List of policies
All policies are listed at Category SemiWikipedia policies. A list that also includes guidelines is at List of policies and guidelines. This page is broken into the following categories:
- Content, which defines the scope of the encyclopedia and the material that is suitable for it
- Conduct, which describes how editors can successfully collaborate and what behavior is acceptable
- Deletion, which explains the processes by which pages, revisions, and logs may be deleted
- Enforcement, which accounts for various means by which standards may be enforced
- Legal, which includes rules influenced by legal considerations, and remedies for their misuse
- Procedural, which documents various processes by which the English Wikipedia operates
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- Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia content policies:
- Article titles
- The ideal title for a Wikipedia article is recognizable to English
speakers, easy to find, precise, concise, and consistent with other
titles.
- Biographies of living persons
- Articles about living persons, which require a degree of
sensitivity, must adhere strictly to Wikipedia's content policies. Be
very firm about high-quality references, particularly about details of
personal lives. "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious
material—whether negative, positive, or just questionable—about
living(or sometimes recently deceased) persons should be removed
immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles, talk pages,
user pages, and project space."
- Image use policy
- Generally avoid uploading non-free images; fully describe images'
sources and copyright details on their description pages, and try to
make images as useful and reusable as possible.
- Neutral point of view
- Everything that our readers can see, including articles, templates,
categories and portals, must be written neutrally and without bias.
- No original research
- Articles may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements,
concepts, arguments, or ideas; or any new interpretation, analysis, or
synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas
that, in the words of Wikipedia's co-founder Jimbo Wales, would amount
to a "novel narrative or historical interpretation."
- Verifiability
- Articles should cite sources
whenever possible. While we cannot check the accuracy of cited sources,
we can check whether they have been published by a reputable
publication and whether independent sources have supported them on
review. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
- What Wikipedia is not
- Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. Please avoid the temptation to use Wikipedia for other purposes.
- Wikipedia is not a dictionary
- Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide.
- Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia conduct policies:
- Civility
- Rudeness or insensitivity, whether intentional or not, can distract from and interfere with our work. Dispute resolution forums are available when civil, reasoned discussion breaks down.
- Clean start
- Any user who is not subject to editing sanctions may abandon his or her account and start fresh under a new one, as long as the new account is not used in an improper manner.
- Consensus
- Consensus among equals is our only tool for resolving content disputes, and our main tool for resolving all other disputes.
- Dispute resolution
- The first step to resolving any dispute is to talk to those who disagree with you. If that fails, there are more structured forms of discussion available.
- Edit warring
- If someone challenges your edits, discuss it with them and seek a compromise, or seek dispute resolution. Do not start fights over competing views and versions. Reverting
any part of any single page more than three times in twenty-four hours,
or even once if long-term edit-warring is apparent, can result in a block on your account.
- Editing policy
- Improve pages wherever you can, and don't worry about leaving them imperfect. It is advisable to explain major changes.
- Harassment
- Do not stop other editors from enjoying Wikipedia by making threats,
nitpicking good-faith edits to different articles, repeated annoying
and unwanted contacts, repeated personal attacks or posting personal
information.
- Non-discrimination
- Do not discriminate against current or prospective users on the
basis of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, age,
disability, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected
characteristics.
- No personal attacks
- Do not make personal attacks anywhere in Wikipedia. Comment on the content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks damage the community and deter editors.
- Ownership of content
- Although you retain some rights under Wikipedia's copyright provisions, pages that you create and edit belong to the community. Others can and often do mercilessly edit "your" material.
- Sock puppetry
- Do not use multiple accounts to create the illusion of greater
support for an issue, to mislead others, or to circumvent a block. Do
not ask your friends to create accounts to support you or anyone.
- Username policy
- Choose a neutral username with which you will be happy. You can usually change your name if you need to by asking, but you cannot delete it.
- Vandalism
- Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a
deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia. It
is inappropriate behavior for an online encyclopedia.
- Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia deletion policies:
- Attack page
- A Wikipedia article, page, category, redirect or image that exists
primarily to disparage its subject is an "attack page". These pages are
subject to being deleted by any administrator at any time.
- Criteria for speedy deletion
- Articles, images, categories etc. may be "speedily deleted" if they
clearly fall within certain categories, which generally boil down to
pages lacking content, or disruptive pages. Anything potentially
controversial should go through the deletion process instead.
- Deletion policy
- Deleting articles requires an administrator and generally follows a
consensus-forming process. Most potentially controversial deletions
require a three-step process and a waiting period of a week.
- Oversight
- Page revisions can be deleted for legal reasons.
- Proposed deletion
- As a shortcut around the Articles for Deletion ("AfD") process, for
uncontroversial deletions an article can be proposed for deletion, but
only once. If no one contests the proposed deletion within seven days,
an administrator may delete the article.
- Proposed deletion (books)
- As a shortcut around the Miscellany for Deletion ("MfD") process, for uncontroversial deletions a Wikipedia-Book
can be proposed for deletion, but only once. If no one contests the
proposed deletion within seven days, an administrator may delete the
book.
- Proposed deletion of biographies of living people
- Articles which are unsourced biographies of living persons
can be proposed for deletion through a special process if they were
created after March 18, 2010. If no one contests the proposed deletion
within ten days, an administrator may delete the article. In order to
contest the proposed deletion, at least one reliable source supporting
at least one statement in the article must be added.
