Cèṭa'an:Wiktionary/doc

This template makes a link in a box to a Wiktionary page. Wiktionary entries include definitions, etymology, and pronunciation, as well as synonyms, antonyms, and related terms.

Usage

{{Wiktionary}}

If no parameter is supplied, the current page name in lower case will be the target. Please check whether it is correct.

You can also use:

{{Wiktionary|1st|2nd|...|10th}} (one up to ten parameters, see Template Data below)

Linking to a search page

For internal link to Wiktionary search on a specific word, this code may be used:

[[wikt:Special:Search/search word|text to show]]

Placement

This template is about the layout of Wikipedia articles. For the layout of Wikipedia talk pages, see Wikipedia:Talk page layout.

Manual of Style (MoS)
Content Accessibility Biography Disambiguation pages Organizing by subject Gender identity Hidden text Infoboxes Linking Self-references Words to watch
Formatting Abbreviations Capitalization Dates and numbers Pronunciation Spelling Text formatting Titles of works
Images Captions Image placement Icons Images
Layout Layout Lead section Tables Trivia sections
Lists Lists Lists of works Road junctions Stand-alone lists
By topic area Legal Legal Trademarks Arts Anime and manga Comics Blazons Film Lyrics and poetry Novels Philosophy Television Video games Visual arts Writing about fiction Music Music samples Record charts Stringed instruments History Military history Regional Specific naming conventions Canada China (and Chinese) Egypt France (and French) Hawaii India Indonesia Ireland Japan Korea Macedonia Malaysia Pakistan Philippines Poland Singapore Trinidad and Tobago Religion Islam Latter Day Saints Science Chemistry Compound classes Chemicals References and external links Safety Structure drawing Computer science Mathematics Medicine Taxonomy Sports Cue sports (Snooker) Figure skating (Terminology)
Related guidelines Article size Article titles Categories, lists, and navigation templates Categorization Citing sources Hatnotes Notability Signatures Subpages Talk page guidelines Template namespace Understandability User pages Wikimedia sister projects WikiProjects
Overview Contents Tips

Sample article layout (click on image for larger view)

This guide presents the typical layout of Wikipedia articles, including the sections an article usually has, ordering of sections, and formatting styles for various elements of an article. For advice on the use of wiki markup, see Help:Editing; for guidance on writing style, see Manual of Style.

Order of article elements

A simple article should have, at least, (a) a lead section and (b) references. The following list includes additional standardized sections in an article. A complete article need not have all, or even most, of these elements.

1. Before the article content
   1. Short description
   2. {{DISPLAYTITLE}}, {{Lowercase title}}, {{Italic title}} (some of these may also be placed before the infobox or after the infobox)
   3. Hatnotes
   4. {{Featured list}}, {{Featured article}} and {{Good article}} (where appropriate for article status)
   5. Deletion / protection tags (CSD, PROD, AFD, PP notices)
   6. Maintenance, cleanup, and dispute tags
   7. Templates relating to English variety and date format
   8. Infoboxes
   9. Language maintenance templates
   10. Images
   11. Navigation header templates (sidebar templates)
2. Article content
   1. Lead section (also called the introduction)
   2. Table of contents
   3. Body (see below for specialized layout)
3. Appendices
   1. Works or publications (for biographies only)
   2. See also
   3. Notes and references (this can be two sections in some citation systems)
   4. Further reading
   5. External links
4. End matter
   1. Succession boxes and geography boxes
   2. Other navigation footer templates (navboxes)
   3. {{Portal bar}}
   4. {{Taxonbar}}
   5. Authority control templates
   6. Geographical coordinates (if not in the infobox) or {{coord missing}}
   7. Defaultsort
   8. Categories
   9. {{Improve categories}} or {{Uncategorized}} (These can alternatively be placed with other maintenance templates before the article content)
   10. Stub templates (follow WP:STUBSPACING)

Body sections

Further information: Help:Section and Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Article titles, headings, and sections

Articles longer than a stub are generally divided into sections, and sections over a certain length are generally divided into paragraphs: these divisions enhance the readability of the article. Recommended names and orders of section headings may vary by subject matter, although articles should still follow good organizational and writing principles regarding sections and paragraphs.

Headings and sections

Further information: Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Section headings

Body sections appear after the lead and table of contents (click on image for larger view).

Headings introduce sections and subsections, clarify articles by breaking up text, organize content, and populate the table of contents. Very short sections and subsections clutter an article with headings and inhibit the flow of the prose. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheadings.

Headings follow a six-level hierarchy, starting at 1 and ending at 6. The level of the heading is defined by the number of equals signs on each side of the title. Heading 1 (= Heading 1 =) is automatically generated as the title of the article, and is never appropriate within the body of an article. Sections start at the second level (== Heading 2 ==), with subsections at the third level (=== Heading 3 ===), and additional levels of subsections at the fourth level (==== Heading 4 ====), fifth level, and sixth level. Sections should be consecutive, such that they do not skip levels from sections to sub-subsections; the exact methodology is part of the Accessibility guideline. Between sections, there should be a

Cèṭa'an:Essay list Essays, as used by Wikipedia editors, typically contain advice or opinions of one or more editors. The purpose of an essay is to aid or comment on the encyclopedia but not on any unrelated causes. Essays have no official status and do not speak for the Wikipedia community because they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Generally soft advice belongs in an essay, thus avoiding instruction creep in Wikipedia's official protocols. There are over 2,000 essays on a wide range of Wikipedia-related topics. Wikipedia policy says, “Essays…that overtly contradict consensus, belong in the user namespace”.

About essays

Although essays are not policies or guidelines, many are worthy of consideration. Policies and guidelines cannot cover all circumstances. Consequently, many essays serve as interpretations of or commentary on perceived community norms for specific topics and situations. The value of an essay should be understood in context, using common sense and discretion. Essays can be written by anyone and can be long monologues or short theses, serious or humorous. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. An essay, as well as being useful, can potentially be a divisive means of espousing a point of view. Although an essay should not be used to create an alternative rule set, the Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of Wikipedia-related subjects and viewpoints on user pages.

The difference between policies, guidelines, and some essays on Wikipedia may be obscure. Essays vary in popularity and how much they are followed and referred to. Editors should defer to official policies or guidelines when essays, information pages or template documentation pages are inconsistent with established community standards and principles.

Avoid "quoting" essays as though they are policy—including this explanatory supplement page. Essays, information pages and template documentation pages can be written without much—if any—debate, as opposed to Wikipedia policies that have been thoroughly vetted by the community (see WP:Local consensus for details). In Wikipedia discussions, editors may refer to essays, provided that they do not hold them out as consensus or policy. Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion. See Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance and Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard for more information.

Essays are located in the Wikipedia namespace (e.g., Wikipedia:Reasonability rule) and in User namespaces (e.g., User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles). The Help namespace contains pages which provide factual (usually technical) information on using Wikipedia and its software (see below). The {{Essay}}-family templates (with several variants like {{Notability essay}} and {{WikiProject advice}}), versus the {{Guideline}} (and variants, like {{MoS guideline}}) and {{Policy}} templates give an indication of a page's status within the community. Some essays at one time were proposed policies or guidelines, but they could not gain consensus overall; as indicated by the template {{Failed proposal}}. Other essays that at one time had consensus, but are no longer relevant, are tagged with the template {{Historical}}. Essays currently nominated for policy status are indicated by the banner {{Proposed}}. See Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace for a listing of namespace banners.

Types of essays

Wikipedia namespace essays

Further information: Wikipedia:Project namespace § Essay pages

Essays in the Wikipedia namespace – which are to be put in the main (encyclopedia article) namespace – typically address some aspect of working in Wikipedia. They have not been formally adopted as guidelines or policies by the community at large, but typically edited by the community. Some are widely accepted as part of the Wikipedia gestalt, and have a significant degree of influence during discussions (like "guideline supplements" WP:Tendentious editing, WP:Bold, revert, discuss cycle, and WP:Competence is required).

Many essays, however, are obscure, single-author pieces. Essays may be moved into userspace as user essays Cèṭa'an:See below, or even deleted, if they are found to be problematic. Occasionally, even longstanding, community-edited essays may be removed or radically revised if community norms shift.

How to and information pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Information pages

Wikipedia's how-to and information pages are typically edited by the community and can also be found in the help namespace. They generally provide technical and factual information about Wikipedia or supplement guidelines and policies in greater detail. Where "essay pages" often offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, information pages are intended to clarity and explain current community practices in an impartial way (e.g., Wikipedia:Administration).

WikiProject advice pages

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § Advice pages

WikiProjects are groups of editors who work together. Advice pages written by these groups are formally considered the same as pages written by anyone else, that is, they are essays unless and until they have been formally adopted as community-wide guidelines or policies. WikiProjects are encouraged to write essays explaining how the community's policies and guidelines should be applied to their areas of interest and expertise (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Recommended structure).

User essays

Further information: Wikipedia:User pages

According to Wikipedia policy, "Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace." These are similar to essays placed in the Wikipedia namespace; however, they are often authored/edited by only one person, and may represent a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or its processes (e.g., User:Jehochman/Responding to rudeness). Some of them are widely respected by other editors, and even occasionally have an effect on policy (e.g., the WP:General notability guideline originated in a user essay).

Writings that contradict policy are somewhat tolerated within the User namespace. The author of a personal essay located in their user space has the prerogative to revert any changes made to it by any other user, within reason. Polemics in the form of personal attacks against particular people, groups, real-life ideas (e.g. artists or politicians), or against Wikipedia itself, are generally deleted at MFD, as unconstructive or disruptive. Likewise, advocacy of fringe POV and pushing of fringe content and conspiracy theories is not tolerated. Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that sides with RS and does not promote content based on unreliable sources. Such content is considered WP:UNDUE.

Historical essays

The Wikimedia Foundation's Meta-wiki was envisioned as the original place for editors to comment on and discuss Wikipedia, although the "Wikipedia" project space has since taken over most of that role. Many historical essays can still be found at Meta.Wikimedia.org.

It is generally preferable that inactive WikiProjects not be tagged as "Historical ", but instead be marked as {{WikiProject status|inactive}} or {{WikiProject status|Defunct}}. See WP:INACTIVEWP for more details.

