Wikipedia:List of policies

This page includes a summary of official policies on the English Wikipedia which are set out in detail elsewhere. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered standards that all editors should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision is consistent with the underlying policies. When in doubt, discuss it on the talk page.

Where a discrepancy exists, the policy page itself overrides. Changing this page does not change policy. Likewise, adding a page to this summary does not elevate it to policy status. Policies are promoted through consensus. See Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines for more.

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WP:LOP

All policies are listed at Category:Wikipedia policy. A list that also includes guidelines is at List of policies and guidelines. This page is broken into general sections on:

Content: define which topics are welcome on Wikipedia, and provide quality and naming standards

Conduct: how to win friends, influence people, and stay out of trouble
Deletion: the body of policies dealing with page deletion
Enforcement: what actions editors can take to enforce other policies
Legal: rules influenced by legal considerations, and remedies for misuse
Procedural: miscellaneous policies, most with some connection to the Arbitration Committee or the Wikimedia Foundation

Ignore all rules: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."

Content

Policy shortcut: Wikipedia:CONPOL

Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia content policy:

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No original research: Articles may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas; or any new interpretation, analysis, or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts,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.
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 persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space."
Copyright violations: Do not add content to Wikipedia if you think that doing so may be a copyright violation. Contributors should take steps to remove any copyright violations that they find.
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.
What Wikipedia is not: Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. Please avoid the temptation to use Wikipedia for other purposes.

Conduct

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WP:BEHAVE

Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia conduct policy:

Civility: Intentional or unintentional rudeness or insensitivity can distract from and interfere with our work. Dispute resolution forums are available when civil, reasoned discussion breaks down.
Consensus: Consensus among equals is our only tool for resolving content disputes, and our main tool for resolving all other disputes.
Editing policy: Improve pages wherever you can, and don't worry about leaving them imperfect. It is advisable to explain major changes.
No 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.
No ownership of articles: 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.
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.

Deletion

Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia deletion policy:

Attack pages: 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.
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. Administrators may choose to "incubate" articles rather than deleting them outright.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary: Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide.

Enforcement

Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia enforcement policy:

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 amounts of time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Legal

Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia legal policy:

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, so long as it obeys the law of the United States and state of Florida. Legal issues are raised by filing a formal complaint with the Wikimedia Foundation.

Copyright violations: Wikipedia has no tolerance for copyright violations in our encyclopedia, and we actively strive to find and remove any violations.
Copyrights: Material which infringes other copyrights must not be added. The legalities of copyright and "fair use" are quite complex.
Libel: It is Wikipedia policy to delete libelous revisions from the page history. If you believe you have been defamed, please contact us.
No legal threats: Use dispute resolution rather than legal threats, for everyone's sake. We respond quickly to complaints of defamation or copyright infringement. If you do take legal action, please refrain from editing until it is resolved.
Non-free content criteria: The Exemption Doctrine Policy for the English Wikipedia. The cases in which you can declare an image, audio clip, or video clip "fair use" are quite narrow. You must specify the exact use, and only use the image or clip in that one context.
Reusing Wikipedia content: Most of Wikipedia's material may be freely used under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL, which means you must credit authors, relicense the material under CC-BY-SA or GFDL and allow free access to it.

Procedural

Pages currently in Category:Wikipedia procedural policy:

Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight: Elections, appointments and removals
Arbitration/Policy: Rules for how the Arbitration Committee decides Requests for arbitration.
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.
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.
Global rights policy: English Wikipedia restrictions on users who have global rights on all Foundation sites
GlobalBlocking: A steward may block an IP address or IP address range from editing all WMF projects to prevent cross-wiki disruption or to enforce the prohibition against editing from open proxies. Globally blocked editors may be unblocked locally, at the discretion of an Administrator.
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 the Mediation Cabal.
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.
Oversight: Page revisions can be deleted for legal reasons.
Policies and guidelines: Understanding and changing policies and guidelines
Revision deletion: A function available to administrators to eliminate grossly improper posts and log entries
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