Many of the most well-established policies and guidelines have developed from principles that have been accepted as fundamental since Wikipedia's inception. Others developed as solutions to common problems and disruptive editing. Policy and guideline pages are seldom established without precedent[3] and require strong community support. Policies and guidelines may be established through new proposals, promotion of essays or guidelines, and reorganization of existing policies and guidelines through splitting and merging.
Essays and information pages may be established by writing them and adding {{essay}}, {{Information page}}, {{Wikipedia how-to}}, or a similar template to the page.
Current policy and guideline proposals can be found in Category:Wikipedia proposals, and failed ones at Category:Wikipedia failed proposals. All editors are welcome to comment.
Proposals
Proposals for new guideline and policy pages require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion to guideline or policy status. Adding the {{policy}} template to a page without the required consensus does not mean the page is policy, even if the page summarizes or copies policy. Most commonly, a new policy or guideline documents existing practices, rather than proposing a change to what experienced editors already choose to do.
One path for proposals is developing them through steps of
- {{brainstorming}}
- {{draft proposal}}
- {{proposal}}
- {{policy}} or {{guideline}}
Brainstorming
The first step is to write the best initial proposal you can. Authors can request early-stage feedback at Wikipedia's village pump for idea incubation and from any relevant WikiProjects. Amendments to a proposal can be discussed on its talk page. It is crucial to improve a proposal in response to feedback received from outside editors. Consensus is built through a process of listening to and discussing the proposal with many other editors.
Once you think the initial proposal is well written, and the issues involved have been sufficiently discussed among early participants to create a proposal that has a solid chance of success with the broader community, start a request for comment (RfC) about your policy or guideline proposal in a new section on the proposal's talk page. Include the {{rfc|policy}}
tag, along with a brief, time-stamped explanation of the proposal. Then, if you want, you can provide a detailed explanation of what the page does and why you think it should be a policy or guideline. The {{Proposal}} template should be placed at the top of the proposed page; this tag will get the proposal properly categorized.
The RfC should typically be announced at the policy and/or proposals village pumps, and you should notify other potentially interested groups. If your proposal affects a specific content area, then related WikiProjects can be found at the WikiProject directory. If your proposal relates to an existing policy or guideline, then leave a note on the talk page of the related policy or guideline. For example, proposed style guidelines should be announced at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, which is the main guideline for style issues. Try to identify the subcategory of guideline or policy (see {{Subcat guideline}} template). Proposals involving contentious subjects or wide-ranging effects should normally be listed on Wikipedia:Centralized discussion for the duration of the RfC. Rarely, a particularly important proposal may be advertised via a watchlist notice; sitenotices (which are displayed to all readers, not just to active editors) are not used for proposals. RfCs for policy and guideline proposals are normally left open for at least a week or sometimes a couple of months.
To avoid later complaints about insufficient notice, it may be helpful to provide a complete list of the groups or pages you used to advertise the proposal on the talk page. Be careful not to canvass, and avoid non-neutral wording.
Editors should respond to proposals in a way that helps identify and build consensus. Explain your thoughts, ask questions, and raise concerns. Many editors begin their responses with bold-font 'vote' of support or opposition to make evaluation easier.
Closing a discussion requires careful evaluation of the responses to determine the consensus. This does not require the intervention of an administrator; it may be done by any sufficiently experienced impartial editor, not involved in the discussion, who is familiar with all policies and guidelines related to the proposal. The following points are important in evaluating consensus:
- Consensus for guidelines and policies should be reasonably strong, though unanimity is not required.
- There must be exposure to the community beyond just the authors of the proposal.
- Consider the strength of the proposed page:
- Have major concerns raised during the community discussion been addressed?
- Does the proposal contradict any existing guidelines or policies?
- Can the new proposed guideline or policy be merged into an existing one?
- Is the proposed guideline or policy, or some part of it, redundant with an existing guideline or policy?
- A proposal's status is not determined by counting votes. Polling is not a substitute for discussion, nor is a poll's numerical outcome tantamount to consensus.
- If consensus for broad community support has not developed after a reasonable time, the proposal has failed. If consensus is neutral or unclear on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal has likewise failed.
