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

Policies and guidelines express standards that have community consensus. Policies are considered a standard that all editors should follow, whereas guidelines are more advisory in nature. Both need to be approached with common sense: adhere to the spirit rather than the letter of the rules, and be prepared to ignore the rules on the rare occasions when they conflict with the goal of improving the encyclopedia. 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.

Policy change comes from three sources:

1. Documenting actual good practices and seeking consensus that the documentation truly reflects them.
2. Proposing a change in practice and seeking consensus for implementation of that change.
3. Declarations from Jimmy Wales, the Board, or the Developers, particularly for copyright, legal issues, or server load.

In practice the first option is the most effective. Proposals for new processes rarely succeed. Jimbo and the board have indicated that they prefer that the community deal with its policies, and rarely do they declare policy. Currently proposed and previously rejected policies can be found in Category:Wikipedia proposals and Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals.

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

Policy and guideline pages

Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard that, with rare exceptions, all users should follow. They are often closely linked to the five pillars of Wikipedia. Guidelines are considered more advisory than policies, with exceptions more likely to occur. Updates to a policy or guideline page are typically discussed on the associated talk page, but it is acceptable to edit them directly. Disputes over wording are often resolved by discussion and compromise toward developing a consensus.

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.

Proposals

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 is generally 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 failed proposal is one for which consensus for acceptance has not developed after a reasonable time period. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral or unclear on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal has likewise failed. 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 failed proposal from scratch and start in a different direction.

Process pages

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). See WP:PPP for details.

• A historical process is one which is no longer in use, or any non-recent log of any process. Historical pages can be revived by advertising them.

WikiProjects

A WikiProject is a group of people that edit articles related to a particular subject. WikiProjects often have pages that explain how that project works, and 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 should be clear from their names that they are parts of projects. They do not overrule policies or guidelines, though some are eventually considered guidelines after sufficient consensus has been reached.

Community pages

Certain pages exist to give members of the Wikipedia community an opportunity to raise and discuss issues, make suggestions and proposals, and draw other users' attention to discussions taking place elsewhere. Such pages include the village pump, the centralized discussions page, various requests for comments pages, and others.

Notice that specific feature requests and bug reports involving changes to the Wikipedia software (and thus requiring the attention of the developers) are filed not within Wikipedia itself, but at Bugzilla. Such requests may of course be the subject of discussion within the Wikipedia community, but it should never be assumed that a proposal will necessarily be implemented by the developers.

"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, while the latter explains when or why certain actions are recommended.

Essays

Essays are pages reflecting the views of an editor or a group of editors. The term is used for many opinion pages that do not fall into other categories. Essays may become guidelines if they have sufficient support, although in practice this happens rarely. A link to an essay should not imply that it represents a policy or guideline.

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 edit your essay, put it in your userspace.

Essays and how-to pages may be marked as such by any editor. Guidelines and policies, however, should be presented to the community for review and feedback.

Proposing a guideline or policy

1. Add the {{Proposed}} template to the top of your page.
2. Leave a message on its talk page that explains whether you are proposing this as a guideline or as a policy and why you think it should be adopted as a guideline (instead of an essay) or a policy (instead of an essay or a guideline). Try to identify the subcategory of guideline or policy (see {{subcat guideline}}).
3. Inform relevant groups of editors that may be interested. It may be helpful to list in the discussion all of the groups that you informed of the proposal.
   • Based on content area: 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.
   • Based on parent policies and guidelines: 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.
   • Central notification: Announce your proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).
4. Place the {{RFCpolicy}} template at the top of the talk page's discussion to further publicize your proposal.

Please leave the discussion open for at least one week.

Responding to a proposal

• Leave a message in the designated section of the talk page. Many editors begin their response with a statement like Support guideline status, Oppose policy status, or Comment for the convenience of the person evaluating the responses. Be sure to sign your response.
• Voting is not a substitute for discussion. Please explain your thoughts, ask your questions, and raise your concerns. All views are welcome.

