Wikipedia works fundamentally by building consensus. Consensus
is an inherent part of the wiki process. Consensus is typically
reached as a natural product of the editing process; generally
someone makes a change or addition to a page, and then everyone
who reads the page has an opportunity to either leave the page
as it is or change it. In essence silence implies consent if
there is adequate exposure to the community. In the case of
policy pages a higher standard of participation and consensus is
expected. When there are disagreements, they are resolved
through polite reasoning, cooperation, and if necessary,
negotiation on talk pages, in an attempt to develop and maintain
a neutral point of view which consensus can agree upon. If we
find that a particular consensus happens often, we write it down
as a guideline, to save people the time having to discuss the
same principles over and over. In the rare situations where
consensus is hard to find, the dispute resolution processes
provide several other ways agree