Creation and modification of essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays

Before creating an essay, it is a good idea to check if similar essays already exist. Although there is no guideline or policy that explicitly prohibits it, writing redundant essays is discouraged. Avoid creating essays just to prove a point or game the system. Essays that violate one or more Wikipedia policies, such as spam, personal attacks, copyright violations, or what Wikipedia is not tend to get deleted or transferred to user space.

You do not have to have created an essay to improve it. If an essay already exists, you can add to, remove from, or modify it as you wish, provided that you use good judgment. However, essays placed in the User: namespace are often—though not always—meant to represent the viewpoint of one user only. You should usually not substantively edit someone else's user essay without permission. To be on the safe side, discuss any edits not covered by REFACTOR and MINOR before making them. If the original author is no longer active or available, seek consensus on the essay's talk page (other editors who have worked on the essay are likely to care about it), or just write a new one.

Finding essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Essay directory

Wikipedia:Essay directory lists about 2100 essays to allow searching for key words or terms with your browser. Essays can also be navigated via categories, the navigation template, or by a custom search box (as seen below).

Data

• Wikipedia:list of essays sorted by score

Notes

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an encyclopedia needs people to write it. Unlike most other reference works, we don't pay people to write for us, and there are very few incentives, perks or privileges associated with contributing. As such, our most valuable resource is neither money nor webspace, but Wikipedia's contributors, those dedicated people who take time out of their lives to edit, improve or maintain articles. In short, editors matter; and one of the important priorities of the Wikipedia community must be to recruit and retain good contributors. The encyclopedia simply cannot survive without human beings to build and maintain it. This should be taken into account in making decisions, particularly in miscellany for deletion discussions.

Think about the impact of deletions

From time to time, a good-faith editor who is contributing to the encyclopedia will create pages in their own userspace or in the project namespace which seem only tangentially related to Wikipedia, if at all. This may include large amounts of information about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, or political and religious views, or may include various wiki-games or "fun" pages. In general, this is because they are new to Wikipedia and are not familiar with the purpose of userspace. Many are younger users, and should be treated with consideration accordingly; all are human beings who may be affected by how the Wikipedia community treats them.

Frequently, a well-meaning long-term Wikipedian, who views their use of userspace as inappropriate, will throw the book at them, citing Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and the userspace guidelines. They may nominate the user's pages for deletion, and say something along the lines of "This user has more userboxes than edits" or "If they're not interested in contributing to the encyclopedia, there's no point keeping their userpage". This is completely the wrong approach, as it is likely to drive the user away.

Instead, the approach to take is to tactfully try to encourage them to contribute to the encyclopedia. Keeping surplus pages around for a while does not do any significant harm to the encyclopedia; Wikipedia needs editors more than it needs webspace (and deletions don't actually free up webspace, as deleted material stays in the archives). What does harm Wikipedia is to drive an active good-faith contributor away by threatening their userpages with deletion. So, if you encounter a new user of this type, don't go for a deletion nomination as the first step. Instead, be nice to them, don't bite, and try to encourage them to concentrate more on editing the encyclopedia rather than their own userspace.

Note that this does not apply to blatant abuses of userspace. For instance, a user who is attempting to use their userspace for obvious advertising purposes (for an individual, business, charity or other organisation), and has already been warned that this is inappropriate, may justifiably have their pages deleted through the miscellany for deletion process. Such accounts are unlikely to be used for constructive contribution.

Policy is not a trump card

All too often, in deletion debates, people churn out references to policies and guidelines without actually relating them to what's best for the encyclopedia, or thinking about them. All too often, this happens at MfD in debates relating to userspace. For instance, someone's userpage will be put up for deletion on the grounds that "WP:NOT a free webhost"; other contributors will automatically agree, because Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is a policy, and they assume that anyone who cites a policy must ipso facto be right. They fail to consider the fact that deleting someone's userpage will drive that contributor away, which is bad for the encyclopedia.

In a deletion debate, don't just use trite policy-based catchphrases like "Wikipedia is not X". While the core content policies serve as reference points, it's always more helpful to relate an argument to what's actually best for the encyclopedia, and justify it in detail.

Questions to consider in debating a deletion

When content in someone's userspace, or in the Wikipedia namespace, is put up for deletion using the miscellany for deletion process, don't just quote inflexible policies and guidelines, and don't blindly follow those who do. For instance, try not to do this:

• Delete. WP:NOT a free webhost. DeleteItAll 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per above. OneWithTheCrowd 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Instead, try to consider the following important questions.

• Does the content make an editor happy, or strengthen Wikipedia's sense of community and shared enjoyment? If so, this is an argument for keeping, as it makes them more likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Unless it can be shown that the content is harmful, the presumption should be in favour of keeping it.
• Will deleting the page actually do Wikipedia any good? Remember that deletions don't actually free up space, and, as per Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, we're not meant to worry about the capacity of the servers. In general, unless a page is actively harmful to the project, there's no reason to delete it.
• Is it harmless? A lot of editors counter valid arguments to Keep by citing the redirect WP:HARMLESS, which is taken from the essay Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. While "it's harmless" is certainly not a valid reason for keeping encyclopedic content (such as articles, templates and images) which does not meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it is a perfectly valid argument when applied to the Wikipedia namespace and to userspace. In general, content in these namespaces should only be removed if it's harmful to the encyclopedia.

See also

• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers
• Wikipedia:Readers First
• Wikipedia:Some observant words regarding editing and people
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community
• Wikipedia:Zeroth law of Wikipedia
• User:Pppery/The iceberg blank line: multiple blank lines in the edit window create too much white space in the article. There is no need to include a blank line between a heading and sub-heading. When changing or removing a heading, consider adding an anchor template with the original heading name to provide for incoming external links and wikilinks (preferably using {{subst:anchor}} rather than using {{anchor}} directly—see ).

Section order

Because of the diversity of subjects it covers, Wikipedia has no general standard or guideline regarding the order of section headings within the body of an article. The usual practice is to order body sections based on the precedent of similar articles. For exceptions, see Specialized layout below.

Section templates and summary style

Further information: WP:SUMMARYHATNOTE and Wikipedia:Summary style § Templates

When a section is a summary of another article that provides a full exposition of the section, a link to the other article should appear immediately under the section heading. You can use the {{Main}} template to generate a "Main article" link, in Wikipedia's "hatnote" style.

If one or more articles provide further information or additional details (rather than a full exposition, see above), links to such articles may be placed immediately after the section heading for that section, provided this does not duplicate a wikilink in the text. These additional links should be grouped along with the {{Main}} template (if there is one), or at the foot of the section that introduces the material for which these templates provide additional information. You can use one of the following templates to generate these links:

• {{Further}} – generates a "Further information" link
• {{See also}} – generates a "See also" link

For example, to generate a "See also" link to the article on Wikipedia:How to edit a page, type {{See also|Wikipedia:How to edit a page}}, which will generate:

Paragraphs

Sections usually consist of paragraphs of running prose, each dealing with a particular point or idea. Between paragraphs—as between sections—there should be only a

Cèṭa'an:Essay list Essays, as used by Wikipedia editors, typically contain advice or opinions of one or more editors. The purpose of an essay is to aid or comment on the encyclopedia but not on any unrelated causes. Essays have no official status and do not speak for the Wikipedia community because they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Generally soft advice belongs in an essay, thus avoiding instruction creep in Wikipedia's official protocols. There are over 2,000 essays on a wide range of Wikipedia-related topics. Wikipedia policy says, “Essays…that overtly contradict consensus, belong in the user namespace”.

About essays

Although essays are not policies or guidelines, many are worthy of consideration. Policies and guidelines cannot cover all circumstances. Consequently, many essays serve as interpretations of or commentary on perceived community norms for specific topics and situations. The value of an essay should be understood in context, using common sense and discretion. Essays can be written by anyone and can be long monologues or short theses, serious or humorous. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. An essay, as well as being useful, can potentially be a divisive means of espousing a point of view. Although an essay should not be used to create an alternative rule set, the Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of Wikipedia-related subjects and viewpoints on user pages.

The difference between policies, guidelines, and some essays on Wikipedia may be obscure. Essays vary in popularity and how much they are followed and referred to. Editors should defer to official policies or guidelines when essays, information pages or template documentation pages are inconsistent with established community standards and principles.

Avoid "quoting" essays as though they are policy—including this explanatory supplement page. Essays, information pages and template documentation pages can be written without much—if any—debate, as opposed to Wikipedia policies that have been thoroughly vetted by the community (see WP:Local consensus for details). In Wikipedia discussions, editors may refer to essays, provided that they do not hold them out as consensus or policy. Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion. See Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance and Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard for more information.

Essays are located in the Wikipedia namespace (e.g., Wikipedia:Reasonability rule) and in User namespaces (e.g., User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles). The Help namespace contains pages which provide factual (usually technical) information on using Wikipedia and its software (see below). The {{Essay}}-family templates (with several variants like {{Notability essay}} and {{WikiProject advice}}), versus the {{Guideline}} (and variants, like {{MoS guideline}}) and {{Policy}} templates give an indication of a page's status within the community. Some essays at one time were proposed policies or guidelines, but they could not gain consensus overall; as indicated by the template {{Failed proposal}}. Other essays that at one time had consensus, but are no longer relevant, are tagged with the template {{Historical}}. Essays currently nominated for policy status are indicated by the banner {{Proposed}}. See Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace for a listing of namespace banners.

Types of essays

Wikipedia namespace essays

Further information: Wikipedia:Project namespace § Essay pages

Essays in the Wikipedia namespace – which are to be put in the main (encyclopedia article) namespace – typically address some aspect of working in Wikipedia. They have not been formally adopted as guidelines or policies by the community at large, but typically edited by the community. Some are widely accepted as part of the Wikipedia gestalt, and have a significant degree of influence during discussions (like "guideline supplements" WP:Tendentious editing, WP:Bold, revert, discuss cycle, and WP:Competence is required).

Many essays, however, are obscure, single-author pieces. Essays may be moved into userspace as user essays Cèṭa'an:See below, or even deleted, if they are found to be problematic. Occasionally, even longstanding, community-edited essays may be removed or radically revised if community norms shift.

How to and information pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Information pages

Wikipedia's how-to and information pages are typically edited by the community and can also be found in the help namespace. They generally provide technical and factual information about Wikipedia or supplement guidelines and policies in greater detail. Where "essay pages" often offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, information pages are intended to clarity and explain current community practices in an impartial way (e.g., Wikipedia:Administration).