Evaluating the consensus

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 independent editor (i.e., not the primary authors, the editors proposing the guideline/policy status, or the editors strongly defending the proposal during the community discussion). For practical reasons, this editor will need to be familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal.

• Consider the community response:
  • Consensus for guidelines and policies should be reasonably strong, but unanimity is not required.
  • Consider the number of respondents. If all of the responses are from the people that wrote the proposal, then please wait until more people have had the opportunity to respond. Consider publicizing the proposal in additional forums.
  • Does the community generally believe that Wikipedia is better off with, or without, the proposed guideline or policy? What status for this page will best contribute to the main goal of writing an encyclopedia?
• Consider the strength of the proposed page:
  • Have important concerns raised during the community discussion been addressed? Perfection is not required, and minor points may be addressed at a later date.
  • Does the proposed page contradict any existing guidelines or policies? If so, it should not be promoted to guideline or policy status. Consider leaving a note about the proposal on the talk page of any guideline or policy it contradicts.
  • Does this need to be a separate guideline or policy? Too many fragmented guideline pages are hard to maintain and make it hard for readers to find the guidance they are looking for. Consider whether the new proposed guideline or policy could be merged with an existing one.
  • Is the proposed guideline or policy, or parts of it, redundant with existing guidelines and policies? If so, it's better to link to the appropriate part of existing pages, or (if a link with a very brief description is not appropriate) to transclude common text into all pages.

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}}.

Disputing guideline or policy status

On occasion, Wikipedia's need for any given guideline or policy may change. An accepted document may become obsolete because of changes in editorial practice or common standards. It may become redundant because of improvements to other pages. It may represent unwarranted instruction creep.

The process for demoting a guideline or policy should normally be similar to the process for promoting a page: Add the {{disputedtag}} to the top of the page, start a discussion on the talk page outlining the reasons for the proposed demotion, and solicit community input. After allowing a reasonable amount of time for comments, an independent editor should close the discussion and evaluate the consensus.

When only one section is disputed, the normal process is to begin a discussion about improvements on the talk page. If wider input is wanted, {{disputedtag|section=yes}} can be used to mark the section.

Overuse of such tags is considered disruptive. This tag is not a badge of shame and may not be used as such. It will be removed if there is no active discussion underway, if it appears to be an effort by a dissatisfied editor to override recent decisions, or if it appears that the outcome favors retaining the policy, guideline, or section.

If a page was assigned guideline or policy status without seeking wider community input, and you believe that its current status would not be supported, then you can use the proposal process outlined above as an alternative to disputing it.

Changes to existing policies and guidelines

Minor edits to existing pages, such as formatting changes, grammatical improvement and uncontentious clarification, may be made by any editor at any time. However changes which would alter the substance of policy or guidelines should normally be announced on the appropriate talk page first. The change may be implemented if no objection is made to it or if discussion shows that there is consensus for the change. Major changes should also be publicized to the community in general; announcements similar to the proposal process may be appropriate.

The stability of major policies and guidelines is important to editors involved in the Wikipedia:Featured articles process and other areas of editing. Edit warring is particularly deprecated in this area. Bold editors of policy and guidelines pages are strongly encouraged to follow WP:1RR or WP:0RR standards. If your changes are removed, please make no further changes until the issue has been appropriately discussed on the talk page.

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 of the 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.

• Wikipedia:Centralized discussion
• Wikipedia:List of policies
• Wikipedia:List of guidelines
• Wikimedia Foundation policies
• Wikipedia:Ignore all rules
• Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), discussion of existing and proposed policies
• 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
• Wikipedia:Key policies and guidelines, a guide to Wikipedia's most important rules
• Category:Wikipedia policies and guidelines lists approved, rejected, and proposed policies
• The Meta-Wiki site contains many articles about Wikipedia and related topics in a more editorial style.