User:Esquivalience/Introduction to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
The goal of Wikipedia is to provide an accurate, comprehensive, and high-quality encyclopedia for free. In order to reach that goal faster, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone.
However, there needs to be a set of policies and guidelines in order to maintain the quality of Wikipedia content. To start off, Wikipedia operates on five principles, and you should have a firm knowledge of those principles before editing.
Note that Wikipedia has no firm rules. If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining the encyclopedia, and you are sure your edit improves or helps maintain the encyclopedia, ignore it!
If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.
Principles
Be bold while editing! Basically, go for it! There is no process that you have to go through in order to edit. See a page that is littered with grammatical errors? Don't hesitate to fix them! Want to add something to an article? As soon as you keep the Wikipedia content policies in mind, go for it!
But be careful. Don't be reckless or disruptive in editing. If you are going to make a significant change to an article on a controversial subject, it's best to gain consensus on the article's talk page before performing the edit.
By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist.
If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. If, while editing, you notice that your edit breaks the letter of the rule, but you're sure that the edit is one that improves or maintains the encyclopedia, you should ignore it. Basically, the spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule.
However, be careful when ignoring a rule. You should be able to explain why your (normally) rule-breaking edit improves or maintains Wikipedia when questioned. If a rule-breaking edit that you believe improves or maintains the encyclopedia may be contentious, it's best to gain consensus before performing the edit.
Ignore all rules diagram
Content
Wikipedia's goal is to provide an accurate, comprehensive, and high-quality encyclopedia for free, however, how do we reach that goal? Well, first, we have to develop some policies whose purpose is to keep the encyclopedia accurate, comprehensive, and high-quality.
All content must be written from a neutral point of view. That basically means that you should not take a side in editing; instead you should explain the sides without bias. Articles should fairly, proportionately, and without bias, explain all of the significant views as published by reliable sources.
This policy is to help prevent articles from favouring a specific viewpoint, which may cause contributors to put undue weight on one viewpoint, or to lower the quality of articles. This also prevents promotional content and propaganda from appearing in articles.
Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. However, couldn't bad-faith contributors add false information and get away with it?
Because Wikipedia is vulnerable to the addition of false information, all content whose accuracy or verifiability is challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable source. This is so readers can verify the accuracy of the content and see if the content comes from a reliable source.
What makes a source reliable?
There are three related meanings of a "source" on Wikipedia:
- The actual work itself.
- The author/creator of the work.
- The publisher of a work.
Any of the three can affect a source's reliability. For example, if the work is published by a reputable publisher, with a history of reliability, then it demonstrates the reliability of the actual work itself.
Articles should be based on reliable and published sources independent of the subject. Works that are self-published are not considered reliable, and self-published sources supporting article content should be replaced with a published and reliable source.
Peer-reviewed and academic publications are usually the most reliable sources (and should be used if available), however reliable, non-academic sources can also be used.
Wikipedia is a project to compile the sum of all human knowledge. However, Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research. Original research, in Wikipedia, is any previously unpublished arguments, concepts, data, or theories; or any new analysis or synthesis of them. Basically, articles may not contain any arguments, concepts, data, or theories that haven't been made before in a reliable source.
Conduct
Wikipedia is edited by a large number of people. In order for Wikipedia to work, editors must get along and co-operate with each other.
Be civil when communicating with other editors. Be respectful and considerate, and don't be too blunt. Respect the opinions and arguments of others. And most importantly, stay calm.
This is important because incivility can deter editors, especially new ones, from the site. It can also lead to disputes that harm the encyclopedia, which usually include edit warring.
Edit warring is prohibited. Edit warring happens when two or more editors constantly revert each other on one article or even multiple articles, which leads to instability and incivility.
Edit warring usually starts after a dispute on an article between two or more editors. The editors can either civility discuss on the article's talk page, or just revert each other, which leads to edit warring.
Because edit warring is harmful (as it prompts incivility, it causes the atmosphere of the article to become a race, and it makes the article a battleground), all editors are limited to three reverts per article in a 24-hour period (three-revert rule). This rule does not apply to reversion of vandalism or yourself. Editors that violate the three-revert rule may be warned or temporarily blocked for edit warring. Editors may even be limited to one revert per article in a 24 hour period or even none for constant edit warring!
Editors may also be sanctioned even if they don't exceed three reverts per article in 24 hours, if there is clearly an edit war despite not exceeding three reverts.
Basically, if you have an editing dispute with an editor, discuss it on the talk page and try to come up with a solution.
Do not make personal attacks on Wikipedia. Basically, do not insult or disparage another editor. To prevent your arguments from being perceived as a personal attack, comment on the content, not the contributor. Being slightly blunt when appropriate does not constitute a personal attack, however insults and derogatory remarks about another editor constitute a personal attack.
