, breaking policies in order to ensure their future enforcement is necessary in this precarious and dire situation. Policies always have the best in mind for the larger community, but the problem is that it is logistically impossible to create a policy for every possible event and situation which can come to be. That is where the leadership which either created those policies and/or is enforcing them steps in and judges upon their own reflection of the surrounding situation whether an action is to be allowed. The major problem with this is that as soon as the earlier mentioned enforcers of those policies fall away, and if it is explicitly stated within the policies that only said leadership may give exception to them and/or is in complete control of those, those policies can affect the community negatively with it's efforts to rebuild said leadership. If this happens, it is required to use common sense.

As the diagram on the right side (from Wikipedia) shows, a user may have a good idea which can positively influence the cause of an encyclopedia, in this case this wiki. If said idea may break the rules, another question is to be asked: "Is that because the rules are wrong?".

This is an extremely important question in regards to the current situation. The policies of this wiki were in the process of a revision based upon events which happened several months ago; furthermore, an extraordinary event for which no policy exists (yet) requires common sense to be used. The lack of any active administration has, clearly, never been considered to be a future point of concern, which is why there is no clear policy about that and no clear addendum to an already existing policy dealing with this.

The only logical follow-up to such an odd and extraordinary situation is the usage of common sense. If there is no policy dealing with the situation, and other policies stand in the way of the process of correcting earlier mentioned situation, then those policies have to be disregarded in respect of common sense and in respect of realizing the issue of those policies and making sure that those issues will be corrected and enforced in the future.

The wiki's situation is as follows: There are no active administrators, and the lack of policies dealing with such a situation plus the existance of policies standing in the way of retification for the lack of administrators stands in conflict with the possible actions which can be taken. Therefore, the only way to remove the problem and also ensure that the policy itself can be continuously enforced is to break it.

The problem is that certain administrators, currently Timeoin and Kennyannydenny, and even according to some rumours a certain past administrator, do not agree with this and instead want to continue enforcing the pre-existing policy while completely disregarding the fact that those admins are only sporadically active and have next to no known relationship to the community, which was attempting to retificate the mistake caused through their inactivity.

This is why I want to call the community and (remaining) leadership of this wiki out: '''The only way to resolve this situation without driving the wiki into a state of stagnation and anarchy is to use common sense. '''

I'd, naturally, appreciate a discussion.