Discussion may be closed as one of: Promote, No consensus, or Failed. Please leave a short note about the conclusion you came to. Update the proposal to reflect the consensus. Remove the {{Proposal}} template and replace it with another appropriate template, such as {{Subcat guideline}}, {{Policy}}, {{Supplement}}, {{essay}}, or {{Failed proposal}}. See Wikipedia namespace templates for a listing of banners.
If a proposal fails, the failed tag should not usually be removed. It is typically more productive to rewrite a failed proposal from scratch to address problems or seek consensus to integrate uncontroversial aspects of it into existing pages, rather than to re-nominate a proposal.
Demotion
An accepted policy or guideline may become obsolete because of changes in editorial practice or community standards, may become redundant because of improvements to other pages, or may represent unwarranted instruction creep. In such situations editors may propose that a policy be demoted to a guideline, or that a policy or guideline be demoted to a supplement, informational page, essay or historical page. In certain cases, a policy or guideline may be superseded, in which case the old page is marked and retained for historical interest.
The process for demotion is similar to promotion. A talk page discussion is typically started, the {{Under discussion|status|Discussion Title}}
template is added to the top of the project page, and community input is solicited. After a reasonable amount of time for comments, an independent editor should close the discussion and evaluate the discussion and determine whether a consensus has formed to change the status.
The {{Disputed tag}} template is typically used instead of {{Under discussion}} for claims that a page was recently assigned guideline or policy status without proper or sufficient consensus being established.
Essays, information pages, and other informal pages that are supported by only a small minority of the community are typically moved to the primary author's userspace. These discussions typically happen on the page's talk page, sometimes with an RfC, but they have at times also been conducted at Miscellany for deletion (despite the MFD guidelines explicitly discouraging this practice). Other pages are retained for historical reference and are marked as such.
Content changes
Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other page. It is not strictly necessary to discuss changes or to obtain consensus in advance. However, because policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure they reflect the community's view and do not accidentally introduce confusion.
The purpose of policies and guidelines is to state what most agree upon, and should be phrased to reflect the present consensus. Editing a policy/guideline/essay page does not in itself imply an immediate change to accepted practice. It is bad practice to recommend a rejected practice on a policy or guideline page.
As explained below, update best practices by editing boldly or by working toward widespread consensus for the change through discussion.
Substantive changes
Implement. Before making substantive changes to policy and guideline pages, it is sometimes useful to try to establish a reasonable exception to the existing practice. To try to update the existing best practices this way, you may directly deviate from the established practice following the WP:IGNORE and WP:BOLD principles and make the change to mainspace pages. After some time, if there are no objections to the change and/or if a widespread consensus for your change or implementation is reached through discussion, you can then edit policy and guideline pages describing the practice to reflect the new situation.
Talk first. Talk page discussion typically precedes substantive changes to a policy. Changes may be made if there are no objections or if the discussion shows there is consensus for the change. Minor edits for grammar and clarity can be made at any time.
If the result of discussions is unclear, then it should be evaluated by an administrator or other independent editor, as in the proposal process. Major changes should also be publicized to the community in general; announcements may be appropriate.
If wider input on a proposed change is desired, it may be useful to mark the section with the tag {{Under discussion|section|talk=Discussion Title}}
. (If the proposal relates to a single statement, use {{Under discussion inline|Discussion Title}}
immediately after it.)
Or be bold. Although most editors find discussions helpful, especially at well-developed pages, directly editing these pages is permitted by Wikipedia's policies. Consequently, you should not remove any change solely because there was no discussion indicating consensus for the change before it was made. Instead, give a substantive reason for challenging it either in your edit summary or on the talk page.
Bold editors of policy and guideline pages are strongly encouraged to follow WP:1RR or WP:0RR standards. Editing a policy to support your own argument in an active discussion may be seen as gaming the system, especially if you do not disclose it when making the edits.
Conflicts between advice pages
If policy and/or guideline pages conflict, one or more pages need to be revised to resolve the conflict so all the conflicting pages accurately reflect the community's actual practices and best advice. As a temporary measure, if a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, editors may assume the policy takes precedence.
More commonly, advice pages do not directly conflict, but provide multiple options. For example, Wikipedia:Reliable sources says newspaper articles are generally considered to be reliable sources, and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) recommends against newspaper articles for certain technical purposes. Editors must use their judgement to decide which advice is most appropriate and relevant to the situation at hand.