You are a Wikipedia editor. Wikipedia lacks an editor-in-chief or a central, top-down mechanism whereby progress on the encyclopedia is monitored and approved. Instead, active participants monitor the Recent Changes page and make corrections to the content, copyediting, and format problems they see. So the participants are both writers and editors. |
You are a Wikipedia editor. Wikipedia lacks an editor-in-chief or a central, top-down mechanism whereby progress on the encyclopedia is monitored and approved. Instead, active participants monitor the Recent Changes page and make corrections to the content, copyediting, and format problems they see. So the participants are both writers and editors. |
You are a Wikipedia editor. Wikipedia lacks an editor-in-chief or a central, top-down mechanism whereby progress on the encyclopedia is monitored and approved. Instead, active participants monitor the Recent Changes page and make corrections to the content, copyediting, and format problems they see. So the participants are both writers and editors.
We do have standards or rules. We have a number of community-agreed and -enforced standards, and our adherence to such standards is essential to making this what it can be--a high-quality product. We aren't all equally committed to all the rules that have been proposed, though. There are some rules that virtually everyone agrees upon (and please do familiarize yourself with the contents of "Some generally-accepted policies," below). Other rules are widely supported but do have a few detractors, and still others have been proposed but about them there is widespread disagreement. We have literally made up these rules as we've gone along, and your input on the policy and process is still welcome.
Please explore these policy pages and help us shape Wikipedia into great resource it can be.
There are three essential characteristics of the Wikipedia project, which together define its niche on the World Wide Web. This is what Wikipedia is:
In a community-built encyclopedia, it seems a bit strange to say that there is a goal, but indeed there does seem to be a goal we, most of us, share for the project:
To the latter end, it might be a good idea to set up some sort of approval process. There have been some objections to the notion of, in the not-too-distant future, establishing an independent approval process, whereby certain versions of articles receive the stamp of approval of some body of expert Wikipedia reviewers. But the notion does have widespread support. The initial proposals for the review process have been bandied about over a period of some months on Wikipedia-L and the issue is discussed on Wikipedia approval mechanism. Another proposal that has very broad support is to facilitate the submission of Wikipedia articles to Nupedia; in that way, Nupedia can serve as an unofficial but nevertheless very reliable approval mechanism for Wikipedia articles.
As for our goals for article content, here are some goals for our stub articles and for more fully-fleshed out articles. Of course, we do not require perfect articles the first time they appear. Quite the contrary, as you will see on editing policy.
Wikipedia's participants commonly follow, and enforce, a few basic policies that are essential to keeping the project running smoothly and productively. Other matters of policy are more controversial; the following are never, or very rarely, controversial. We can sort these policy issues into three basic categories, as follows:
Article naming conventions
Article content policies
Editing policy and /Talk pages
Wikipedia policy has been formulated for the most part by habit and consensus, particularly over the initial months of Wikipedia's existence. (To get a feel for the original attitudes toward policy development, see PolicyPolicy.) Hence, the statements on this page and pages adjoining it are intended for the most part to be descriptive of existing community norms that have developed over time. Issues are still formulated and debated particularly on the rules to consider page and via the Wikipedia commentary page, as well as the pages of individual Wikipedians.
Another very important forum where Wikipedia policy is discussed is Wikipedia-L, the project's mailing list. Everyone who is interested in Wikipedia policy, news, and social life should be subscribed to that mailing list. (It is available in digest format.)
Miscellaneous policy issues