Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays on Wikipedia is obscure. There is no bright line between what the community chooses to call a "

information page
".

This explanatory essay itself is a

policy and guideline proposal process
. However, some essays and supplemental pages are widely accepted as part of the Wikipedia gestalt, and have a significant degree of influence during discussions.

How-to and information pages typically provide technical and factual information and are not often referenced during deliberations, but rather used for directing editors to pages about Wikipedia's processes and practices.

Misconceptions

Various theories have been put forward as to what these differences are. Here are the most common misconceptions:

Breaking policies will always get you blocked

It's true that violating (some)
banning
editors.
On the other hand, violating other kinds of policies, such as Wikipedia:Verifiability, is done constantly, by thousands of editors each week, without anyone getting blocked because of such violations.

Policies are succinct

Some editors wish this were true, but it isn't. Some policies, such as Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, which weighs in at 60 kB, are more than ten times the length of some guidelines and essays.

Policies tell you what you must always do, and other pages just make optional suggestions

There are a remarkable number of exceptions and limitations embedded within Wikipedia's policies, and all policies need to be applied with
External links guideline, for example, does not permit any exceptions to its prohibition on linking to known copyright violations. Furthermore, Wikipedia:Ignore all rules
is a major policy: We would not have a policy telling us that all policies and guidelines may be ignored (for sufficiently good reasons) if no exceptions could exist to policies.

Policies are prescriptive, and other pages are descriptive

This is usually combined with the erroneous belief that "prescriptive" means that the page uses
weasel words
.
In fact, the primary difference between being
telling people what to do
, or whether it is describing what people already do.
The major content policies, in particular, arose out of the community's actual practices, and thus are correctly considered descriptive pages, even when they describe the community's long-established and widely supported practices in unflinching terms. Any page may use—and many should use—clear, firm, and direct language when describing a firmly established practice.

Policies are supported by a higher degree of consensus than guidelines

There is some truth in this: As a general rule policy pages tend to be watched by more editors, and changes to them scrutinized more closely. But there is no guarantee, in any concrete situation, that a given page marked as policy better reflects the will of the community than a given page marked as a guideline. Indeed, sometimes the watching editors' resistance to changes in the text of policy pages can actually prevent those pages from evolving to reflect changed consensus in the wider community. (And some pages are policy only because they were marked as such a long time ago, when standards were different; some of them date back before Wikipedia distinguished between policies and guidelines.)
At the other end of the spectrum, some of the most widely supported advice pages, like
Wikipedia:Use common sense
is an essay.

A page is a policy because everyone reads it

Some policies are rarely viewed or commented on. Some essays, supplemental and information pages are viewed thousands of times each week and are widely supported, such as Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions and Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. Nevertheless, how much a page is viewed or its number of incoming links does not always determine the page's status within the community.

Policy pages outrank guidelines, which in turn outrank essays

This is actually true in some cases, but not always. First of all, what's written on any given advice page at any given moment may not accurately reflect the community's view—and it's the community's actual view that is the real policy, not the words on a page that says "policy" at the top.
More importantly, editors need to follow the most relevant advice. A broadly worded policy page, intended to provide only the most general outline of the goals, is not necessarily a better source of advice than a guideline that directly and explicitly addresses the specific issue at hand. For example, even though
Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources
guideline.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ This explanatory essay was created as a separate "supplement" because, in discussions about how to improve and explain the policy on policies and guidelines, most editors thought that it would be easier to handle this material on a separate page, using a FAQ format, instead of trying to shoehorn it directly into the official policy page. (See {{supplement}} for further information on usage.)

External links

  • The meaning of words like "must" and "should"
  • Dariusz Jemielniak (Wikipedia editor .
  • Phoebe Ayers (Wikipedia editor .
  • Peter Gallert (Wikipedia editor .