- Revision deletion
- A function available to administrators to eliminate grossly improper posts and log entries.
- Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia enforcement policies:
- Administrators
- Administrators, like all editors, are not perfect beings. However,
in general, they are expected to act as role models within the
community, and a good general standard of civility, fairness, and
general conduct both to editors and in content matters, is expected.
When acting as administrators, they are also expected to be fair,
exercise good judgment, and give explanations and be communicative as
necessary.
- Banning policy
- Extremely disruptive editors may be banned from Wikipedia. Please
respect these bans, do not bait banned users, and do not help them out.
Bans can be appealed to Jimbo Wales or the Arbitration Committee, depending on the nature of the ban.
- Blocking policy
- Disruptive editors can be blocked from editing for short or long periods of time.
- Page protection policy
- Pages can be protected against vandals or during fierce content
disputes. Protected pages can, but in general should not, be edited by
administrators. In addition, pages undergoing frequent vandalism can be
semi-protected to block edits by very new or unregistered editors.
- Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia legal policies:
These are policies with legal implications. Outside of policies, such as those below and the
office actions policy,
Wikipedia does not censor itself of content that may be objectionable or offensive, or adopt other
perennial legal proposals over content, so long as the content obeys the
law of the United States. Legal issues are raised by filing a formal complaint with the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Child protection
- Editors who advocate or attempt to pursue or facilitate
inappropriate adult-child relationships, or who identify themselves as
paedophiles, are to be blocked indefinitely.
- Copyright violations
- Relates to material copied from sources that are either not public
domain, or are not compatibly licensed without the permission of the
copyright holder. Wikipedia has no tolerance for copyright violations in
our encyclopedia, and we actively strive to find and remove any
violations.
- Copyrights
- Relates to the copyrighted Wikipedia text being licensed to the public under one or several liberal licenses.
- Libel
- It is Wikipedia policy to delete libelous revisions from the page history. If you believe you have been defamed, please contact us. It is the responsibility of all contributors to ensure that material posted on Wikipedia is not defamatory.
- No legal threats
- Use dispute resolution
rather than making legal threats, for everyone's sake, as we respond
quickly to complaints of defamation or copyright infringement. If you
make legal threats, or take legal action over a Wikipedia dispute, you
may be blocked
from editing, so that the matter is not exacerbated through other
channels. If you do take legal action, please refrain from editing until
it is resolved.
- Non discrimination
- Do not discriminate against current or prospective users on the
basis of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, age,
disability, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected
characteristics.
- Non-free content criteria
- The Exemption Doctrine Policy for the English Wikipedia. The cases
in which you can declare usage of a non-free image, audio clip, or video
clip as "fair use" are quite narrow. You must specify the exact use,
and only use the image or clip in that one context. Only use non-free
content as a last resort.
- Paid-contribution disclosure
- Editors must disclose their employer, client, and affiliation with
respect to any contribution for which they receive, or expect to
receive, compensation.
- Reusing Wikipedia content
- Relates to the basis of using Wikipedia content in your own
publications. Most of Wikipedia's material may be freely used under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licences. Which means you must credit the authors, re-license the material under CC-BY-SA or GFDL, and allow free access to it.
- Terms of use
- The terms of use are established by the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia procedural policies:
- Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight
- Elections, appointments and removals
- Arbitration/Policy
- Rules for how the Arbitration Committee decides Requests for arbitration.
- Bot policy
- Programs that update pages automatically in a useful and harmless
way may be welcome, as long as their owners seek approval first and are
careful to keep them from running amok or being a drain on resources.
- Bureaucrats
- Bureaucrats are Wikipedia users with the technical ability to add
the administrator, bureaucrat, or bot user group to an account; or
remove the administrator or bot user group from an account.
- CheckUser
- CheckUser is a tool allowed to be used by a small number of editors
who are permitted to examine user IP information and other server log
data under certain circumstances, for the purposes of protecting
Wikipedia against actual and potential disruption and abuse.
- Global rights policy
- English Wikipedia restrictions on users who have global rights on all Foundation sites
- IP block exemption
- Editors in good standing whose editing is disrupted by unrelated
blocks or firewalls may request IP block exemption, which allows editing
on an otherwise-blocked IP address.
- Mediation
- Mediation is a process that creates valid consensus with the aid of a
neutral third party skilled in dispute resolution. Editors may request
formal mediation from the Mediation Committee or informal mediation from any Wikipedia contributor.
- Mediation Committee/Policy
- Rules for how the Mediation Committee conducts formal mediation.
- Office actions
- The Wikimedia Foundation office reserves the right to speedily
delete an article temporarily in cases of exceptional controversy.
- Open proxies
Open proxies may be blocked from editing for any period at any time to deal with editing abuse.- Policies and guidelines
- Understanding and changing policies and guidelines
- Volunteer response team
- If you disagree with an edit that was made referencing a volunteer
response ticket number as a reason, or in the edit summary, please
follow the steps listed at "Wikipedia:Volunteer response team#Dispute resolution".
- Wikimedia policy
- A list of Wikimedia policy links of interest to Wikipedians, along with links to the texts of the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses
Recent changes
Miscellaneous
- Ignore all rules
- "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."
Enforcement
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