Wikipedia:Per

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You may be looking for Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests (shortcut: WP:PER).

Frequently, on several of our process pages, people make comments containing the word per, such as

Delete per nom

Oppose per User:Example

Merge per WP:CUTS

Among new users, there is the occasional confusion about what the word "per" means and implies. Specifically, "Merge per WP:CUTS" means the following:

"In my opinion we should merge this, for the reasoning explained on WP:CUTS".

It is sometimes understood as, but specifically does not mean, the following:

"WP:CUTS is officially policy and therefore it is mandatory to merge this".

However, it can be taken to mean this:

"I interpret WP:CUTS as recommending this course of action be taken, and furthermore I think that the current version of WP:CUTS provides a good principle on which to base choices on in matters like this one"

or

"User:Example makes a good argument, and I'm going to recommend the same course of action that s/he did because I substantially agree with the bulk of what s/he said (or, if the user being 'cited' did not !vote, 'I think that what s/he said leads to this being the best course of action')"

While that argument can be debated, "WP:CUTS isn't policy!" is not the proper way to go about such a challenge, and is generally a poor substitute for challenging the latter of the two parts of that statement.

[edit] In short

• Per gives an explanation, not a mandatory reason.
• Many pages have a shortcut like WP:PAGE; this does not give those pages any greater degree of officiality, the shortcut exists just for convenience. For instance, such shortcuts are used for policy, guidelines, essays, wikiprojects and parody pages.
• So if somebody says "do this per WP:PAGE" and you disagree, it's only a straw man to say "...but WP:PAGE is not policy!!". We know that it's not policy. It is, however, a reason, and you are free to disagree for some other reason, with or without reference to any other page.