WikiProject advice pages

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § Advice pages

WikiProjects are groups of editors who work together. Advice pages written by these groups are formally considered the same as pages written by anyone else, that is, they are essays unless and until they have been formally adopted as community-wide guidelines or policies. WikiProjects are encouraged to write essays explaining how the community's policies and guidelines should be applied to their areas of interest and expertise (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Recommended structure).

User essays

Further information: Wikipedia:User pages

According to Wikipedia policy, "Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace." These are similar to essays placed in the Wikipedia namespace; however, they are often authored/edited by only one person, and may represent a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or its processes (e.g., User:Jehochman/Responding to rudeness). Some of them are widely respected by other editors, and even occasionally have an effect on policy (e.g., the WP:General notability guideline originated in a user essay).

Writings that contradict policy are somewhat tolerated within the User namespace. The author of a personal essay located in their user space has the prerogative to revert any changes made to it by any other user, within reason. Polemics in the form of personal attacks against particular people, groups, real-life ideas (e.g. artists or politicians), or against Wikipedia itself, are generally deleted at MFD, as unconstructive or disruptive. Likewise, advocacy of fringe POV and pushing of fringe content and conspiracy theories is not tolerated. Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that sides with RS and does not promote content based on unreliable sources. Such content is considered WP:UNDUE.

Historical essays

The Wikimedia Foundation's Meta-wiki was envisioned as the original place for editors to comment on and discuss Wikipedia, although the "Wikipedia" project space has since taken over most of that role. Many historical essays can still be found at Meta.Wikimedia.org.

It is generally preferable that inactive WikiProjects not be tagged as "Historical ", but instead be marked as {{WikiProject status|inactive}} or {{WikiProject status|Defunct}}. See WP:INACTIVEWP for more details.

Creation and modification of essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays

Before creating an essay, it is a good idea to check if similar essays already exist. Although there is no guideline or policy that explicitly prohibits it, writing redundant essays is discouraged. Avoid creating essays just to prove a point or game the system. Essays that violate one or more Wikipedia policies, such as spam, personal attacks, copyright violations, or what Wikipedia is not tend to get deleted or transferred to user space.

You do not have to have created an essay to improve it. If an essay already exists, you can add to, remove from, or modify it as you wish, provided that you use good judgment. However, essays placed in the User: namespace are often—though not always—meant to represent the viewpoint of one user only. You should usually not substantively edit someone else's user essay without permission. To be on the safe side, discuss any edits not covered by REFACTOR and MINOR before making them. If the original author is no longer active or available, seek consensus on the essay's talk page (other editors who have worked on the essay are likely to care about it), or just write a new one.

Finding essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Essay directory

Wikipedia:Essay directory lists about 2100 essays to allow searching for key words or terms with your browser. Essays can also be navigated via categories, the navigation template, or by a custom search box (as seen below).

Data

• Wikipedia:list of essays sorted by score

Notes

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an encyclopedia needs people to write it. Unlike most other reference works, we don't pay people to write for us, and there are very few incentives, perks or privileges associated with contributing. As such, our most valuable resource is neither money nor webspace, but Wikipedia's contributors, those dedicated people who take time out of their lives to edit, improve or maintain articles. In short, editors matter; and one of the important priorities of the Wikipedia community must be to recruit and retain good contributors. The encyclopedia simply cannot survive without human beings to build and maintain it. This should be taken into account in making decisions, particularly in miscellany for deletion discussions.

Think about the impact of deletions

From time to time, a good-faith editor who is contributing to the encyclopedia will create pages in their own userspace or in the project namespace which seem only tangentially related to Wikipedia, if at all. This may include large amounts of information about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, or political and religious views, or may include various wiki-games or "fun" pages. In general, this is because they are new to Wikipedia and are not familiar with the purpose of userspace. Many are younger users, and should be treated with consideration accordingly; all are human beings who may be affected by how the Wikipedia community treats them.

Frequently, a well-meaning long-term Wikipedian, who views their use of userspace as inappropriate, will throw the book at them, citing Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and the userspace guidelines. They may nominate the user's pages for deletion, and say something along the lines of "This user has more userboxes than edits" or "If they're not interested in contributing to the encyclopedia, there's no point keeping their userpage". This is completely the wrong approach, as it is likely to drive the user away.

Instead, the approach to take is to tactfully try to encourage them to contribute to the encyclopedia. Keeping surplus pages around for a while does not do any significant harm to the encyclopedia; Wikipedia needs editors more than it needs webspace (and deletions don't actually free up webspace, as deleted material stays in the archives). What does harm Wikipedia is to drive an active good-faith contributor away by threatening their userpages with deletion. So, if you encounter a new user of this type, don't go for a deletion nomination as the first step. Instead, be nice to them, don't bite, and try to encourage them to concentrate more on editing the encyclopedia rather than their own userspace.

Note that this does not apply to blatant abuses of userspace. For instance, a user who is attempting to use their userspace for obvious advertising purposes (for an individual, business, charity or other organisation), and has already been warned that this is inappropriate, may justifiably have their pages deleted through the miscellany for deletion process. Such accounts are unlikely to be used for constructive contribution.

Policy is not a trump card

All too often, in deletion debates, people churn out references to policies and guidelines without actually relating them to what's best for the encyclopedia, or thinking about them. All too often, this happens at MfD in debates relating to userspace. For instance, someone's userpage will be put up for deletion on the grounds that "WP:NOT a free webhost"; other contributors will automatically agree, because Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is a policy, and they assume that anyone who cites a policy must ipso facto be right. They fail to consider the fact that deleting someone's userpage will drive that contributor away, which is bad for the encyclopedia.

In a deletion debate, don't just use trite policy-based catchphrases like "Wikipedia is not X". While the core content policies serve as reference points, it's always more helpful to relate an argument to what's actually best for the encyclopedia, and justify it in detail.

Questions to consider in debating a deletion

When content in someone's userspace, or in the Wikipedia namespace, is put up for deletion using the miscellany for deletion process, don't just quote inflexible policies and guidelines, and don't blindly follow those who do. For instance, try not to do this:

• Delete. WP:NOT a free webhost. DeleteItAll 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per above. OneWithTheCrowd 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Instead, try to consider the following important questions.

• Does the content make an editor happy, or strengthen Wikipedia's sense of community and shared enjoyment? If so, this is an argument for keeping, as it makes them more likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Unless it can be shown that the content is harmful, the presumption should be in favour of keeping it.
• Will deleting the page actually do Wikipedia any good? Remember that deletions don't actually free up space, and, as per Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, we're not meant to worry about the capacity of the servers. In general, unless a page is actively harmful to the project, there's no reason to delete it.
• Is it harmless? A lot of editors counter valid arguments to Keep by citing the redirect WP:HARMLESS, which is taken from the essay Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. While "it's harmless" is certainly not a valid reason for keeping encyclopedic content (such as articles, templates and images) which does not meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it is a perfectly valid argument when applied to the Wikipedia namespace and to userspace. In general, content in these namespaces should only be removed if it's harmful to the encyclopedia.

See also

• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers
• Wikipedia:Readers First
• Wikipedia:Some observant words regarding editing and people
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community
• Wikipedia:Zeroth law of Wikipedia
• User:Pppery/The iceberg blank line. First lines are

Cèṭa'an:Essay list Essays, as used by Wikipedia editors, typically contain advice or opinions of one or more editors. The purpose of an essay is to aid or comment on the encyclopedia but not on any unrelated causes. Essays have no official status and do not speak for the Wikipedia community because they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Generally soft advice belongs in an essay, thus avoiding instruction creep in Wikipedia's official protocols. There are over 2,000 essays on a wide range of Wikipedia-related topics. Wikipedia policy says, “Essays…that overtly contradict consensus, belong in the user namespace”.

About essays

Although essays are not policies or guidelines, many are worthy of consideration. Policies and guidelines cannot cover all circumstances. Consequently, many essays serve as interpretations of or commentary on perceived community norms for specific topics and situations. The value of an essay should be understood in context, using common sense and discretion. Essays can be written by anyone and can be long monologues or short theses, serious or humorous. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. An essay, as well as being useful, can potentially be a divisive means of espousing a point of view. Although an essay should not be used to create an alternative rule set, the Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of Wikipedia-related subjects and viewpoints on user pages.

The difference between policies, guidelines, and some essays on Wikipedia may be obscure. Essays vary in popularity and how much they are followed and referred to. Editors should defer to official policies or guidelines when essays, information pages or template documentation pages are inconsistent with established community standards and principles.

Avoid "quoting" essays as though they are policy—including this explanatory supplement page. Essays, information pages and template documentation pages can be written without much—if any—debate, as opposed to Wikipedia policies that have been thoroughly vetted by the community (see WP:Local consensus for details). In Wikipedia discussions, editors may refer to essays, provided that they do not hold them out as consensus or policy. Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion. See Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance and Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard for more information.

Essays are located in the Wikipedia namespace (e.g., Wikipedia:Reasonability rule) and in User namespaces (e.g., User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles). The Help namespace contains pages which provide factual (usually technical) information on using Wikipedia and its software (see below). The {{Essay}}-family templates (with several variants like {{Notability essay}} and {{WikiProject advice}}), versus the {{Guideline}} (and variants, like {{MoS guideline}}) and {{Policy}} templates give an indication of a page's status within the community. Some essays at one time were proposed policies or guidelines, but they could not gain consensus overall; as indicated by the template {{Failed proposal}}. Other essays that at one time had consensus, but are no longer relevant, are tagged with the template {{Historical}}. Essays currently nominated for policy status are indicated by the banner {{Proposed}}. See Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace for a listing of namespace banners.

Types of essays

Wikipedia namespace essays

Further information: Wikipedia:Project namespace § Essay pages

Essays in the Wikipedia namespace – which are to be put in the main (encyclopedia article) namespace – typically address some aspect of working in Wikipedia. They have not been formally adopted as guidelines or policies by the community at large, but typically edited by the community. Some are widely accepted as part of the Wikipedia gestalt, and have a significant degree of influence during discussions (like "guideline supplements" WP:Tendentious editing, WP:Bold, revert, discuss cycle, and WP:Competence is required).

