It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not beenthoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.
This page in a nutshell: A list of recommendations regarding the creation and updating ofpolicy and guideline pages. SeeWP:PROPOSAL for official procedural details.
There are two main approaches for the creation of additional guidance in Wikipedia:
Solving a problem: Something is experienced as problematic, for which an appropriate solution is sought;
Writing down existing state-of-the-art practice: Some issues are tackled in a way that has become more or less standardized, or in a way that follows from the features of the MediaWiki software – in order to help editors not yet acquainted with these systems, the preferredmodus operandi is noted down on a guidance page.
Only in the case when somebody has a brilliant and original idea to solve an existing problem (first approach), and furthermore that solution is instantly adopted by the community at large, could it be said that guidance is created "from scratch". Usually, however, the creation of guidance involves many intermediate steps before the community agrees on the new standards. Specifically, there is broad agreement at "policy" level that the essential features are already contained in the current ruleset, not calling for sweeping changes. Nonetheless, Wikipedia founderJimbo Wales or theBoard of Trustees can initiate the creation process of a policy "from scratch" (example:Wikipedia:Office actions,initiated by Jimbo, or alater example).
Most guidance is created as a combination of the first and second approaches; for example,Wikipedia:Footnotes results from technical novelties requested by the community (first approach), then written down in guidance on how to use the updated technical features (second approach).
It is usually not such a good idea to insert novel ideas on guidance in the top level guidance pages (policies and importantguidelines). In that case, attempt anessay or a newguideline proposal instead. If help is desired in forming an acceptable proposal, one may wish to invite others tobrainstorm ideas.
If an essaycontradicts existing policies and adopted guidelines, the essay would better be removed in order not to create confusion. In other words, essays should not be used to create an alternative rule set – such alternative ideas can better be presented via discussion on the talk page of a related guideline or via a project namespace discussion platform likeWikipedia:Village pump (policy). Guideline proposals should also not be used to attempt to create a contradictory ruleset; use relevant discussion pages instead if you think your alternative ideas have merit.
New or alternative guidance proposals that would affect the nature of Wikipedia (key policies and essential guidelines that more or less define the nature of Wikipedia) should be discussed on themailing list (compareUser:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles, point 6).
Consider that the most important job on guidance pages ispruning, rather than the expansion of the ruleset. Constant expansion of the body of policies and guidelines can make it into a swamp, not nearly like the handy toolset editors may expect to find.
Maintaining a clear and organic structure of the ruleset can be seen as part of much-appreciated pruning efforts – for instance, updatingnaming conventions guideline pages to a common and recognizable structure can be seen as a contribution to such pruning effort.
The following general principles were gathered together following the implementation of several policies across the encyclopedia. As you will see from these recommendations themselves, these points areguidelines, notrules. You know best what will work in your case.
Choose policies that have sprung up organically, not imposed from the top down. Contributors "in the trenches" can tell when recurring themes and ideas appear across several articles. Look for conventions that are introduced by one user, but are then copied and adopted by other users. These "de facto" policies often prove very workable. Indeed, they are already in practice, so making them "official" is more of a formality than a new policy.
Leave room for flexibility (or:Avoid instruction creep). Although a uniformity of style is itself a good thing, it sometimes forces contributors into astraitjacket that they won't like. For example, the very flexibility of ourpolicy on allowing all styles of English spelling, rather than just the dominant one, has caused it to be a very stable, implementable policy. Although new users often ask if and what the policy is, they tend to accept it pretty quickly once they've been shown the relevant policy page. The same is not true of inflexible policies, which generate the same arguments over and over again.
Don't be prescriptive. Devolve responsibility. Although it is tempting to try to cover every possible angle that might arise, it is not always possible. Doing so can lead to long complex policies, with loopholes. Very precise rules are things that ill-intentioned users sometimeslove. A policy that says "Doing X n times in a day is grounds for a banning" is often unhelpful – trollish users can and will then deliberately do X (n-1) times in a day. Better to write "Doing X is considered bad. If a user continues to do X after being warned that it is inappropriate, users may decide to {report to arb. committee/implement a temp ban/protect page/revert}". The number of "good" users overwhelms the bad – trust the users to sort things in specific cases; the policy just provides the framework. People are smarter than the words on the page will ever be. This is similar to having a judge to implement and interpret laws.
