(Thinks Dave with gleefully spinning mental gears:)
Oh good - someone else questioning the difference between rules and guidelines.
My philosophy is this: If I need to do any “police work” - policy enforcement, etc., then I have not finished creating a system whose beauty can be maintained, and I need to do more work to eliminate the need. The “rules” are intended to inspire, not to constrain. It fits right in with my overall outlook that people who make up rules and then have to spend time enforcing them are foolish. Better to provide guidelines and estimates of one’s own behavior in cases where the guidelines are broken - don’t commit yourself to enforcing the rules. This comes from my disdain for the use of my tax dollars to enforce idiotic rules like “teacher permanence” here in the states, and the government’s list of “illegal substances” and wars on various “evils” they invented like the drug trade and terrorism… etc. etc.
Ok, sorry, I kind of took advantage of your question as a soapbox. I hope you enjoyed my little essay.
Anyway, to follow my own advice here’s how I use the rules er I mean guidelines: If I like two pieces about the same and one of them breaks the rules, I’ll pick the one that followed the rules. That is in deference to those who put in “extra work” to follow the rules, as well as StarLizard, who creates the contests. In real life, though, I think I would go the other way because I don’t think people break rules enough - especially those that don’t do us much good, which are most of them. Eating from the tree of knowledge, for example