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Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines

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WP:PG
This page documents a procedural policy of Wikipedia. WP:101

WP:RULES

WP:POLICY

WP:GUIDELINE

This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are pages that
serve to document the good practices that are accepted in the Wikipedia
community. This policy describes how WP policies and guidelines should
normally be developed and maintained.

Policies and guidelines

Principles

Five pillars

Ignore all rules

Core content policies

Content policies

Article titles

Biographies of living persons

Image use

Neutral point of view

No original research

Verifiability

What Wikipedia is not (Not a dictionary)

Conduct policies

Civility

Clean start

Consensus

Dispute resolution
Edit warring

Editing policy

Harassment

No legal threats

No personal attacks

Non-discrimination policy

Ownership of content

Username policy

Vandalism

Other policy categories

Deletion

Enforcement

Friendly space policy

Legal

Procedural

Directories

List of policies

List of guidelines

Manual of Style contents

Wikipedia policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practices,
clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable
encyclopedia. There is no need to read any policy or guideline pages to start editing. The five
pillars is a popular summary of the most pertinent principles.
Although Wikipedia generally does not employ hard-and-fast rules, Wikipedia policy and guideline
pages describe its principles and best-agreed practices. Policies are standards that all users should
normally follow, and guidelines are generally meant to be best practices for following those
standards in specific contexts. Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason
and common sense.
This policy page specifies the community standards related to the organization, life cycle,
maintenance of, and adherence to policies, guidelines, and related pages.

Contents
[hide]

1Derivation
2Role
3Adherence
4Enforcement
5Content
6Not part of the encyclopedia
7Life cycle
o 7.1Proposals
7.1.1Good practice for proposals
o 7.2Demotion
o 7.3Content changes
7.3.1Substantive changes
o 7.4Conflicts between advice pages
8Naming
9See also
10Notes
11Further reading

Derivation
Further information: Wikipedia:Administration Human and legal administration
Wikipedia is operated by the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which reserves certain legal rights
- see the Wikimedia Foundation's Policies page for a list of its policies. See also Role of Jimmy
Wales. Nevertheless, normally Wikipedia is a self-governing project run by its community. Its policies
and guidelines are intended to reflect the consensus of the community.

Role
Further information: Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays

Shortcuts:

WP:POLICIES

WP:GUIDES

Policies have wide acceptance among editors and describe standards that all users
should normally follow. All policy pages are in Wikipedia:List of policies and
guidelines and Category:Wikipedia policies. For summaries of key policies, see also List of policies.
Guidelines are sets of best practices that are supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to
follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may
apply. Guideline pages can be found in Wikipedia:List of policies and
guidelines and Category:Wikipedia guidelines. For summaries of key guidelines, see also List of
guidelines.
Essays are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors for which widespread consensus
has not been established. They do not speak for the entire community and may be created and
written without approval. Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to
contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace. (For more information,
see Wikipedia:Essays.)
Other administration pages in the Wikipedia: namespace include:

process pages, which facilitate application of the policies and


guidelines (e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for deletion),
WikiProject pages, including essays they have written to give
advice to other editors about their areas of interest,
how-to or help pages (also found in the Help namespace), which
provide mainly technical information,
information pages, which generally provide factual information,
supplements to guidelines and policies, which explain advice in
greater detail,
community discussion pages and noticeboards for
communication between editors, and
historical pages, which are outdated.[1]
These other pages are not policies or guidelines, although they may contain valuable advice or
information.

Adherence
Use common sense when interpreting and applying policies and guidelines; there will be occasional
exceptions to these rules. Conversely, those who violate the spirit of a rule may be reprimanded
even if no rule has technically been broken.
Whether a policy or guideline is an accurate description of best practice is determined by the
community through consensus.
On discussion pages and in edit summaries, shortcuts are often used to refer to policies and
guidelines. For example, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and WP:LIVE. Similar shortcuts are sometimes also
used for other types of project page. A shortcut does not necessarily imply that the page linked to
has policy or guideline status. Additionally, remember that the shortcut is not the policy; the plain-
English definition of the page's title or shortcut may be importantly different from the linked page.

