Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-24325144-20150106201659/@comment-1738746-20150123210956

AIdmeri wrote:

If there are no polices and only guidelines, then who is anyone to say an editor is adding something wrong? For instance, with over-linking. If it's only a guideline to link once in an article, then it's not wrong if someone links more than once in an article since it's only a guideline to link once, but it's not a policy that's to be enforced. This is where common sense needs to play a role. Overlinking just looks bad in an article, and adding extra links that were already present doesn't contribute more to the article so therefore it would be discouraged from doing. What I mean less forcing of the policies, is that people need to stop and ask themselves more often if the actions of a person are actually doing harm, doing nothing, or actually benefiting the article, as opposed to just blindly following the policies and assuming they're for the best.

New things will always pop up, new things that weren't discussed when the policies were first made, which is why they need to be able to retain a degree of flexibility to change over time, just as the community does.