Personal attacks are harmful because they are damaging to the goal of building an encyclopedia. They slow down the progression of the encyclopedia (Wikipedia is built by reasoned debate), they discourage editors from contributing, and they are contrary to our goal of building an encyclopedia.
Do not harass another editor. Harassment is any pattern of continuous offensive or uncivil behaviour that intentionally targets another editor or group of editors.
The most common forms of harassment on Wikipedia include threats of legal action, revealing another editor(s)'s personally identifiable information without the targeted editor(s) explicitly and voluntarily sharing it on Wikipedia, and intentionally singling out another editor(s) by repeatedly confronting the targeted editor(s)'s work with an intent to irritate the targeted editors.
This policy is in line with the civility and no personal attacks policies; basically, be civil and don't personally attack someone, and especially don't target a specific editor with incivility.
Vandalism is prohibited on Wikipedia. Vandalism is defined as any intentional, willful, and deliberate attempt to compromise the accuracy or integrity of Wikipedia. The most common form of vandalism is the addition silly or humourous content to the encyclopedia, and "blanking" (i.e. removing parts of or all of an article's content without reason).
There is little tolerance for vandalism of any kind. Administrators can and will block for vandalism, even on the first instance of vandalism if serious.
If you see an instance of vandalism, revert it, and warn the vandal. While there is little tolerance for vandalism, editors are encouraged to warn vandals about their edits and encourage them to make constructive edits to help the encyclopedia. Use a warning template to warn vandals.
It is harder for any editor to edit an article whose subject they are closely connected with (conflict of interest) neutrally. Thus, you should avoid editing articles about subjects that you have a conflict of interest with. You can define a conflict of interest as:
- When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest.
Editing with a conflict of interest is strongly discouraged. While minor grammatical fixes to articles whose subject you are closely connected with are acceptable, substantial edits to such articles should be discussed on the article's talk page. Conflict of interest editing can lead to an article being biased and unverifiable.
If you want to substantially edit an article whose subject you are closely connected with, be very careful. Make sure that you do not add promotional or biased content to the article(s) you are editing with a conflict of interest. When in doubt, discuss possibly biased or promotional content on the talk page of the article.
Paid editing and paid advocacy
If you are paid (with anything of monetary or intrinsic value) to edit an article on Wikipedia, under Wikimedia terms of use, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation with:Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).
- a statement on your user page,
- a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or
- a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.
Paid editing, while not prohibited, is strongly discouraged, as it may lead to non-neutral articles on the subject. Paid editors are encouraged to discuss all edits on the talk page of the article that he/she is paid to edit.
Deletion
While Wikipedia is a project to compile the sum of human knowledge, some articles or topics are not appropriate for Wikipedia.
Deletion policy
Wikipedia articles may be deleted for a multitude of reasons. The most common reasons for deletion are:
- The subject is not notable. A subject is generally notable if the subject has received significant, non-trivial coverage of the subject in multiple reliable sources independent of the subject.
- The article or topic is not suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If the article or topic does not belong in an encyclopedia, it does not belong on Wikipedia.
- The article is very harmful in its current state, and there is no/very little encyclopedic content. For example, if the article contains advertising and spam (can be deleted immediately by any administrator), libel or unsourced, contentious content against biographies of living people, or vandalism (only applies to when there is no good revision of the article to revert to), and the article has no/very little actual encyclopedic content, it should be deleted. Harmful content does not include violations of Wikipedia content policies, as such violations are not very harmful and they can easily be fixed by bold edits.
There are other reasons for deletion, see here for other reasons. Note that improvement or deletion of offending sections are almost always preferable to deleting an entire page.
Notability
Notability on Wikipedia is usually shown by meeting the general notability guideline. The general notability guidelines requires significant, non-trivial coverage of the subject in multiple reliable sources independent of the subject. Significant coverage is coverage that covers the subject in detail, so no original research is required to extract the content of the subject.
Note that subjects may also be notable if they meet the specific notability guideline for their topic (see the right box for links to the specific guidelines), even if the subject does not meet the general notability guideline. It is recommended that you assess a subject's notability based on the topic-specific notability guideline as it lists additional criteria and extends on the general guideline.
However, the general guideline takes precedence over the specific criteria; even if the subject does not meet the criteria for the notability guideline for the subject's topic, it is still suitable for inclusion on Wikipedia if it meets the general guideline.
References
- ^ Bringhurst, Robert (2005). The Elements of Typographic Style (3.1 ed.). Hartley & Marks. p. 10. ISBN 0-88179-206-3.