 | This is anessay on misuse of shortcuts. 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 shortcut name might appear to support your argument but the linked policy, guideline or essay may not. |
Many of our shortcuts to policy, guideline or essays consist of an uppercase word or two or a short phrase. Although these words may appear to succinctly sum up the linked advice, it is best to think of them as a mnemonic. There is a temptation to cite shortcuts as though these words in themselves support one's argument, and this can be unhelpful to constructive discussion when they do not. Editors are then misled, or become distracted from the topic at hand into pointing out the mistake. Repeatedly misciting shortcuts to policy can bedisruptive and a sign ofactivism: anattempt to block or silence those one disagrees witha false claim to have policy on one's side.
This essay documents some cases of WP:UPPERCASE, where a shortcut is often miscited.
TheWP:IDONTLIKEIT shortcut leads to a section in the essayWikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. It is therefore not applicable to discussions outside those concerning article deletion. It is cited correctly to complain when a voter does not like the article subject and their prejudice against the subject is the entire basis of their vote to delete. This shortcut is sometimes indiscriminately used to dismiss another editor's personal negative opinion about anything, anywhere, including the quality of or bias in sources, style and word choices, article layout, etc. This misuse is ironic: editors are dismissing someone's argument solely because it is negative rather than on the substance of the arguments made, which is the kind of false-argumentation thatWikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions discourages.
TheWP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS shortcut leads to another section in the essayWikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. As withWP:IDONTLIKEIT, it is inappropriate to cite this outside article deletion discussions. The concern there is that the existence of a similar article should not set a precedent. As the essayWikipedia:Some stuff exists for a reason explains, precedent can in fact be useful in other areas, as widespread current practice may well be informative.Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines says that our policies and guidelines often describe agreed-upon best practices. Sometimes a misguided argument about how things are supposedly done on Wikipedia or how policy or guideline apparently requires something, is best demolished by giving examples demonstrating this can't possibly be so. Whether examples of "other stuff" helps your case or are irrelevant will vary, but the practice of pointing them out should not be dismissed out-of-hand as though it is forbidden. If your problem with another's argument isWhataboutism, then link to that article.
TheWP:STICKTOSOURCES shortcut leads to the "Using sources" section ofWikipedia:No original research. It documents how our articles are built by summarising reliable sources in our own words while remaining true to their intention and the facts within them. Sometimes editors cite this shortcut to demand that our articles must also use the same words as the source. This fallacy is described in detail in theWikipedia:Use our own words essay.
The style advice atMOS:CONSISTENT is about maintaining one regional variety of English within an article. It is not, as some have miscited it, a requirement that an article must consistently use the same words for something throughout its length. We frequently do not. Most commonly to avoid tedious repetition, but we may choose to use a technical term or jargon in one place and a lay alternative in another (or side-by-side).
TheWP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS shortcut leads to a section inWikipedia:Tendentious editing, which is an explanatory essay for theWikipedia:Disruptive editing guideline. It is about ensuring article content is verifiable by reliable sources and gives appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion. It is correctly cited when removing unverifiable claims or dubious "facts", or when trimming the excess weight given to fringe or discredited viewpoints, and then dealing with editors who keep putting it back. For example, the belief in ivermectin to treat COVID-19 or that MMR vaccine causes autism or any number of conspiracy theories.
Some editors thinkWP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS is their policy weapon in a war againstwoke editors. As with all wars, both sides areadvocating something and editors both progressive and conservative can sometimes engage inactivist behaviour that is harmful to the project. Wikipedia does not have a policy on who in this war is right and who is wrong. Disagreements, as always, should be resolved through discussion leading to consensus.
Don't assume that a shortcut beginning with
WP:NOTwill take you to theWP:NOT policy. Less than half of them do.
TheWP:NOTADVOCACY shortcut links to a section inWikipedia:What Wikipedia is not that is about achieving neutrality and objectivity in our article content. It links toWikipedia:Advocacy which says "Advocacy is the use of Wikipedia to promote personal beliefs or agendas at the expense ofWikipedia's goals andcore content policies, includingverifiability andneutral point of view. Despite the popularity of Wikipedia, it isnot a soapbox to use for editors' activism, recruitment, promotion, advertising, announcements, or other forms of advocacy."
Sometimes editors citeWP:NOTADVOCACY to dismiss editors they disagree with, who are arguing, in good faith, and in alignment with our goals and policies. This may typically be because that argument aligns with viewpoints of some groups outside Wikipedia (politics, religion, social attitudes, race, sexuality, etc) and the dismissing editor disagrees with those groups too. Editors may in good faith disagree about how we should, for example, make articles accessible to a general audience or how to write them neutrally and objectively and in an encyclopaedic tone. All editors have beliefs, biases and prejudices that influence what they think should or should not be written and how to write it. The problem is not having opinions and, to a degree, expressing them on talk pages, but whether you are seeking to cooperate, collaborate and compromise with other editors to achieve our goal.
