Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines

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This page documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
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Wikipedia has developed a body of policies and guidelines which have helped us over the years to work toward our goal of creating a (successful) free encyclopedia.

While we strive to build consensus, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and its governance can be inconsistent. Hence there is disagreement between those who believe rules should be explicitly stated and those who feel that written rules are inherently inadequate to cover every possible variation of problematic or disruptive behavior. In either case, a user who acts against the spirit of our written policies may be reprimanded, even if technically no rule has been violated.

However those who edit in good faith, show civility, seek consensus, and work towards the goal of creating a great encyclopedia should find a welcoming environment. Wikipedia greatly appreciates additions that help all people. A list of key policies and guidelines can be found at Wikipedia:Key policies and guidelines.

Contents

[edit] Sources of Wikipedia policy

Wikipedia policy, as documented on policy and guideline pages, comes from a number of sources. The most fundamental policy principles are the Wikimedia Foundation issues, which form the core of policy in all Wikimedia Foundation projects, including Wikipedia. These basic issues, such as NPOV, are generally considered to be beyond debate. Most other policies derive from consensus, which includes:

  1. Wikimedia-wide policy conventions that have been established among all the Wikimedia projects.
  2. Current conventions, practices, and standards, established over time by consensus among Wikipedia editors.

In rare cases, a consensus policy may be disregarded or construed in a binding way by:

  1. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, who has the ultimate say in any decision affecting Wikipedia. The Board may alter policy by adopting resolutions or policies. Some authority has been maintained by Jimmy Wales, the founder and Chairman Emeritus.
  2. MediaWiki developers and foundation staff, through altering the MediaWiki software code or server operation.
  3. Office actions by Wikimedia officers, employees, and attorneys. Office actions concern legal issues such as copyrights, privacy rights, and libel.
  4. Adjudications by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, which are considered binding.

Wikipedia policy and guideline pages are not in themselves the source of Wikipedia policy. They merely document Wikipedia policy derived from each of the above sources. By convention, the most significant and stable policies are documented in official policy pages such as this one. Policies that require more judgment and common sense by the editor are documented in guidelines.

The purpose of a written policy or guideline is to record clearly what has evolved as communal consensus in actual practice, rather than to lead editors prescriptively toward a given result. Wikipedia polices may change as consensus changes, but policy and guideline pages must reflect the present consensus and practice. The easiest way to change policy is to change common practice first.

Wikipedia guidelines
Content
Article Inclusion
Notability
Classification
Editing
Discussion
Behavior
Style
Manual of Style
See also policies

[edit] Policy-related articles

Official Wikipedia policy or proposed policy may be described in one of several different kinds of articles, including official policy or guideline pages, and non-official essay and proposal pages. There is not a strict classification; it is not problematic if a page is not in any of these groups, and indeed many pages in the namespace are not. It is important to note that this classification does not form a hierarchy between which pages can be "promoted" or "demoted". For instance, there exists no process by which you can "turn" a guideline into an essay.

See Template messages/Project namespace for the templates associated with each type.

[edit] Official policy articles

A policy article is similar to a guideline, only more official and less likely to have exceptions. As with guidelines, amendments should generally be discussed on their talk pages, but are sometimes forked out if large in scope. One should not generally make significant changes to policy without seeking consensus first.

[edit] Official guideline articles

A guideline article is any page that: (1) recommends actions that editors should either take or avoid; and (2) reflects consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page — although it is generally acceptable to edit a guideline to improve it. Disputes over the wording of a guideline are resolved by considering and discussing objections and counter-proposals and coming to agreement, often using compromise language; such a dispute does not "suspend" the guideline or "turn it into" something other than a guideline. People are sometimes tempted to call a vote on a guideline, but this is a bad idea because it polarizes the issue.

A naming convention or Manual of Style entry is a specific kind of guideline, related to proper naming, or the way articles should be written. Note that guidelines are subcategorized merely for convenience, and that there is no practical difference between several "kinds" of guidelines.

[edit] Non-official essays or proposals

Essays are opinion pages reflecting the views of an editor or a group of editors.

  • The term essay is used for many opinion pages that do not fall in the above categories.
  • Essays are neither policies or guidelines regardless of whether these represent a consensus.
  • Essays need not be proposed or advertised; you can simply write them, as long as you understand that you do not necessarily speak for the entire community. If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace.

[edit] Processes relating to policy, guideline, essay, and proposal articles

  • A process is a central and organized way of doing things, generally following certain policies or guidelines (e.g. the "deletion policy" tells us how the "deletion process" works)
  • A proposal is any suggested guideline, policy or process for which the status of consensus is not yet clear, as long as discussion is ongoing. Amendments to a proposal should be discussed on its talk page (not on a new page) but it generally is acceptable to edit a proposal to improve it. Proposals should be advertised to solicit feedback and to reach a consensus. A proposal's status is not determined by counting votes. Polling is not a substitute for discussion, nor is a poll's numerical outcome tantamount to consensus.
  • A historical page includes any process which is no longer in use, or any non-recent log of any process. Historical pages can be revived by advertising them.
  • A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus for acceptance is not present after a reasonable time period, for which consensus is unclear after a reasonable time period for discussion regardless of whether there is active discussion or not, or where discussion has substantially died out without reaching consensus. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. It is considered bad form to hide this fact, e.g. by removing the tag. Making small changes will not change this fact, nor will repetitive arguments. Generally it is wiser to rewrite a rejected proposal from scratch and start in a different direction.

[edit] Other types of policy or consensus-related articles

[edit] WikiProjects

WikiProjects often have subpages that explain how that project works, or gives best practices or recommendations for the articles within that project's scope. Since it is clear from their name that these are part of a project, these fall outside the classification of policy/guideline/essay/and so forth.

[edit] Feature requests

A feature request is anything that requires a change to the Wikipedia software. These should be filed on Bugzilla. One should never assume the developers will implement something without asking them first. Thus, if you propose something that requires a feature request to work, discuss with the developers first before asking community opinion on an issue that may turn out to be moot.

[edit] "How to" or help pages

A how-to or help page is any instructive page that tells people how to do things. These will of course be edited by people who have suggestions on how to do things differently. A how-to differs from a guideline in that the former explains how to perform a certain action, and the latter explains when or why certain actions are recommended.

[edit] How are policies enforced?

You are a Wikipedia editor. Since Wikipedia has no editor-in-chief or top-down article approval mechanism, active participants make copyedits and corrections to the format and content problems they see. So the participants are both writers and editors.

Individual users thus enforce most policies and guidelines by editing pages, and discussing matters with each other. Some policies, such as vandalism, are enforced by administrators by blocking users. In extreme cases the Arbitration Committee has the power to deal with highly disruptive situations, as part of the general dispute resolution procedure.

Some features of the software which could potentially be misused, such as deleting pages and locking pages from editing, are restricted to administrators, who are experienced and trusted members of the community. See the administrators' reading list for further information.

[edit] Other essays and discussions about Wikipedia

[edit] See also

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines"
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