Avoid knee-jerk reactions. Suppose one user does something annoying once. It is then often common practice to add to the boilerplate at the top of the relevant policy page, prohibiting what that user did. This in the past has led toever-lengthening boilerplates that often consider minutiae irrelevant to the broad thrust of the policy. Consider whether it was a one-off, and thus whether it is better to keep that detail on relevant talk pages.
Flexibility again. Most articles are only monitored by a few people. Debates are generally manageable, and consensus (often unanimous) can be reached. On very popular policy pages, this is not the case. Lots of people monitor these pages. If you cast a change in "either/or" terms you will often get opinion divided down the middle. Thus, if your policy change has to come to some sort of vote (ample discussionalways comes first, becausepolls are evil), use a form ofapproval voting rather thanfirst past the post voting. Lay out all the options, and for each option allow the user to say if the proposed solution is acceptable or unacceptable. If you only have two options to list, examine whether all the middle-ground possibilities have been included.
Consult widely. Make a special effort to engage potential critics of the new guideline; engage them and get them to help find the middle ground early. (If all else fails, you can use theBold, Revert, Discuss cycle to find these critics.)
Do not rush. You will get there faster if you give the process the time it needs. People may oppose an idea simply because they feel it has not had adequate discussion, and especially if they feel a policy is beingpushed through to circumvent discussion. On the other hand, some amount of friction can always be expected these days. Don't slow down TOO much!
Do not call a vote. Votes are rarely appropriate for policy debates, and almost never for guidelines. A vote can nevercreate consensus; instead, it may or may not indicateexisting consensus.
Policies as well as guidelines can benefit fromexamples:
Guidelines usually contain more examples than Policies
Most Guidelines document the implementation of the general principles of Policies in concrete circumstances; for that reason, Guidelines quite naturally contain more examples than Policy pages. Examples canchange. For instance, an article that used to be a good illustration to some guidance can be turned into adisambiguation page, or the particular example might be moved to a subpage, etc. While Policies require more consensus to change (they generally have moreresistance to swift change), care should especially be taken that the examples on Policy pages exhibitstability over a long period of time. For example, theWP:V policy page used to contain names of publications as examples ofunreliable sources. These examples were subsequently moved to a guideline page – branding publications as "unreliable" as a policy-level appreciation is far too absolute to be workable.
Role of examples during the creation process of policies and guidelines
During the creation process of policies and guidelines,examples play an important role: these examples can bepositive (the policy/guideline attempting to describe how particular issues were successfully handled in the past), as well asnegative (the policy/guideline attempting to describe how a particular problem can be resolved in the future). As an example of the latter, theSeigenthaler controversy was instrumental in the development ofWikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Another example of how examples keep the development of a guideline in check:Wikipedia:Notability (books)#Examples and precedents. New guideline descriptions are cross-referenced to priorAfD cases to check whether the new guideline deviates from Wikipedians' prior assessments, and/or whether the new guidance would be able to resolve problematic situations in the future without recourse to voting.
Choose clear-cut examples
A well-chosen example can often make things clear and understandable far better than long-winded detailed descriptions can. For that reason, the selection of the most appropriate examples for guideline and policy pages should not be trivialized: for instance, don't choose examples that Wikipedians are strongly divided on the best solution for (unless it is a clear example illustrating why a guideline chooses a "we agree to disagree" approach). Note the examples used inWikipedia:Words to avoid#Terrorist, terrorism: although the area discussed in that guideline section is highly contentious, the examples are always clear – this helps Wikipedians when writing articles about these delicate topics to assess what phrasing would be acceptable, and how to avoid going "over the top".
Also, use examples relevant to thenamespace you're writing the guidance for. If you're creating guidance specifically forArticle namespace, it wouldn't be a good idea to use examples from how issues were tackled inUser Talk namespace, etc.
[...] although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it, and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.