[D]efending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.
Someone once wrote that "Anyone who defends their edits by citingWP:NOTCENSORED doesn't have the first clue." Its misuse can be akin toGodwin's Law, as a signal that you have run out of argument.
The first thing to realise, if you are citingWP:NOTCENSORED in order to justifyincluding something, is that it is part of theWhat Wikipedia is not policy, which is mostly about what wedon't want to include on Wikipedia. Our other core policies such asWP:WEIGHT,WP:NOR andWP:V are also mainly used to exclude and reduce content. Wikipedia goes to a lot of effort to keep content out.WP:NOTCENSORED is in fact clear that our policies (and the law) have priority over your opinion about what should be included.
Sometimes editors citeWP:NOTCENSORED to try to dismiss the concerns of those who view that certain language or word choices are offensive, can perpetuate stigma, are prejudiced or biased, and who are asking editors to consider alternatives. The opening paragraph of the policy section might at first glance appear useful to dismiss these concerns of causing offense but it is essentially saying that we can't please everyone and are notrequired to agree with you if you complain. But no more than that. The linkedOffensive material guideline says that we should only knowingly include material or text that causes readers offense "if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available". Wikipedians routinely remove sexist, racist and antisemitic content, enforce an encyclopaedic tone, and we don't misgender trans people, insult politicians or mock celebrities even if our sources do. In practice, where there is consensus that a word choice is problematic and has good alternatives while remaining informative, relevant and accurate, we change it.
The main purpose of this section is to say that Wikipedia's encyclopedia articles are not news stories. Editors who want to write original news articles should look intoWikinews, which is one of theWikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects and is dedicated to creating original news.
However, the section also says that most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion in any encyclopedia article, and gets cited whenWP:DUE orWP:BALASP would be more relevant. Additionally, it gets (mis)cited to claim that subjects are non-notable.
This is one of those shortcuts where you can't win. Cited correctly, you are complaining about, or fixing, a situation where two wikilinks are adjacent. The reader will see just one link and not the two separate links. When you do that, someone may then complain that the black sentence text with just a few blue words was hardly a "SEAOFBLUE". Cited incorrectly, you are falsely claiming guideline support for your opinion about the maximum number of blue wikilinks one should see in a paragraph, and asserting that the current text or proposed changes exceeds this threshold. This personal threshold is typically set at "what it is now" or "what it used to be before you came along".
TheMOS:RETAIN link is aboutnational varieties of English only, and is sometimes confused withMOS:STYLERET, which is less catchy and more generally about style. Both discourage change without a substantial reason for the change or existing MOS guidance. Both permit discussion to achieve consensus for change (either at an article talk page or a MOS discussion) and thus citing themwithin such a discussion is a foolish contradiction. Neither guideline prevents copyediting.
Thepolicy on article titles does not apply to the words in the article body. There are many ways in which our choice of article title is constrained that do not apply to body text. Do not simply cite the shortcuts on that page when discussing the best word style for body text. For example,WP:COMMONNAME,WP:PRECISION,WP:NATURAL,WP:CONCISE,WP:CONSISTENT, andWP:TRANSLITERATE.
This helpful essay discourages violations of theWikipedia:Edit warring policy by encouraging editors not to revertduring dispute discussions. It is routinely invoked as a justification for reverting before, during, and after discussions. Editors who invoke it usually haven't read the page since at least the previous decade, if ever.
TheWP:CONLEVEL section of theWikipedia:Consensus policy, also calledWP:LOCALCONSENSUS, addresses an occasional problem in which a small group of editors declare that"their" articles are exempt from certain standards. This can happen on a larger scale, such as when WikiProject Composers declared that "their" articles about classical composers were exempt fromMOS:INFOBOXUSE, or on a smaller scale, such as when editors of an article about a sensitive subject decide that "their" article should be exempt from theWikipedia:No disclaimers guideline.
CONLEVEL doesnot say that decisions made by a few editors in conformance with all relevant rules are "just a local consensus", nor does it say that well-advertised discussions on article talk pages are "just a local consensus" or have "a low level of consensus".
CONLEVEL doesnot say anything about the strength or weakness of a given consensus.
TOOSOON is about articles being written "too soon" – i.e. before they arenotable. It says nothing aboutWP:RFA, otherrequests for permissions, or anything else occurring before the editor citing the essay thinks it should. You may be looking forWP:NOTNOW orWP:NOTYET, which deal with RFA applications from novice and intermediate editors, respectively.
NOTNOW is a page which was written for newbies who are unaware of the community expectations around adminship; itexplains what adminship entails. If an editor knows what it means to be an admin (hint: if an admin nominated the editor, they do), you are citing the wrong essay.
In particular, it says nothing to bolster a generic "please come back after 6/12/18 months" oppose.