Wikipedia:Semi-policy

Wikipedia has a number of things that, for whatever reason, are not policy, but that still have a level of precedent or support that lends them some measure of validity. Some of these got significant majorities of the votes, but failed meet the threshold of consensus. Others were never passed, but have still been cited by the arbitration committee. Still others are inferrable through assembling scraps of things on existing policy pages. And, finally, some are just tradition that's never been challenged with any effectiveness.

This accounting is not provided as a way of trying to stealthily make things that are not policy into policy - rather, it is an attempt to catalog a bunch of stuff that, previously, has existed in an unspoken gray area on Wikipedia. The end result is that these things now exist in a spoken gray area. There is, obviously, no consensus on whether or not it is acceptable to follow semi-policy. But, historically, all of these things have been followed without comment at least some of the time.

Some call semi-policy Calvinball because it allows failed proposals to be retroactively claimed as "policy-like" by a minority of users.

However, the following comments made by User:Raul654 in IRC may be instructive from the practical standpoint of conducting one's behavior on en.wikipedia.org in such a way as to avoid being banned:

Raul654: Oh, while I am here, I'd just like to inform all of you of something
Raul654: Several members of the arbcom and Jimbo himself seem to agree with me on this
Raul654: (Jimbo explicetely agreed, actually)
Raul654: Not all of Wikipedia's rules are written down. You may be banned for violating unwritten,
community standards
Raul654: There is no explict rule that says not to edit war on the main apge
Raul654: Anthony got banned for it
Raul654: It's very simple - use common sense.
Raul654: Common sense says not to edit war on the main page
Raul654: If you do it, you do it at your own peril.

However, the following comment also made in IRC by another user may also be instructive:

JimboWales: This page (semi policy) is misleading in several small but important ways, I think.

In the interests of recursion, no effort has been made or will be made to make any aspect of this page - including whether or not semi-policy is in any way or to any degree binding, acceptable, or anything else. This page is itself semi-policy, and thus has exactly as much legitimacy as all of the things listed on the page - however much that is. There is no consensus about the level of respect that semi-policy deserves. Some argue that this means it deserves none at all - policy is policy, and things that are not policy are, simply, not policy. Others dislike the reductionism of things falling into "policy" and "forbidden," and note that these are simply things there is no consensus on the acceptability of - after all, there is just as little consensus against them as there is for them.

• Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks did not pass a vote, but has been cited numerous times by the arbitration committee as a directive, typically when they are putting a user under personal attack probation.
• Wikipedia:What is a troll did not pass, nor has any other attempt to define trolling. However, users have been banned by Jimbo for trolling. Note that any attempt to give sysops the power to ban obvious trolls has generally been roundly rejected.
• Under normal circumstances, a user may only be hard banned by the decree of the arbitration committee or Jimbo. However, User:Mr. Treason was banned without consulting either of these sources, after a long stream of personal attacks, legal threats, and, finally, death threats. This ban has not been reversed or challenged, and thus there are grounds to believe that the banning policy allows for bans in extreme cases. Note that this ban was not performed unilaterally - it was discussed in IRC among several users, both sysop and non-sysop, before being put into place.