Well, it seems like you haven't had much exposure to Wikipedia's user-contributed 'guidelines', for which you should be thankful... Wikipedia has lots of rules to prevent their other rules from being refuted, giving leverage to insiders when discussing decisions. Case in point:

* Disruption to make a point, which would be used to shoot down Plan A - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:POINT

* Strict invocation of the rules - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:LAWYER

* 'Gaming the system' in general. See how they forbid pointing out contradictions in the application of the rules! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Gaming_the_system

I can see how the spirit of them was to lubricate discussion and decision making, but when you have such a complex etiquette which can be used to silence newcomers upon breach, you have just a recipe for abuse.