Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines

Wikipedia policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia. Although Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules, its policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-known practices. Policies describe standards that (within the limits of common sense) all users should normally follow, and guidelines are meant to contain best practices for doing so. A useful summary of the key principles can be found at Five pillars.

Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other Wikipedia page, but edits that would imply a change to accepted practice, particularly such edits to a policy page, should usually be discussed in advance to ensure that the change reflects consensus.

This policy page specifies the community standards related to the organization, life cycle, maintenance of, and adherence to policies and guidelines, and related pages.

Derivation

Wikipedia is operated by the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which reserves certain legal rights (see here for a list of its policies). See also Role of Jimmy Wales. Nevertheless, in normal working order, Wikipedia is a self-governing project run by its community. Its policies and guidelines are intended to reflect the consensus of the community.

The page Wikipedia:Five pillars summarizes the most important principles on which many policies and guidelines are based. (Other similar pages include Jimbo Wales' statement of principles and the Founding principles for Wikimedia projects.)

Role

See also: Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays

Policies have wide acceptance among editors and describe standards that all users should normally follow. They are often closely related to the five pillars of Wikipedia. All policy pages are in Category:Wikipedia policy; 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. Where a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, the policy normally takes precedence. Guideline pages can be found under Category:Wikipedia 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. See Category:Wikipedia essays.

Other pages that can be found in the Wikipedia: namespace include community process pages (which facilitate application of the policies and guidelines), historical pages, WikiProject pages, how-to or help pages (also found in the Help namespace), community discussion pages and noticeboards. These 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

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 administrator and steward actions. In the case of policy pages, they are likely to resort to more forceful means fairly rapidly. You'll need to do some pretty fast talking to get away with not adhering to the consensus within policy pages, though this is not impossible, if you somehow happen to know something that many years of collective wisdom hasn't discovered yet. 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.

Content

Policy and guideline pages should:

• be clear and concise. Avoid esoteric legal terms and verbose dumbed-down language. Be both plain and concise. Clarity and terseness are not in opposition: direct and brief writing is more clear. Footnotes may be used for further clarification.
• emphasize the spirit of the rule. Verbosity is not a defense against misinterpretation. Be unambiguous and specific: avoid platitudes and generalities. Don't theorize, and omit needless words, especially adjectives. If the spirit of the rule is clear, say no more.
• maintain scope, avoid redundancy. Both purpose and scope must be clearly provided in the lead, and not merely as an aside. Content should be within the scope of its policy. When the scope of one policy overlaps with the scope of another, keep redundancy to a minimum. When one policy refers to another policy, it should do so briefly, clearly and explicitly.
• avoid overlinking. Links should be used only when clarification or context is needed. Links to other policies, guidelines, or essays may inadvertently or intentionally defer authority to them. Make it clear when links defer, and when they do not.

Not part of the encyclopedia

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 with the content standards. It is therefore not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Wikipedia's rules, or to phrase rules in a neutral manner, or to cite an outside authority in determining Wikipedia's own rules and procedures. Instead, the content of these pages is controlled by community-wide consensus, and the style should emphasize clarity, directness, and usefulness to other editors.

Life cycle

Many of the most well-established policies and guidelines are closely related to Wikipedia's founding principles. Others developed as solutions to common problems and disruptive editing. Policy pages are seldom established without precedent, and always require strong community support. Policies may be established through new policy proposals, promotion of essays or guidelines, and reorganization of existing policy through splitting and merging.

Current policy proposals can be found in Category:Wikipedia proposals, and rejected proposals can be found in Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals.

Proposals

New proposals 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. The Request for comments process is typically used to determine consensus for a new policy, via the {{rfctag|policy}} tag. A proposal RfC should be left open for at least one week.

Good practice for proposals

An RfC can be initiated by starting a new section at the relevant talk page, and including the {{rfctag|policy}} tag along with the reasons to make the proposal a policy or guideline. Amendments to a proposal should be discussed on its talk page (not on a new page) but it is generally acceptable to edit a proposal to improve it. The {{proposed}} (for newly-written proposals) or {{promote}} (for promotion of essays or guidelines) should be placed at the top of the policy page, and potentially interested groups should be notified. Policy proposals can get early-stage feedback at Wikipedia's policy village pump.

It may be helpful to list in the discussion which groups were informed of the proposal. If your proposal affects a specific content area, then related WikiProjects can be found at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. For example, proposed style guidelines should be announced to Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style. If your proposal relates to an existing policy or guideline, leave a note on the talk page of the related policy or guideline. For example, proposed style guidelines should be announced at Wikipedia:Manual of Style. You may announce your proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Try to identify the subcategory of guideline or policy (see {{subcat guideline}}).

Editors should respond to proposals in a way that helps 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 remember to sign their response.

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 much 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 either 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}}, {{Essay}}, {{How-to}}, or {{Failed}}.

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 than to re-nominate a proposal.

Demotion

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 or guideline be demoted to guideline, essay, or historical page.

The process for demotion is similar to promotion. A talk page discussion is typically started, the {{underdiscussion|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 {{disputedtag}} template is typically used instead of {{underdiscussion}} for claims that a page was recently assigned guideline or policy status without proper or sufficient consensus being established.

Content changes

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 {{underdiscussion|section|talk=Discussion Title}}. (If the proposal relates to a single statement, use {{underdiscussion-inline|Discussion Title}} immediately after it.)

Bold editors of policy and guideline pages are strongly encouraged to follow WP:1RR or WP:0RR standards. Although most editors find that 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 is no formal record indicating consensus for it: instead, you should give a policy-based or common-sense reason for challenging it.

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.

See also

• Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines
• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies, a listing of policy 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
• Template messages/Project namespace for the templates associated with each type of policy page.
• Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines, an introduction to the major policies and guidelines for very new users.

Notes

Related information