Many essays, however, are obscure, single-author pieces. Essays may be moved into userspace as user essays Cèṭa'an:See below, or even deleted, if they are found to be problematic. Occasionally, even longstanding, community-edited essays may be removed or radically revised if community norms shift.

How to and information pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Information pages

Wikipedia's how-to and information pages are typically edited by the community and can also be found in the help namespace. They generally provide technical and factual information about Wikipedia or supplement guidelines and policies in greater detail. Where "essay pages" often offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, information pages are intended to clarity and explain current community practices in an impartial way (e.g., Wikipedia:Administration).

WikiProject advice pages

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § Advice pages

WikiProjects are groups of editors who work together. Advice pages written by these groups are formally considered the same as pages written by anyone else, that is, they are essays unless and until they have been formally adopted as community-wide guidelines or policies. WikiProjects are encouraged to write essays explaining how the community's policies and guidelines should be applied to their areas of interest and expertise (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Recommended structure).

User essays

Further information: Wikipedia:User pages

According to Wikipedia policy, "Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace." These are similar to essays placed in the Wikipedia namespace; however, they are often authored/edited by only one person, and may represent a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or its processes (e.g., User:Jehochman/Responding to rudeness). Some of them are widely respected by other editors, and even occasionally have an effect on policy (e.g., the WP:General notability guideline originated in a user essay).

Writings that contradict policy are somewhat tolerated within the User namespace. The author of a personal essay located in their user space has the prerogative to revert any changes made to it by any other user, within reason. Polemics in the form of personal attacks against particular people, groups, real-life ideas (e.g. artists or politicians), or against Wikipedia itself, are generally deleted at MFD, as unconstructive or disruptive. Likewise, advocacy of fringe POV and pushing of fringe content and conspiracy theories is not tolerated. Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that sides with RS and does not promote content based on unreliable sources. Such content is considered WP:UNDUE.

Historical essays

The Wikimedia Foundation's Meta-wiki was envisioned as the original place for editors to comment on and discuss Wikipedia, although the "Wikipedia" project space has since taken over most of that role. Many historical essays can still be found at Meta.Wikimedia.org.

It is generally preferable that inactive WikiProjects not be tagged as "Historical ", but instead be marked as {{WikiProject status|inactive}} or {{WikiProject status|Defunct}}. See WP:INACTIVEWP for more details.

Creation and modification of essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays

Before creating an essay, it is a good idea to check if similar essays already exist. Although there is no guideline or policy that explicitly prohibits it, writing redundant essays is discouraged. Avoid creating essays just to prove a point or game the system. Essays that violate one or more Wikipedia policies, such as spam, personal attacks, copyright violations, or what Wikipedia is not tend to get deleted or transferred to user space.

You do not have to have created an essay to improve it. If an essay already exists, you can add to, remove from, or modify it as you wish, provided that you use good judgment. However, essays placed in the User: namespace are often—though not always—meant to represent the viewpoint of one user only. You should usually not substantively edit someone else's user essay without permission. To be on the safe side, discuss any edits not covered by REFACTOR and MINOR before making them. If the original author is no longer active or available, seek consensus on the essay's talk page (other editors who have worked on the essay are likely to care about it), or just write a new one.

Finding essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Essay directory

Wikipedia:Essay directory lists about 2100 essays to allow searching for key words or terms with your browser. Essays can also be navigated via categories, the navigation template, or by a custom search box (as seen below).

Data

• Wikipedia:list of essays sorted by score

Notes

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an encyclopedia needs people to write it. Unlike most other reference works, we don't pay people to write for us, and there are very few incentives, perks or privileges associated with contributing. As such, our most valuable resource is neither money nor webspace, but Wikipedia's contributors, those dedicated people who take time out of their lives to edit, improve or maintain articles. In short, editors matter; and one of the important priorities of the Wikipedia community must be to recruit and retain good contributors. The encyclopedia simply cannot survive without human beings to build and maintain it. This should be taken into account in making decisions, particularly in miscellany for deletion discussions.

Think about the impact of deletions

From time to time, a good-faith editor who is contributing to the encyclopedia will create pages in their own userspace or in the project namespace which seem only tangentially related to Wikipedia, if at all. This may include large amounts of information about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, or political and religious views, or may include various wiki-games or "fun" pages. In general, this is because they are new to Wikipedia and are not familiar with the purpose of userspace. Many are younger users, and should be treated with consideration accordingly; all are human beings who may be affected by how the Wikipedia community treats them.

Frequently, a well-meaning long-term Wikipedian, who views their use of userspace as inappropriate, will throw the book at them, citing Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and the userspace guidelines. They may nominate the user's pages for deletion, and say something along the lines of "This user has more userboxes than edits" or "If they're not interested in contributing to the encyclopedia, there's no point keeping their userpage". This is completely the wrong approach, as it is likely to drive the user away.

Instead, the approach to take is to tactfully try to encourage them to contribute to the encyclopedia. Keeping surplus pages around for a while does not do any significant harm to the encyclopedia; Wikipedia needs editors more than it needs webspace (and deletions don't actually free up webspace, as deleted material stays in the archives). What does harm Wikipedia is to drive an active good-faith contributor away by threatening their userpages with deletion. So, if you encounter a new user of this type, don't go for a deletion nomination as the first step. Instead, be nice to them, don't bite, and try to encourage them to concentrate more on editing the encyclopedia rather than their own userspace.

Note that this does not apply to blatant abuses of userspace. For instance, a user who is attempting to use their userspace for obvious advertising purposes (for an individual, business, charity or other organisation), and has already been warned that this is inappropriate, may justifiably have their pages deleted through the miscellany for deletion process. Such accounts are unlikely to be used for constructive contribution.

Policy is not a trump card

All too often, in deletion debates, people churn out references to policies and guidelines without actually relating them to what's best for the encyclopedia, or thinking about them. All too often, this happens at MfD in debates relating to userspace. For instance, someone's userpage will be put up for deletion on the grounds that "WP:NOT a free webhost"; other contributors will automatically agree, because Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is a policy, and they assume that anyone who cites a policy must ipso facto be right. They fail to consider the fact that deleting someone's userpage will drive that contributor away, which is bad for the encyclopedia.

In a deletion debate, don't just use trite policy-based catchphrases like "Wikipedia is not X". While the core content policies serve as reference points, it's always more helpful to relate an argument to what's actually best for the encyclopedia, and justify it in detail.

Questions to consider in debating a deletion

When content in someone's userspace, or in the Wikipedia namespace, is put up for deletion using the miscellany for deletion process, don't just quote inflexible policies and guidelines, and don't blindly follow those who do. For instance, try not to do this:

• Delete. WP:NOT a free webhost. DeleteItAll 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per above. OneWithTheCrowd 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Instead, try to consider the following important questions.

• Does the content make an editor happy, or strengthen Wikipedia's sense of community and shared enjoyment? If so, this is an argument for keeping, as it makes them more likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Unless it can be shown that the content is harmful, the presumption should be in favour of keeping it.
• Will deleting the page actually do Wikipedia any good? Remember that deletions don't actually free up space, and, as per Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, we're not meant to worry about the capacity of the servers. In general, unless a page is actively harmful to the project, there's no reason to delete it.
• Is it harmless? A lot of editors counter valid arguments to Keep by citing the redirect WP:HARMLESS, which is taken from the essay Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. While "it's harmless" is certainly not a valid reason for keeping encyclopedic content (such as articles, templates and images) which does not meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it is a perfectly valid argument when applied to the Wikipedia namespace and to userspace. In general, content in these namespaces should only be removed if it's harmful to the encyclopedia.

See also

• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers
• Wikipedia:Readers First
• Wikipedia:Some observant words regarding editing and people
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community
• Wikipedia:Zeroth law of Wikipedia
• User:Pppery/The iceberg indented.

Bullet points should not be used in the lead of an article, and should be used in the body only to break up a mass of text, particularly if the topic requires significant effort to comprehend. However, bulleted lists are typical in the reference, further reading, and external links sections towards the end of the article. Bullet points are usually not separated by blank lines, as that causes an accessibility issue (see for ways to create multiple paragraphs within list items that do not cause this issue).

The number of single-sentence paragraphs should be minimized, since they can inhibit the flow of the text; by the same token, paragraphs that exceed a certain length become hard to read. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheadings; in such circumstances, it may be preferable to use bullet points instead.

Standard appendices and footers

For the list and order of common appendices and footers, see § Order of article elements.

Headings

When appendix sections are used, they should appear at the bottom of an article, with ==level 2 headings==, followed by the various footers. When it is useful to sub-divide these sections (for example, to separate a list of magazine articles from a list of books), this should be done using level 3 headings (===Books===) instead of definition list headings (;Books), as explained in the accessibility guidelines.

Works or publications

Further information: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works

Contents: A bulleted list, usually ordered chronologically, of the works created by the subject of the article.

Heading names: Many different headings are used, depending on the subject matter. "Works" is preferred when the list includes items that are not written publications (e.g. music, films, paintings, choreography, or architectural designs), or if multiple types of works are included. "Publications", "Discography" or "Filmography" are occasionally used where appropriate; however, "Bibliography" is discouraged because it is not clear whether it is limited to the works of the subject of the article. "Works" or "Publications" should be plural, even if it lists only a single item.

"See also" section

For the placement of "see also" notes at the top of an article, see WP:RELATED.

A "See also" section is a useful way to organize internal links to related or comparable articles and . However, the section itself is not required; many high-quality and comprehensive articles do not have one.

The section should be a bulleted list, sorted either logically (for example, by subject matter), chronologically, or alphabetically. Consider using {{Columns-list}} or {{Div col}} if the list is lengthy.

Contents: Links in this section should be relevant and limited to a reasonable number. Whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense. One purpose of "See also" links is to enable readers to explore tangentially related topics; however, articles linked should be related to the topic of the article or be in the same defining category. For example, the article on Jesus might include a link to List of people claimed to be Jesus because it is related to the subject but not otherwise linked in the article. The article on Tacos might include Fajita as another example of Mexican cuisine.

The "See also" section should

Cèṭa'an:Essay list Essays, as used by Wikipedia editors, typically contain advice or opinions of one or more editors. The purpose of an essay is to aid or comment on the encyclopedia but not on any unrelated causes. Essays have no official status and do not speak for the Wikipedia community because they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Generally soft advice belongs in an essay, thus avoiding instruction creep in Wikipedia's official protocols. There are over 2,000 essays on a wide range of Wikipedia-related topics. Wikipedia policy says, “Essays…that overtly contradict consensus, belong in the user namespace”.