Enforcement
Further information: Wikipedia:Enforcement policies, Wikipedia:Active sanctions,
and Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement

Shortcuts:

WP:Enforcement

WP:ENFORCEMENT

Enforcement on Wikipedia is similar to other social interactions. If an editor violates the community
standards described in policies and guidelines, other editors can persuade the person to adhere
to acceptable norms of conduct, over time resorting to more forceful means, such
as administratorand steward actions. In the case of gross violations of community norms, they are
likely to resort to more forceful means fairly rapidly. Going against the principles set out on these
pages, particularly policy pages, is unlikely to prove acceptable, although it may be possible to
convince fellow editors that an exception ought to be made. This means that individual editors
(including you) enforce and apply policies and guidelines.
In cases where it is clear that a user is acting against policy (or against a guideline in a way that
conflicts with policy), especially if they are doing so intentionally and persistently, that user may be
temporarily or indefinitely blocked from editing by an administrator. In cases where the
general dispute resolution procedure has been ineffective, the Arbitration Committee has the power
to deal with highly disruptive or sensitive situations.

Content
Policy and guideline pages should:

Be clear. Avoid esoteric or quasi-legal terms and dumbed-down


language. Be plain, direct, unambiguous, and specific. Avoid
platitudes and generalities. Do not be afraid to tell editors directly
that they must or should do something.
Be as concise as possiblebut no more concise. Verbosity is
not a reliable defense against misinterpretation. Omit needless
words. Direct, concise writing may be more clear than rambling
examples. Footnotes and links to other pages may be used for
further clarification.
Emphasize the spirit of the rule. Expect editors to use common
sense. If the spirit of the rule is clear, say no more.
Maintain scope and avoid redundancy. Clearly identify the
purpose and scope early in the page, as many readers will just look
at the beginning. Content should be within the scope of its policy.
When the scope of one advice page overlaps with the scope of
another, minimize redundancy. When one policy refers to another
policy, it should do so briefly, clearly and explicitly.
Avoid overlinking. Links to policies, guidelines, essays, and
articles should be used only when clarification or context is needed.
Links to other advice pages may inadvertently or intentionally defer
authority to them. Make it clear when links defer, and when they do
not.
Not contradict each other. The community's view cannot
simultaneously be "A" and "not A". When apparent discrepancies
arise between pages, editors at all the affected pages should
discuss how they can most accurately represent the community's
current position, and correct all of the pages to reflect the
community's view. This discussion should be on one talk page, with
invitations to that page at the talk pages of the various affected
pages; otherwise the corrections may still contradict each other.

Not part of the encyclopedia


Shortcut:

WP:NOTPART
Wikipedia has many policies and guidelines about encyclopedic content. These standards require
verifiability, neutrality, respect for living people, and more.
The policies, guidelines, and process pages themselves are not part of the encyclopedia proper.
Consequently, they do not generally need to conform to the same content standards. It is therefore
not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Wikipedia's administrative pages, or to phrase
Wikipedia procedures or principles in a neutral manner, or to cite an outside authority in determining
Wikipedia's editorial practices. Instead, the content of these pages is controlled by community-wide
consensus, and the style should emphasize clarity, directness, and usefulness to other editors.[2]
These pages do, however, need to comply with Wikipedia's legal and behavioral policies, as well as
policies applicable to non-content pages. For example, editors may not violate copyrights anywhere
on Wikipedia, and edit warring is prohibited everywhere, not merely in encyclopedia articles.

