Policies and guidelines

Wikipedia has developed a body of policies and guidelines that have helped to further our goal of creating a free encyclopedia.

While we strive to build consensus, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and its governance can be inconsistent. There is disagreement between those who believe rules should be stated explicitly, and those who believe that written rules are inadequate to cover every variation of problematic editing or 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. Those who edit in good faith, are civil, seek consensus, and work towards the goal of creating a great encyclopedia should find a welcoming environment.

A list of key policies and guidelines can be found at Key policies and guidelines.

Sources of Wikipedia policy
Policy change comes from three sources:
 * The codification of general practice that already has wide consensus. These are statements of practice that document the way Wikipedia works. A single user cannot dictate what best practice is, but writing down the results of a well-used process is a good way of making policy. The easiest way to change policy is to change common practice first.
 * A policy adopted after having been proposed on a wiki page, without first being applied in practice.
 * 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 Category:Wikipedia proposals and Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals.

Policy-related articles
See Template messages/Project namespace for the templates associated with each type of policy page.

Policies
Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard that all users should follow. Editors should be careful that any change they make to a policy page reflects consensus.

Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikipedia principle and a non-negotiable policy. Other content policies are Verifiability and No original research. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Because the policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three. The principles upon which these policies are based are non-negotiable, and cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus. Their policy pages may be edited only to improve the application and explanation of the principles.

Guidelines
Guidelines are more advisory in nature than policies, and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, although it is 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 polarizes the issue.

A naming convention or Manual of Style entry is a specific kind of guideline, related to proper naming, or the way articles should be written. Note that guidelines are subcategorized merely for convenience, and that there is no practical difference between several "kinds" of guidelines.

Essays and proposals
Essays are pages reflecting the views of an editor or a group of editors.
 * The term essay is used for many opinion pages that do not fall into the above categories.
 * Essays are neither policies nor guidelines regardless of whether these represent a consensus.
 * Essays need not be proposed or advertised; you can simply write them, as long as you understand that you do not necessarily speak for the entire community. If you do not want other people to reword your essay, put it in your userspace.
 * Remember that consensus has primacy. Even if an essay does not reflect general consensus it may still convey the opinions or thoughts of a (large) group of editors. In such a case failure to follow its advice, or making unilateral changes to the essay, will place you in conflict with that group of editors. This might be a bad idea.
 * Due to the process by which wikipedia policies, guidelines and essays are written, some pages become mislabeled as essay at some points in time. The best way to avoid running into traps is to think for yourself and consider what the optimal outcome is for the encyclopedia

Processing proposals

 * 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 includes any process which is 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 for acceptance is not present after a reasonable time period, for which consensus is unclear after a reasonable time period for discussion regardless of whether there is active discussion or not, or where discussion has substantially died out without reaching consensus. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. It is considered bad form to hide this fact, e.g. by removing the tag. 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.

WikiProjects
WikiProjects often have subpages that explain how that project works, or give best practices or recommendations for the articles within that project's scope. These documents may only represent a consensus of a small number of editors, and it is clear from their names that they are parts of projects. They fall outside the classification of policies or guidelines, though some eventually move out of projectspace and are designated guidelines after sufficient consensus has been reached.

Feature requests
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.

"How to" or help pages
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.

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 the 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.
 * Centralized discussion is a centralized list of ongoing policy discussions, as is Requests for comment/Policies.