About essays

Although essays are not policies or guidelines, many are worthy of consideration. Policies and guidelines cannot cover all circumstances. Consequently, many essays serve as interpretations of or commentary on perceived community norms for specific topics and situations. The value of an essay should be understood in context, using common sense and discretion. Essays can be written by anyone and can be long monologues or short theses, serious or humorous. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. An essay, as well as being useful, can potentially be a divisive means of espousing a point of view. Although an essay should not be used to create an alternative rule set, the Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of Wikipedia-related subjects and viewpoints on user pages.

The difference between policies, guidelines, and some essays on Wikipedia may be obscure. Essays vary in popularity and how much they are followed and referred to. Editors should defer to official policies or guidelines when essays, information pages or template documentation pages are inconsistent with established community standards and principles.

Avoid "quoting" essays as though they are policy—including this explanatory supplement page. Essays, information pages and template documentation pages can be written without much—if any—debate, as opposed to Wikipedia policies that have been thoroughly vetted by the community (see WP:Local consensus for details). In Wikipedia discussions, editors may refer to essays, provided that they do not hold them out as consensus or policy. Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion. See Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance and Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard for more information.

Essays are located in the Wikipedia namespace (e.g., Wikipedia:Reasonability rule) and in User namespaces (e.g., User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles). The Help namespace contains pages which provide factual (usually technical) information on using Wikipedia and its software (see below). The {{Essay}}-family templates (with several variants like {{Notability essay}} and {{WikiProject advice}}), versus the {{Guideline}} (and variants, like {{MoS guideline}}) and {{Policy}} templates give an indication of a page's status within the community. Some essays at one time were proposed policies or guidelines, but they could not gain consensus overall; as indicated by the template {{Failed proposal}}. Other essays that at one time had consensus, but are no longer relevant, are tagged with the template {{Historical}}. Essays currently nominated for policy status are indicated by the banner {{Proposed}}. See Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace for a listing of namespace banners.

Types of essays

Wikipedia namespace essays

Further information: Wikipedia:Project namespace § Essay pages

Essays in the Wikipedia namespace – which are to be put in the main (encyclopedia article) namespace – typically address some aspect of working in Wikipedia. They have not been formally adopted as guidelines or policies by the community at large, but typically edited by the community. Some are widely accepted as part of the Wikipedia gestalt, and have a significant degree of influence during discussions (like "guideline supplements" WP:Tendentious editing, WP:Bold, revert, discuss cycle, and WP:Competence is required).

Many essays, however, are obscure, single-author pieces. Essays may be moved into userspace as user essays Cèṭa'an:See below, or even deleted, if they are found to be problematic. Occasionally, even longstanding, community-edited essays may be removed or radically revised if community norms shift.

How to and information pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Information pages

Wikipedia's how-to and information pages are typically edited by the community and can also be found in the help namespace. They generally provide technical and factual information about Wikipedia or supplement guidelines and policies in greater detail. Where "essay pages" often offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, information pages are intended to clarity and explain current community practices in an impartial way (e.g., Wikipedia:Administration).

WikiProject advice pages

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § Advice pages

WikiProjects are groups of editors who work together. Advice pages written by these groups are formally considered the same as pages written by anyone else, that is, they are essays unless and until they have been formally adopted as community-wide guidelines or policies. WikiProjects are encouraged to write essays explaining how the community's policies and guidelines should be applied to their areas of interest and expertise (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Recommended structure).

User essays

Further information: Wikipedia:User pages

According to Wikipedia policy, "Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace." These are similar to essays placed in the Wikipedia namespace; however, they are often authored/edited by only one person, and may represent a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or its processes (e.g., User:Jehochman/Responding to rudeness). Some of them are widely respected by other editors, and even occasionally have an effect on policy (e.g., the WP:General notability guideline originated in a user essay).

Writings that contradict policy are somewhat tolerated within the User namespace. The author of a personal essay located in their user space has the prerogative to revert any changes made to it by any other user, within reason. Polemics in the form of personal attacks against particular people, groups, real-life ideas (e.g. artists or politicians), or against Wikipedia itself, are generally deleted at MFD, as unconstructive or disruptive. Likewise, advocacy of fringe POV and pushing of fringe content and conspiracy theories is not tolerated. Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that sides with RS and does not promote content based on unreliable sources. Such content is considered WP:UNDUE.

Historical essays

The Wikimedia Foundation's Meta-wiki was envisioned as the original place for editors to comment on and discuss Wikipedia, although the "Wikipedia" project space has since taken over most of that role. Many historical essays can still be found at Meta.Wikimedia.org.

It is generally preferable that inactive WikiProjects not be tagged as "Historical ", but instead be marked as {{WikiProject status|inactive}} or {{WikiProject status|Defunct}}. See WP:INACTIVEWP for more details.

Creation and modification of essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays

Before creating an essay, it is a good idea to check if similar essays already exist. Although there is no guideline or policy that explicitly prohibits it, writing redundant essays is discouraged. Avoid creating essays just to prove a point or game the system. Essays that violate one or more Wikipedia policies, such as spam, personal attacks, copyright violations, or what Wikipedia is not tend to get deleted or transferred to user space.

You do not have to have created an essay to improve it. If an essay already exists, you can add to, remove from, or modify it as you wish, provided that you use good judgment. However, essays placed in the User: namespace are often—though not always—meant to represent the viewpoint of one user only. You should usually not substantively edit someone else's user essay without permission. To be on the safe side, discuss any edits not covered by REFACTOR and MINOR before making them. If the original author is no longer active or available, seek consensus on the essay's talk page (other editors who have worked on the essay are likely to care about it), or just write a new one.

Finding essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Essay directory

Wikipedia:Essay directory lists about 2100 essays to allow searching for key words or terms with your browser. Essays can also be navigated via categories, the navigation template, or by a custom search box (as seen below).

Data

• Wikipedia:list of essays sorted by score

Notes

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an encyclopedia needs people to write it. Unlike most other reference works, we don't pay people to write for us, and there are very few incentives, perks or privileges associated with contributing. As such, our most valuable resource is neither money nor webspace, but Wikipedia's contributors, those dedicated people who take time out of their lives to edit, improve or maintain articles. In short, editors matter; and one of the important priorities of the Wikipedia community must be to recruit and retain good contributors. The encyclopedia simply cannot survive without human beings to build and maintain it. This should be taken into account in making decisions, particularly in miscellany for deletion discussions.

Think about the impact of deletions

From time to time, a good-faith editor who is contributing to the encyclopedia will create pages in their own userspace or in the project namespace which seem only tangentially related to Wikipedia, if at all. This may include large amounts of information about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, or political and religious views, or may include various wiki-games or "fun" pages. In general, this is because they are new to Wikipedia and are not familiar with the purpose of userspace. Many are younger users, and should be treated with consideration accordingly; all are human beings who may be affected by how the Wikipedia community treats them.

Frequently, a well-meaning long-term Wikipedian, who views their use of userspace as inappropriate, will throw the book at them, citing Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and the userspace guidelines. They may nominate the user's pages for deletion, and say something along the lines of "This user has more userboxes than edits" or "If they're not interested in contributing to the encyclopedia, there's no point keeping their userpage". This is completely the wrong approach, as it is likely to drive the user away.

Instead, the approach to take is to tactfully try to encourage them to contribute to the encyclopedia. Keeping surplus pages around for a while does not do any significant harm to the encyclopedia; Wikipedia needs editors more than it needs webspace (and deletions don't actually free up webspace, as deleted material stays in the archives). What does harm Wikipedia is to drive an active good-faith contributor away by threatening their userpages with deletion. So, if you encounter a new user of this type, don't go for a deletion nomination as the first step. Instead, be nice to them, don't bite, and try to encourage them to concentrate more on editing the encyclopedia rather than their own userspace.

Note that this does not apply to blatant abuses of userspace. For instance, a user who is attempting to use their userspace for obvious advertising purposes (for an individual, business, charity or other organisation), and has already been warned that this is inappropriate, may justifiably have their pages deleted through the miscellany for deletion process. Such accounts are unlikely to be used for constructive contribution.

Policy is not a trump card

All too often, in deletion debates, people churn out references to policies and guidelines without actually relating them to what's best for the encyclopedia, or thinking about them. All too often, this happens at MfD in debates relating to userspace. For instance, someone's userpage will be put up for deletion on the grounds that "WP:NOT a free webhost"; other contributors will automatically agree, because Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is a policy, and they assume that anyone who cites a policy must ipso facto be right. They fail to consider the fact that deleting someone's userpage will drive that contributor away, which is bad for the encyclopedia.

In a deletion debate, don't just use trite policy-based catchphrases like "Wikipedia is not X". While the core content policies serve as reference points, it's always more helpful to relate an argument to what's actually best for the encyclopedia, and justify it in detail.

Questions to consider in debating a deletion

When content in someone's userspace, or in the Wikipedia namespace, is put up for deletion using the miscellany for deletion process, don't just quote inflexible policies and guidelines, and don't blindly follow those who do. For instance, try not to do this:

• Delete. WP:NOT a free webhost. DeleteItAll 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per above. OneWithTheCrowd 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Instead, try to consider the following important questions.

• Does the content make an editor happy, or strengthen Wikipedia's sense of community and shared enjoyment? If so, this is an argument for keeping, as it makes them more likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Unless it can be shown that the content is harmful, the presumption should be in favour of keeping it.
• Will deleting the page actually do Wikipedia any good? Remember that deletions don't actually free up space, and, as per Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, we're not meant to worry about the capacity of the servers. In general, unless a page is actively harmful to the project, there's no reason to delete it.
• Is it harmless? A lot of editors counter valid arguments to Keep by citing the redirect WP:HARMLESS, which is taken from the essay Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. While "it's harmless" is certainly not a valid reason for keeping encyclopedic content (such as articles, templates and images) which does not meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it is a perfectly valid argument when applied to the Wikipedia namespace and to userspace. In general, content in these namespaces should only be removed if it's harmful to the encyclopedia.