Life cycle
Shortcut:

WP:PGLIFE

Many of the most well-established policies and guidelines have developed from principles which
have been accepted as fundamental since Wikipedia's inception. Others developed as solutions to
common problems and disruptive editing. Policy and guideline pages are seldom established without
precedent,[3] and always require strong community support. Policies and guidelines may be
established through new proposals, promotion of existing essays or guidelines, and reorganization of
existing policies and guidelines through splitting and merging.
Essays and information pages may be established by writing them and adding {{essay}},
{{Information page}}, {{Wikipedia how-to}},or similar template to the page.
Current policy and guideline proposals can be found in Category:Wikipedia proposals, and failed
proposals can be found in Category:Wikipedia failed proposals. All editors are welcome to comment
on these proposals.
Proposals

Shortcut:

WP:PROPOSAL
Further information: Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance
See also: WP:POLL Policy and guidelines, and WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY
Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the
entire community for promotion to guideline or policy. Adding the {{policy}} template to a page
without the required consensus does not mean that the page is policy, even if the page summarizes
or copies policy. Most commonly, a new policy or guideline documents existing practices, rather than
proposing a change to what experienced editors already choose to do.
Good practice for proposals
The first step is to write the best initial proposal that you can. Authors can request early-stage
feedback at Wikipedia's village pump for idea incubation and from any relevant WikiProjects.
Amendments to a proposal can be discussed on its talk page. It is crucial to improve a proposal in
response to feedback received from outside editors. Consensus is built through a process of
listening to and discussing the proposal with many other editors.
Once you think that the initial proposal is well-written, and the issues involved have been sufficiently
discussed among early participants to create a proposal that has a solid chance of success with the
broader community, start an RfC for your policy or guideline proposal in a new section on the talk
page, and include the {{rfc|policy}} tag along with a brief, time-stamped explanation of the
proposal. After that, you can provide, if you want, a detailed explanation of what the page does and
why you think it should be a policy or guideline. The {{proposed}} template should be placed at the
top of the proposed page; this tag will get the proposal properly categorized.
The RfC should typically be announced at the policy and/or proposals village pumps, and you should
notify other potentially interested groups. If your proposal affects a specific content area, then related
WikiProjects can be found at the WikiProject directory. For example, proposed style guidelines
should be announced at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Manual of Style, which is the WikiProject most
closely related to style issues. If your proposal relates to an existing policy or guideline, then leave a
note on the talk page of the related policy or guideline. Try to identify the subcategory of guideline or
policy (see {{subcat guideline}}). Proposals involving contentious subjects or wide-ranging effects
should normally be listed on Wikipedia:Centralized discussion for the duration of the RfC. Rarely, a
particularly important proposal may be advertised via a watchlist notice; sitenotices (which are
displayed to all readers, not just to active editors) are not used for proposals. RfCs for policy and
guideline proposals are normally left open for at least one week, and sometimes as long as a couple
of months.
To avoid later complaints about insufficient notice, it may be helpful to provide a complete list of the
groups or pages that you used to advertise the proposal on the talk page.
Editors should respond to proposals in a way that helps identify and build consensus. Explain your
thoughts, ask questions, and raise concerns; all views are welcome. Many editors begin their
response with bold-font 'vote' of support or opposition to make evaluation easier. Editors should sign
their responses.
Ending a discussion requires careful evaluation of the responses to determine the consensus. This
does not require the intervention of an administrator, but may be done by any sufficiently
experienced independent editor (an impartial editor not involved in the discussion) who is familiar
with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal. The following points are important in
evaluating consensus:

