Wikipedia:Offensive material: Difference between revisions
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{{about|the use of profanity in articles|the use of profanity on talk pages and project pages|Wikipedia:Civility}} |
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{{subcat guideline|content guideline|Profanity|WP:PROFA|WP:PROFANE|WP:F***}} |
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{{nutshell|Wikipedia articles may contain offensive words and images, but only for a good reason. Do not use disclaimers.}} |
{{nutshell|Wikipedia articles may contain offensive words and images, but only for a good reason. Do not use disclaimers.}} |
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Revision as of 03:55, 20 April 2010
 | This page documents an English Wikipedia content guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles may contain offensive words and images, but only for a good reason. Do not use disclaimers. |
Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission. Wikipedia is not censored. However, words and images that can be considered offensive should not be included unless they are treated in an encyclopedic manner. Material that would be considered vulgar or obscene by typical Wikipedia readers should be used if and only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available.
How to treat offensive material in articles
In original Wikipedia content, a vulgarity or obscenity should either appear in its full form or not at all; words should never be bowdlerized by replacing letters with dashes, asterisks, or other symbols. However, when quoting relevant material, rendering a quotation as it appears in the source cited trumps our style guidelines. Where it is necessary to indicate that an alteration is carried over from a quoted source, "[sic]" may be used.
Discussions about whether to include a vulgar or obscene image or verbal expression are often heated. As in all discussions on Wikipedia, it is vital that all parties practice civility and assume good faith. Labeling content with such terms as "pornography" or responses to content with such terms as "censorship" tends to inflame the discussion and should be avoided. Objective terminology is more helpful than subjective terminology.
Disclaimers should not be used in articles that contain potentially or patently offensive material. All articles are covered by the five official disclaimer pages.
Occasionally, the edit filter will block anonymous users and newly registered accounts from adding profanity to an article. This happens because such users add profanity as vandalism much more often than as constructive edits. Users affected by false positives should edit unrelated articles for about a week to establish themselves as serious contributors.