See also

• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers
• Wikipedia:Readers First
• Wikipedia:Some observant words regarding editing and people
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community
• Wikipedia:Zeroth law of Wikipedia
• User:Pppery/The iceberg include red links, links to disambiguation pages (unless used in a disambiguation page for ), or external links (including links to pages within Wikimedia sister projects). As a general rule, the "See also" section should

Cèṭa'an:Essay list Essays, as used by Wikipedia editors, typically contain advice or opinions of one or more editors. The purpose of an essay is to aid or comment on the encyclopedia but not on any unrelated causes. Essays have no official status and do not speak for the Wikipedia community because they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Generally soft advice belongs in an essay, thus avoiding instruction creep in Wikipedia's official protocols. There are over 2,000 essays on a wide range of Wikipedia-related topics. Wikipedia policy says, “Essays…that overtly contradict consensus, belong in the user namespace”.

About essays

Although essays are not policies or guidelines, many are worthy of consideration. Policies and guidelines cannot cover all circumstances. Consequently, many essays serve as interpretations of or commentary on perceived community norms for specific topics and situations. The value of an essay should be understood in context, using common sense and discretion. Essays can be written by anyone and can be long monologues or short theses, serious or humorous. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. An essay, as well as being useful, can potentially be a divisive means of espousing a point of view. Although an essay should not be used to create an alternative rule set, the Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of Wikipedia-related subjects and viewpoints on user pages.

The difference between policies, guidelines, and some essays on Wikipedia may be obscure. Essays vary in popularity and how much they are followed and referred to. Editors should defer to official policies or guidelines when essays, information pages or template documentation pages are inconsistent with established community standards and principles.

Avoid "quoting" essays as though they are policy—including this explanatory supplement page. Essays, information pages and template documentation pages can be written without much—if any—debate, as opposed to Wikipedia policies that have been thoroughly vetted by the community (see WP:Local consensus for details). In Wikipedia discussions, editors may refer to essays, provided that they do not hold them out as consensus or policy. Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion. See Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance and Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard for more information.

Essays are located in the Wikipedia namespace (e.g., Wikipedia:Reasonability rule) and in User namespaces (e.g., User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles). The Help namespace contains pages which provide factual (usually technical) information on using Wikipedia and its software (see below). The {{Essay}}-family templates (with several variants like {{Notability essay}} and {{WikiProject advice}}), versus the {{Guideline}} (and variants, like {{MoS guideline}}) and {{Policy}} templates give an indication of a page's status within the community. Some essays at one time were proposed policies or guidelines, but they could not gain consensus overall; as indicated by the template {{Failed proposal}}. Other essays that at one time had consensus, but are no longer relevant, are tagged with the template {{Historical}}. Essays currently nominated for policy status are indicated by the banner {{Proposed}}. See Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace for a listing of namespace banners.

Types of essays

Wikipedia namespace essays

Further information: Wikipedia:Project namespace § Essay pages

Essays in the Wikipedia namespace – which are to be put in the main (encyclopedia article) namespace – typically address some aspect of working in Wikipedia. They have not been formally adopted as guidelines or policies by the community at large, but typically edited by the community. Some are widely accepted as part of the Wikipedia gestalt, and have a significant degree of influence during discussions (like "guideline supplements" WP:Tendentious editing, WP:Bold, revert, discuss cycle, and WP:Competence is required).

Many essays, however, are obscure, single-author pieces. Essays may be moved into userspace as user essays Cèṭa'an:See below, or even deleted, if they are found to be problematic. Occasionally, even longstanding, community-edited essays may be removed or radically revised if community norms shift.

How to and information pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Information pages

Wikipedia's how-to and information pages are typically edited by the community and can also be found in the help namespace. They generally provide technical and factual information about Wikipedia or supplement guidelines and policies in greater detail. Where "essay pages" often offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, information pages are intended to clarity and explain current community practices in an impartial way (e.g., Wikipedia:Administration).

WikiProject advice pages

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § Advice pages

WikiProjects are groups of editors who work together. Advice pages written by these groups are formally considered the same as pages written by anyone else, that is, they are essays unless and until they have been formally adopted as community-wide guidelines or policies. WikiProjects are encouraged to write essays explaining how the community's policies and guidelines should be applied to their areas of interest and expertise (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Recommended structure).

User essays

Further information: Wikipedia:User pages

According to Wikipedia policy, "Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace." These are similar to essays placed in the Wikipedia namespace; however, they are often authored/edited by only one person, and may represent a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or its processes (e.g., User:Jehochman/Responding to rudeness). Some of them are widely respected by other editors, and even occasionally have an effect on policy (e.g., the WP:General notability guideline originated in a user essay).

Writings that contradict policy are somewhat tolerated within the User namespace. The author of a personal essay located in their user space has the prerogative to revert any changes made to it by any other user, within reason. Polemics in the form of personal attacks against particular people, groups, real-life ideas (e.g. artists or politicians), or against Wikipedia itself, are generally deleted at MFD, as unconstructive or disruptive. Likewise, advocacy of fringe POV and pushing of fringe content and conspiracy theories is not tolerated. Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that sides with RS and does not promote content based on unreliable sources. Such content is considered WP:UNDUE.

Historical essays

The Wikimedia Foundation's Meta-wiki was envisioned as the original place for editors to comment on and discuss Wikipedia, although the "Wikipedia" project space has since taken over most of that role. Many historical essays can still be found at Meta.Wikimedia.org.

It is generally preferable that inactive WikiProjects not be tagged as "Historical ", but instead be marked as {{WikiProject status|inactive}} or {{WikiProject status|Defunct}}. See WP:INACTIVEWP for more details.

Creation and modification of essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays

Before creating an essay, it is a good idea to check if similar essays already exist. Although there is no guideline or policy that explicitly prohibits it, writing redundant essays is discouraged. Avoid creating essays just to prove a point or game the system. Essays that violate one or more Wikipedia policies, such as spam, personal attacks, copyright violations, or what Wikipedia is not tend to get deleted or transferred to user space.

You do not have to have created an essay to improve it. If an essay already exists, you can add to, remove from, or modify it as you wish, provided that you use good judgment. However, essays placed in the User: namespace are often—though not always—meant to represent the viewpoint of one user only. You should usually not substantively edit someone else's user essay without permission. To be on the safe side, discuss any edits not covered by REFACTOR and MINOR before making them. If the original author is no longer active or available, seek consensus on the essay's talk page (other editors who have worked on the essay are likely to care about it), or just write a new one.

Finding essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Essay directory

Wikipedia:Essay directory lists about 2100 essays to allow searching for key words or terms with your browser. Essays can also be navigated via categories, the navigation template, or by a custom search box (as seen below).

Data

• Wikipedia:list of essays sorted by score

Notes

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an encyclopedia needs people to write it. Unlike most other reference works, we don't pay people to write for us, and there are very few incentives, perks or privileges associated with contributing. As such, our most valuable resource is neither money nor webspace, but Wikipedia's contributors, those dedicated people who take time out of their lives to edit, improve or maintain articles. In short, editors matter; and one of the important priorities of the Wikipedia community must be to recruit and retain good contributors. The encyclopedia simply cannot survive without human beings to build and maintain it. This should be taken into account in making decisions, particularly in miscellany for deletion discussions.

Think about the impact of deletions

From time to time, a good-faith editor who is contributing to the encyclopedia will create pages in their own userspace or in the project namespace which seem only tangentially related to Wikipedia, if at all. This may include large amounts of information about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, or political and religious views, or may include various wiki-games or "fun" pages. In general, this is because they are new to Wikipedia and are not familiar with the purpose of userspace. Many are younger users, and should be treated with consideration accordingly; all are human beings who may be affected by how the Wikipedia community treats them.

Frequently, a well-meaning long-term Wikipedian, who views their use of userspace as inappropriate, will throw the book at them, citing Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and the userspace guidelines. They may nominate the user's pages for deletion, and say something along the lines of "This user has more userboxes than edits" or "If they're not interested in contributing to the encyclopedia, there's no point keeping their userpage". This is completely the wrong approach, as it is likely to drive the user away.

Instead, the approach to take is to tactfully try to encourage them to contribute to the encyclopedia. Keeping surplus pages around for a while does not do any significant harm to the encyclopedia; Wikipedia needs editors more than it needs webspace (and deletions don't actually free up webspace, as deleted material stays in the archives). What does harm Wikipedia is to drive an active good-faith contributor away by threatening their userpages with deletion. So, if you encounter a new user of this type, don't go for a deletion nomination as the first step. Instead, be nice to them, don't bite, and try to encourage them to concentrate more on editing the encyclopedia rather than their own userspace.

Note that this does not apply to blatant abuses of userspace. For instance, a user who is attempting to use their userspace for obvious advertising purposes (for an individual, business, charity or other organisation), and has already been warned that this is inappropriate, may justifiably have their pages deleted through the miscellany for deletion process. Such accounts are unlikely to be used for constructive contribution.

Policy is not a trump card

All too often, in deletion debates, people churn out references to policies and guidelines without actually relating them to what's best for the encyclopedia, or thinking about them. All too often, this happens at MfD in debates relating to userspace. For instance, someone's userpage will be put up for deletion on the grounds that "WP:NOT a free webhost"; other contributors will automatically agree, because Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is a policy, and they assume that anyone who cites a policy must ipso facto be right. They fail to consider the fact that deleting someone's userpage will drive that contributor away, which is bad for the encyclopedia.

In a deletion debate, don't just use trite policy-based catchphrases like "Wikipedia is not X". While the core content policies serve as reference points, it's always more helpful to relate an argument to what's actually best for the encyclopedia, and justify it in detail.

Questions to consider in debating a deletion

When content in someone's userspace, or in the Wikipedia namespace, is put up for deletion using the miscellany for deletion process, don't just quote inflexible policies and guidelines, and don't blindly follow those who do. For instance, try not to do this:

• Delete. WP:NOT a free webhost. DeleteItAll 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per above. OneWithTheCrowd 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Instead, try to consider the following important questions.