Consensus for guidelines and policies should be reasonably strong,


though unanimity is not required.
There must be exposure to the community beyond just the authors
of the proposal.
Consider the strength of the proposed page:
Have major concerns raised during the community discussion
been addressed?
Does the proposal contradict any existing guidelines or
policies?
Can the new proposed guideline or policy be merged into an
existing one?
Is the proposed guideline or policy, or some part of it, redundant
with an existing guideline or policy?
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.
If consensus for broad community support has not developed after
a reasonable time period, the proposal is considered failed. If
consensus is neutral or unclear on the issue and unlikely to
improve, the proposal has likewise failed.
Discussion may be closed as one of: Promote, No consensus, or Failed. Please leave a short note
about the conclusion that you came to. Update the proposal to reflect the consensus. Remove the
{{Proposed}} template and replace it with another appropriate template, such as {{Subcat guideline}},
{{Policy}}, {{Supplement}}, {{Essay}}, or {{Failed}}. See Wikipedia namespace templates for a listing
of banners.
If a proposal fails, the failed tag should not usually be removed. It is typically more productive to
rewrite a failed proposal from scratch to address problems, or seek consensus to integrate
uncontroversial aspects of it into existing pages, than to re-nominate a proposal.
Demotion

Shortcut:

WP:HISTORICAL
See also: WP:HISPAGES
An accepted policy or guideline may become obsolete because of changes in editorial practice or
community standards, may become redundant because of improvements to other pages, or may
represent unwarranted instruction creep. In such situations editors may propose that a policy be
demoted to a guideline, or that a policy or guideline be demoted to a supplement, informational
page, essay or historical page. In certain cases, a policy or guideline may be superseded, in which
case the old page is marked and retained for historical interest.
The process for demotion is similar to promotion. A talk page discussion is typically started,
the {{Under discussion|status|Discussion Title}} template is added to the top of the
project page, and community input is solicited. After a reasonable amount of time for comments, an
independent editor should close the discussion and evaluate the consensus.
The {{Disputed tag}} template is typically used instead of {{Under discussion}} for claims that a page
was recently assigned guideline or policy status without proper or sufficient consensus being
established.
Essays, information pages, and other informal pages that are only supported by a small minority of
the community are typically moved to the primary author's userspace. These discussions typically
happen on the page's talk page, sometimes with an RfC, but they have at times also been
conducted at Miscellany for deletion (despite the MFD guidelines explicitly discouraging this
practice). Other pages are retained for historical reference and are marked as such.
Content changes

Shortcut:

WP:PGCHANGE
See also: Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard
Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other Wikipedia page. It is not strictly necessary to
discuss changes or to obtain written documentation of a consensus in advance. However, because
policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure
they are faithfully reflecting the community's view and to be sure that they are not accidentally
introducing new sources of error or confusion.
Because Wikipedia practice exists in the community through consensus, editing a
policy/guideline/essay page does not in itself imply an immediate change to accepted practice. It is,
naturally, bad practice to recommend a rejected practice on a policy or guideline page. To update
best practices, you may change the practice directly (you are permitted to deviate from practice for
the purposes of such change) and/or set about building widespread consensus for your change or
implementation through discussion. When such a change is accepted, you can then edit the page to
reflect the new situation.
Substantive changes

Shortcuts:

WP:PGBOLD

WP:TALKFIRST

Talk page discussions are usually held before substantive changes are made to policies.
Talk first. Talk page discussion typically precedes substantive changes to policy. Changes may be
made if there are no objections, or if discussion shows that there is consensus for the change. Minor
edits to improve formatting, grammar, and clarity may be made at any time.
If the result of discussions is unclear, then it should be evaluated by an administrator or other
independent editor, as in the proposal process. Major changes should also be publicized to the
community in general; announcements similar to the proposal process may be appropriate.
If wider input on a proposed change is desired, it may be useful to mark the section with the
tag {{Under discussion|section|talk=Discussion Title}} . (If the proposal relates to a
single statement, use {{Under discussion-inline|Discussion Title}} immediately after it.)
Or be bold. The older but still valid method is to boldly edit the page. Bold editors of policy and
guideline pages are strongly encouraged to follow WP:1RR or WP:0RR standards. Although most
editors find advance discussion, especially at well-developed pages, very helpful, directly editing
these pages is permitted by Wikipedia's policies. Consequently, you should not remove any
change solely on the grounds that there was no formal discussion indicating consensus for the
change before it was made. Instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it and, if
one hasn't already been started, open a discussion to identify the community's current
views.[under discussion as of May 2017]
Editing a policy to support your own argument in an active discussion may be seen as gaming the
system, especially if you do not disclose your involvement in the argument when making the edits.
Conflicts between advice pages
Shortcut:

