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 policies
Article standards

Neutral point of view
Attribution
What Wikipedia is not
Biographies of living persons
Working with others

Civility
Consensus
No personal attacks
Resolving disputes

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.

Contents

Key policies

You don't need to read every Wikipedia policy before you contribute. However, the following policies are particularly important to the project, and the sooner you understand and use them, the better:

  1. Wikipedia works by building consensus. Consensus is an inherent part of the wiki process. (See Wikipedia:Consensus)
  2. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Its goals go no further, and material that does not fit this goal must be moved to another Wikimedia project or removed altogether. (See What Wikipedia is not.)
  3. Respect other contributors. Wikipedia contributors come from many different countries and cultures, and have widely different views. Treating others with respect is key to collaborating effectively in building an encyclopedia. (See Wikipedia:Civility, Wikipedia:Etiquette, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.)
  4. Don't infringe copyrights. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Submitting work which infringes copyrights threatens our objective to build a truly free encyclopedia that anyone can redistribute, and could lead to legal problems. (See Wikipedia:Copyright.)
  5. Avoid bias. Articles should be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias.
  6. Add only information based on reliable sources. Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable published sources, and these sources should be cited so that other editors can check articles. (See Wikipedia:Attribution).

Other concise summaries of key policies

One of these concise versions of the Wikipedia guidelines should get you familiar with the important policies.

Here's the recommended reading order:

  1. The five pillars of Wikipedia: a quick rundown of the 5 key rules you need to start editing. Don't worry, it's easy.
  2. Simplified ruleset: 15 rules of thumb to help you avoid problems.
  3. List of policies: A comprehensive list of the 42 official policies with very quick summaries.

Every policy and guideline is listed in one of the following categories:

Procedural questions

How are policies started?

Policy change now comes from three sources:

  • The codification of current convention and common practice. These are proposals that document the way Wikipedia works. Of course, a single user cannot dictate what common practice is, but writing down the common results of a well-used process is a good way of making policy.
  • A proposed policy being adopted by consensus. (See Wikipedia:How to create policy). These are usually proposals to change the way Wikipedia works.
  • Declarations from Jimmy Wales, the Board, or the Developers, particularly for copyright, legal issues, or server load.

Currently proposed and previously rejected policies can be found in these categories:

Wikipedia Guidelines
Content

Autobiography
Don't copy sources
Disambiguation
Don't create hoaxes
Patent nonsense
Classification

Subpages
Cats, lists, boxes
Lists
Categories
Editing

Be Bold
Build the web
Edit summary
Article size
Discussion

Talk page guidelines
Sign on talk pages
Build consensus
Conflict of interest
Behavior

Etiquette
Profanity
Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point
Don't bite the newcomers
User page
Style
Manual of style

See also policies

The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc.

Many pages in the Wikipedia namespace fall in one of the following groups. However, this 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 aren't. 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.

  • A guideline is any page that is: (1) actionable (i.e. it recommends, or recommends against, an action to be taken by editors) and (2) authorized by 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's 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 can polarize the issue (see this page for details).
  • A policy 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 edit policy without seeking consensus first.
  • 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 is any proposal for which consensus is unclear, where discussion has died out for whatever reason. Historical pages also include any process 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 support is not present, regardless of whether there's active discussion or not. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • An essay is any page that is not actionable or instructive, regardless of whether it's authorized by consensus. Essays tend to be opinionated. Essays need not be proposed or advertised, you can simply write them, as long as you understand that you do not generally speak for the entire community. If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace. It does not follow that any page that is not a policy or a guideline is therefore an essay; there are plenty of pages in the Wikipedia namespace that are none of the three.

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

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 Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list for further information.


Other essays and discussions about Wikipedia

  • The Meta-Wiki site contains many articles about Wikipedia and related topics in a more editorial style.
  • Creating how-to articles in Wikipedia.
  • Wikipedia:Centralized discussion has a number of discussions to establish consensus on whether some groups of articles should or should not be included in Wikipedia. These policies should be upheld by all users.

See also

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