• Does the content make an editor happy, or strengthen Wikipedia's sense of community and shared enjoyment? If so, this is an argument for keeping, as it makes them more likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Unless it can be shown that the content is harmful, the presumption should be in favour of keeping it.
• Will deleting the page actually do Wikipedia any good? Remember that deletions don't actually free up space, and, as per Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, we're not meant to worry about the capacity of the servers. In general, unless a page is actively harmful to the project, there's no reason to delete it.
• Is it harmless? A lot of editors counter valid arguments to Keep by citing the redirect WP:HARMLESS, which is taken from the essay Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. While "it's harmless" is certainly not a valid reason for keeping encyclopedic content (such as articles, templates and images) which does not meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it is a perfectly valid argument when applied to the Wikipedia namespace and to userspace. In general, content in these namespaces should only be removed if it's harmful to the encyclopedia.

See also

• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers
• Wikipedia:Readers First
• Wikipedia:Some observant words regarding editing and people
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community
• Wikipedia:Zeroth law of Wikipedia
• User:Pppery/The iceberg repeat links that appear in the article's body.

Editors should provide a brief annotation when a link's relevance is not immediately apparent, when the meaning of the term may not be generally known, or when the term is ambiguous. For example:

• Joe Shmoe – made a similar achievement on April 4, 2005
• Ischemia – restriction in blood supply

If the linked article has a short description then you can use {{annotated link}} to automatically generate an annotation. For example, {{annotated link|Winston Churchill}} will produce:

• Winston Churchill

Other internal links: {{Portal}} links are usually placed in this section. As an alternative, {{Portal bar}} may be placed with the end matter navigation templates. See relevant template documentation for correct placement.

Heading name: The standardized name for this section is "See also".

Notes and references

For how to generate and format these sections, see Help:Footnotes, Help:Shortened footnotes, and Wikipedia:Citing sources (particularly § How to create the list of citations).

Notes and References appear after See also (click on image for larger view).

Contents: This section, or series of sections, may contain any or all of the following:

1. Explanatory footnotes that give information which is too detailed or awkward to be in the body of the article
2. Citation footnotes (either short citations or full citations) that connect specific material in the article with specific sources
3. Full citations to sources, if short citations are used in the footnotes
4. General references (full bibliographic citations to sources that were consulted in writing the article but that are not explicitly connected to any specific material in the article)

Editors may use any citation method they choose, but it should be consistent within an article.

If there are both citation footnotes and explanatory footnotes, then they may be combined in a single section, or separated using the grouped footnotes function. General references and other full citations may similarly be either combined or separated (e.g. "References" and "General references"). There may therefore be one, two, three or four sections in all.

It is most common for only citation footnotes to be used, and therefore it is most common for only one section ("References") to be needed. Usually, if the sections are separated, then explanatory footnotes are listed first, short citations or other footnoted citations are next, and any full citations or general references are listed last.

Heading names: Editors may use any reasonable section and subsection names that they choose. The most frequent choice is "References". Other options, in diminishing order of popularity, are "Notes", "Footnotes" or "Works cited", although these are more often used to distinguish between multiple end-matter sections or subsections.

Several alternate titles ("Sources", "Citations", "Bibliography") may also be used, although each is questionable in some contexts: "Sources" may be confused with source code in computer-related articles, product purchase locations, river origins, journalism sourcing, etc.; "Citations" may be confused with official awards, or a summons to court; "Bibliography" may be confused with the complete list of printed works by the subject of a biography ("Works" or "Publications").

If multiple sections are wanted, then some possibilities include:

• For a list of explanatory footnotes or shortened citation footnotes: "Notes", "Endnotes" or "Footnotes"
• For a list of full citations or general references: "References" or "Works cited"

With the exception of "Bibliography", the heading should be plural even if it lists only a single item.

Further reading

Contents: An optional bulleted list, usually alphabetized, of a reasonable number of publications that would help interested readers learn more about the article subject. Editors may include brief annotations. Publications listed in further reading are formatted in the same citation style used by the rest of the article. The Further reading section should not duplicate the content of the External links section, and should normally not duplicate the content of the References section, unless the References section is too long for a reader to use as part of a general reading list. This section is not intended as a repository for general references or full citations that were used to create the article content. Any links to external websites included under "Further reading" are subject to the guidelines described at Wikipedia:External links.

External links

Main pages: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § External links section, and Wikipedia:External links

Contents: A bulleted list of recommended relevant websites, each accompanied by a short description. These hyperlinks should not appear in the article's body text, nor should links used as references normally be duplicated in this section. "External links" should be plural, even if it lists only a single item. Depending on the nature of the link contents, this section may be accompanied or replaced by a "Further reading" section.

Links to sister projects

Main page: Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects

Links to Wikimedia sister projects and {{Spoken Wikipedia}} should generally appear in "External links", not under "See also". If the article has no "External links" section, then place the sister link(s) in a new "External links" section using inline templates. If there is more than one sister link, a combination of box-type and "inline" templates can be used, as long as the section contains at least one "inline" template.

• Box-type templates (such as {{Commons category}}, shown at right) have to be put at the beginning of the "External links" section of the article so that boxes will appear next to, rather than below, the list items. (Do

Cèṭa'an:Essay list Essays, as used by Wikipedia editors, typically contain advice or opinions of one or more editors. The purpose of an essay is to aid or comment on the encyclopedia but not on any unrelated causes. Essays have no official status and do not speak for the Wikipedia community because they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Generally soft advice belongs in an essay, thus avoiding instruction creep in Wikipedia's official protocols. There are over 2,000 essays on a wide range of Wikipedia-related topics. Wikipedia policy says, “Essays…that overtly contradict consensus, belong in the user namespace”.

About essays

Although essays are not policies or guidelines, many are worthy of consideration. Policies and guidelines cannot cover all circumstances. Consequently, many essays serve as interpretations of or commentary on perceived community norms for specific topics and situations. The value of an essay should be understood in context, using common sense and discretion. Essays can be written by anyone and can be long monologues or short theses, serious or humorous. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. An essay, as well as being useful, can potentially be a divisive means of espousing a point of view. Although an essay should not be used to create an alternative rule set, the Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of Wikipedia-related subjects and viewpoints on user pages.

The difference between policies, guidelines, and some essays on Wikipedia may be obscure. Essays vary in popularity and how much they are followed and referred to. Editors should defer to official policies or guidelines when essays, information pages or template documentation pages are inconsistent with established community standards and principles.

Avoid "quoting" essays as though they are policy—including this explanatory supplement page. Essays, information pages and template documentation pages can be written without much—if any—debate, as opposed to Wikipedia policies that have been thoroughly vetted by the community (see WP:Local consensus for details). In Wikipedia discussions, editors may refer to essays, provided that they do not hold them out as consensus or policy. Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion. See Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance and Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard for more information.

Essays are located in the Wikipedia namespace (e.g., Wikipedia:Reasonability rule) and in User namespaces (e.g., User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles). The Help namespace contains pages which provide factual (usually technical) information on using Wikipedia and its software (see below). The {{Essay}}-family templates (with several variants like {{Notability essay}} and {{WikiProject advice}}), versus the {{Guideline}} (and variants, like {{MoS guideline}}) and {{Policy}} templates give an indication of a page's status within the community. Some essays at one time were proposed policies or guidelines, but they could not gain consensus overall; as indicated by the template {{Failed proposal}}. Other essays that at one time had consensus, but are no longer relevant, are tagged with the template {{Historical}}. Essays currently nominated for policy status are indicated by the banner {{Proposed}}. See Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace for a listing of namespace banners.

Types of essays

Wikipedia namespace essays

Further information: Wikipedia:Project namespace § Essay pages

Essays in the Wikipedia namespace – which are to be put in the main (encyclopedia article) namespace – typically address some aspect of working in Wikipedia. They have not been formally adopted as guidelines or policies by the community at large, but typically edited by the community. Some are widely accepted as part of the Wikipedia gestalt, and have a significant degree of influence during discussions (like "guideline supplements" WP:Tendentious editing, WP:Bold, revert, discuss cycle, and WP:Competence is required).

Many essays, however, are obscure, single-author pieces. Essays may be moved into userspace as user essays Cèṭa'an:See below, or even deleted, if they are found to be problematic. Occasionally, even longstanding, community-edited essays may be removed or radically revised if community norms shift.

How to and information pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Information pages

Wikipedia's how-to and information pages are typically edited by the community and can also be found in the help namespace. They generally provide technical and factual information about Wikipedia or supplement guidelines and policies in greater detail. Where "essay pages" often offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, information pages are intended to clarity and explain current community practices in an impartial way (e.g., Wikipedia:Administration).

WikiProject advice pages

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § Advice pages

WikiProjects are groups of editors who work together. Advice pages written by these groups are formally considered the same as pages written by anyone else, that is, they are essays unless and until they have been formally adopted as community-wide guidelines or policies. WikiProjects are encouraged to write essays explaining how the community's policies and guidelines should be applied to their areas of interest and expertise (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Recommended structure).

User essays

Further information: Wikipedia:User pages

According to Wikipedia policy, "Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace." These are similar to essays placed in the Wikipedia namespace; however, they are often authored/edited by only one person, and may represent a strictly personal viewpoint about Wikipedia or its processes (e.g., User:Jehochman/Responding to rudeness). Some of them are widely respected by other editors, and even occasionally have an effect on policy (e.g., the WP:General notability guideline originated in a user essay).

Writings that contradict policy are somewhat tolerated within the User namespace. The author of a personal essay located in their user space has the prerogative to revert any changes made to it by any other user, within reason. Polemics in the form of personal attacks against particular people, groups, real-life ideas (e.g. artists or politicians), or against Wikipedia itself, are generally deleted at MFD, as unconstructive or disruptive. Likewise, advocacy of fringe POV and pushing of fringe content and conspiracy theories is not tolerated. Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that sides with RS and does not promote content based on unreliable sources. Such content is considered WP:UNDUE.

Historical essays

The Wikimedia Foundation's Meta-wiki was envisioned as the original place for editors to comment on and discuss Wikipedia, although the "Wikipedia" project space has since taken over most of that role. Many historical essays can still be found at Meta.Wikimedia.org.

It is generally preferable that inactive WikiProjects not be tagged as "Historical ", but instead be marked as {{WikiProject status|inactive}} or {{WikiProject status|Defunct}}. See WP:INACTIVEWP for more details.

Creation and modification of essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays

Before creating an essay, it is a good idea to check if similar essays already exist. Although there is no guideline or policy that explicitly prohibits it, writing redundant essays is discouraged. Avoid creating essays just to prove a point or game the system. Essays that violate one or more Wikipedia policies, such as spam, personal attacks, copyright violations, or what Wikipedia is not tend to get deleted or transferred to user space.