WP:POLCON

If policy and/or guideline pages directly conflict, one or more pages need to be revised to resolve the
conflict so that all of the conflicting pages accurately reflect the community's actual practices and
best advice. As a temporary measure during that resolution process, if a guideline appears to conflict
with a policy, editors may assume that the policy takes precedence.
More commonly, advice pages do not directly conflict, but provide multiple options. For
example, WP:Identifying reliable sources says that newspaper articles are generally considered to
be reliable sources, and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) recommends against
newspaper articles for certain technical purposes. Editors must use their best judgement to decide
which advice is most appropriate and relevant to the specific situation at hand.

Naming
The page names of policies and guidelines usually do not include the words "policy" or "guideline",
unless required to distinguish the page from another.

See also
Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines,
a listing of policy and guideline proposals advertised
through Wikipedia:Requests for comment
Wikipedia:Centralized discussion, a centralized list of ongoing policy
discussions
Wikipedia:Perennial proposals, proposals that come up very often
Wikipedia:Product, process, policy the place of policies in
Wikipedia
Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines, an introduction to the
major policies and guidelines for very new users.
Wikipedia:Principles, an index of essays about the community's
principles and values

Notes
1. Jump up^ Many historical essays can still be found within Meta's
essay category. The Wikimedia Foundation's Meta-wiki was
envisioned as the original place for editors to comment on and discuss
Wikipedia, although the "Wikipedia" project space has since taken
over most of that role.
2. Jump up^ There is no prohibition against including appropriate
external references to support and explain our policies or guidelines,
but such sources are not authoritative with respect to Wikipedia, and
should only be used to reinforce consensus.
3. Jump up^ Office declarations may establish unprecedented policies
to avoid copyright, legal, or technical problems, though such
declarations are rare.
Further reading
Book: Key Wikipedia
Policies & Guidelines

Mission statement - The Wikimedia Foundation


Wikimedia values - The six values of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia founding principles - Principles generally supported by all
of the Wikimedia communities

Wikipedia key policies and guidelines

Verifiability

No original research

Neutral point of view

What Wikipedia is not

Biographies of living persons

Autobiography

Image use

Wikipedia is not a dictionary

Article titles

Notability

Citing sources
Identifying reliable sources

medicine

Do not include copies of primary sources

Plagiarism

Don't create hoaxes

Fringe theories

Patent nonsense

External links

Civility
Consensus

Editing policy

Harassment

Vandalism

No personal attacks

Ownership of content

Edit warring

Dispute resolution

Sock puppetry

No legal threats

Child protection

Paid-contribution disclosure

Assume good faith

Conflict of interest

Disruptive editing

Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point

Etiquette

Gaming the system

Please do not bite the newcomers

Courtesy vanishing

Deletion policy

Proposed deletion

Criteria for speedy deletion

Attack page

Oversight

Proposed deletion of BLP

Proposed deletion (books)

Revision deletion

Administrators

Banning

Blocking
Page protection
Article size

Be bold

Disambiguation

Hatnotes

Set index articles

Subpages

User pages

Talk page guidelines

Signatures

Broad-concept article
Project namespace

WikiProjects

Manual of Style

Contents

Accessibility

Understandability

Style
Dates and numbers

Images

Layout

Lead section

Linking

Lists

Categories, lists, and navigation templates

Classification Categorization

Template namespace

cies

ace policy

and copyright

licy
List of all policies and guidelines

List of policies

List of guidelines

Principles

Five pillars

Ignore all rules

rnanc

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