You do not have to have created an essay to improve it. If an essay already exists, you can add to, remove from, or modify it as you wish, provided that you use good judgment. However, essays placed in the User: namespace are often—though not always—meant to represent the viewpoint of one user only. You should usually not substantively edit someone else's user essay without permission. To be on the safe side, discuss any edits not covered by REFACTOR and MINOR before making them. If the original author is no longer active or available, seek consensus on the essay's talk page (other editors who have worked on the essay are likely to care about it), or just write a new one.

Finding essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Essay directory

Wikipedia:Essay directory lists about 2100 essays to allow searching for key words or terms with your browser. Essays can also be navigated via categories, the navigation template, or by a custom search box (as seen below).

Data

• Wikipedia:list of essays sorted by score

Notes

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an encyclopedia needs people to write it. Unlike most other reference works, we don't pay people to write for us, and there are very few incentives, perks or privileges associated with contributing. As such, our most valuable resource is neither money nor webspace, but Wikipedia's contributors, those dedicated people who take time out of their lives to edit, improve or maintain articles. In short, editors matter; and one of the important priorities of the Wikipedia community must be to recruit and retain good contributors. The encyclopedia simply cannot survive without human beings to build and maintain it. This should be taken into account in making decisions, particularly in miscellany for deletion discussions.

Think about the impact of deletions

From time to time, a good-faith editor who is contributing to the encyclopedia will create pages in their own userspace or in the project namespace which seem only tangentially related to Wikipedia, if at all. This may include large amounts of information about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, or political and religious views, or may include various wiki-games or "fun" pages. In general, this is because they are new to Wikipedia and are not familiar with the purpose of userspace. Many are younger users, and should be treated with consideration accordingly; all are human beings who may be affected by how the Wikipedia community treats them.

Frequently, a well-meaning long-term Wikipedian, who views their use of userspace as inappropriate, will throw the book at them, citing Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and the userspace guidelines. They may nominate the user's pages for deletion, and say something along the lines of "This user has more userboxes than edits" or "If they're not interested in contributing to the encyclopedia, there's no point keeping their userpage". This is completely the wrong approach, as it is likely to drive the user away.

Instead, the approach to take is to tactfully try to encourage them to contribute to the encyclopedia. Keeping surplus pages around for a while does not do any significant harm to the encyclopedia; Wikipedia needs editors more than it needs webspace (and deletions don't actually free up webspace, as deleted material stays in the archives). What does harm Wikipedia is to drive an active good-faith contributor away by threatening their userpages with deletion. So, if you encounter a new user of this type, don't go for a deletion nomination as the first step. Instead, be nice to them, don't bite, and try to encourage them to concentrate more on editing the encyclopedia rather than their own userspace.

Note that this does not apply to blatant abuses of userspace. For instance, a user who is attempting to use their userspace for obvious advertising purposes (for an individual, business, charity or other organisation), and has already been warned that this is inappropriate, may justifiably have their pages deleted through the miscellany for deletion process. Such accounts are unlikely to be used for constructive contribution.

Policy is not a trump card

All too often, in deletion debates, people churn out references to policies and guidelines without actually relating them to what's best for the encyclopedia, or thinking about them. All too often, this happens at MfD in debates relating to userspace. For instance, someone's userpage will be put up for deletion on the grounds that "WP:NOT a free webhost"; other contributors will automatically agree, because Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is a policy, and they assume that anyone who cites a policy must ipso facto be right. They fail to consider the fact that deleting someone's userpage will drive that contributor away, which is bad for the encyclopedia.

In a deletion debate, don't just use trite policy-based catchphrases like "Wikipedia is not X". While the core content policies serve as reference points, it's always more helpful to relate an argument to what's actually best for the encyclopedia, and justify it in detail.

Questions to consider in debating a deletion

When content in someone's userspace, or in the Wikipedia namespace, is put up for deletion using the miscellany for deletion process, don't just quote inflexible policies and guidelines, and don't blindly follow those who do. For instance, try not to do this:

• Delete. WP:NOT a free webhost. DeleteItAll 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per above. OneWithTheCrowd 13:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Instead, try to consider the following important questions.

• Does the content make an editor happy, or strengthen Wikipedia's sense of community and shared enjoyment? If so, this is an argument for keeping, as it makes them more likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Unless it can be shown that the content is harmful, the presumption should be in favour of keeping it.
• Will deleting the page actually do Wikipedia any good? Remember that deletions don't actually free up space, and, as per Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, we're not meant to worry about the capacity of the servers. In general, unless a page is actively harmful to the project, there's no reason to delete it.
• Is it harmless? A lot of editors counter valid arguments to Keep by citing the redirect WP:HARMLESS, which is taken from the essay Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. While "it's harmless" is certainly not a valid reason for keeping encyclopedic content (such as articles, templates and images) which does not meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it is a perfectly valid argument when applied to the Wikipedia namespace and to userspace. In general, content in these namespaces should only be removed if it's harmful to the encyclopedia.

See also

• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers
• Wikipedia:Readers First
• Wikipedia:Some observant words regarding editing and people
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community
• Wikipedia:Zeroth law of Wikipedia
• User:Pppery/The iceberg make a section whose sole content is box-type templates.)
• "Inline" templates are used when box-type templates are not good, either because they result in a long sequence of right-aligned boxes hanging off the bottom of the article, or because there are no external links except sister project ones. "Inline" templates, such as {{Commons category-inline}}, create links to sister projects that appear as list items, like this:
  • Media related to Wikimedia Foundation at Wikimedia Commons

If an external link is added and/or exists in the "External links" section, the "inline" templates linking to sister projects can be replaced with their respective box-type templates.

Navigation templates

Main page: Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates § Navigation templates

An article may end with Navigation templates and footer navboxes, such as succession boxes and geography boxes (for example, {{Geographic location}}). Most navboxes do not appear in printed versions of Wikipedia articles.

For navigation templates in the lead, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section § Sidebars.

Specialized layout

Stand-alone lists and talk pages have their own layout designs.

Certain topics have Manual of Style pages that provide layout advice, including:

• Chemistry
• Film
• Medicine, for articles on treatments, procedures, medical products, fields of medicine, and other concepts
• Television
• Video games

Some WikiProjects have advice pages that include layout recommendations. You can find those pages at Category:WikiProject style advice.

Formatting

Images

Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images

Each image should ideally be located in the section to which it is most relevant, and most should carry an explanatory caption. An image that would otherwise overwhelm the text space available within a 1024×768 window should generally be formatted as described in relevant formatting guidelines (e.g. WP:IMAGESIZE, , Help:Pictures § Panoramas). Try to harmonize the sizes of images on a given page in order to maintain visual coherence.

If "stacked" images in one section spill over into the next section at 1024×768 screen resolution, there may be too many images in that section. If an article overall has so many images that they lengthen the page beyond the length of the text itself, you can use a gallery; or you can create a page or category combining all of them at Wikimedia Commons and use a relevant template ({{Commons}}, {{Commons category}}, {{Commons-inline}} or {{Commons category-inline}}) to link to it instead, so that further images are readily available when the article is expanded. See Wikipedia:Image use policy § Image galleries for further information on galleries.

Use |upright=scaling factor to adjust the size of images; for example, |upright=1.3 displays an image 30% larger than the default, and |upright=0.60 displays it 40% smaller. Lead images should usually be no larger than |upright=1.35.

Avoid article text referring to images as being to the left, right, above or below, because image placement varies with platform (especially mobile platforms) and screen size, and is meaningless to people using screen readers; instead, use captions to identify images.

Horizontal rule

Horizontal rules are sometimes used in some special circumstances, such as inside {{sidebar}} template derivatives, but not in regular article prose.

Collapsible content

As explained at , limit the use of {{Collapse top}}/{{Collapse bottom}} and similar templates in articles. That said, they can be useful in talk pages.

See also

• Help:Section
• Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines – shows how to use headings on talk pages

References

The template may be placed anywhere, such as the External links section, the beginning of the article, or in the article's etymology section if one exists. It may also be placed inline.

On disambiguation pages, place this template at the TOP of the page (on the first line of the edit screen). This is in accord with .

See Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects for some recommendations about the best choice of template for various situations.

This template may be floated to the left by use of |position=left. The default and usually recommended position is to the right.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Wiktionary in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Wiktionary

Creates a small box with links to entries in Wiktionary.

Parameter templat

Parameter		Keterangan	Jenis	Status
First word	1	The first word to link to, case sensitive. If not specified, it links to the pagename in lower case. Nilai otomatis	Kata	disarankan
Second word	2	Second word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Third word	3	Third word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Fourth word	4	Fourth word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Fifth word	5	Fifth word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Sixth word	6	Sixth word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Seventh word	7	Seventh word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Eighth word	8	Eighth word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Ninth word	9	Ninth word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Tenth word	10	Tenth word to link to.	Kata	opsional
Position	position	Float box to left Baku floated right Contoh position=left Nilai otomatis right	Kata	opsional

See also

• {{Wiktionary redirect}}

Similar templates for other Wikimedia projects

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § External links
• {{Commons}}—shows Commons box
• {{Commons-inline}}—shows Commons gallery inline
• {{Commons category}}—shows Commons category box
• {{Commons category-inline}}—shows Commons category inline
• {{Commons category multi}}—to list up to six categories
• {{Commons and category}}—shows Commons box with both gallery and category
• {{Commons and category inline}}—shows Commons gallery and category inline
• {{Copy to Wikimedia Commons}}
• {{Wikimedia Commons redirect}}—specialized soft redirect template for Commons
• {{Wiki category}}—to link to a gallery hosted on Wikipedia
• mw:Manual:Pywikibot/commonscat.py

• {{Sister project links}}—to link all Wikinews, Wikisource, etc.
• {{Wikibooks}} / {{Wikibooks inline}}
• {{Wikinews}} / {{Wikinews inline}}
• {{Wikiquote}} / {{Wikiquote-inline}}
• {{Wikisource}} / {{Wikisource-inline}}
• {{Wikispecies}} / {{Wikispecies-inline}}
• {{Wikiversity}} / {{Wikiversity inline}}
• {{Wikivoyage}} / {{Wikivoyage inline}}
• {{Wiktionary}} / {{Wiktionary-inline}}