Wikipedia:Historical archive/Policy/Rules to consider: Difference between revisions

Since this is a wiki, there are no editors. We must rely on developing our own good habits and occasionally taking a bit of time to correct the results of someone else's bad habits. But it might help to specifically enunciate particularly rules that some of us wish we'd make an effort to follow. So here's a page containing such rules. Two suggested features of this page are: add your name to a list of the rule's "supporters" to get an idea of how strongly WikiPedians support a rule, and "[nameofrule]Debate" pages where we can talk about the merits of the proposed rule. (The latter will help keep this page nice and clean for those people who are mainly interested in the rules themselves.)

See also NamingConventions and RefactoringPolicy.

Ignore all rules: If rules make your nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them entirely and go about your business.

Supporters of this rule include LarrySanger

See IgnoreAllRulesDebate

Explain jargon: It would be great if you would hyperlink all jargon (area-specific terminology that someone who might happen not to have had a college course in your subject might not understand) and explain it, and then explain all the jargon you use to explain that, until you've reached terms that ordinary educated people can understand.

Supporters of this rule include LarrySanger JerryMuelver

See ExplainJargonDebate

Avoid bias: Since this is an encyclopedia, after a fashion, it would be best if you represented your controversial views either (1) not at all, (2) on *Debate, *Talk, or *Discussion pages linked from the bottom of the page that you're tempted to grace, or (3) represented in a fact-stating fashion, i.e., which attributes a particular opinion to a particular person or group, rather than asserting the opinion as fact. (3) is strongly preferred.

Supporters of this rule include LarrySanger JerryMuelver

See AvoidBiasDebate

Delete patent nonsense: I propose that we delete PatentNonsense when we run across it, and then put it on the BadJokesAndOtherDeletedNonsense page. The problem with this is that people disagree about what is PatentNonsense. So be careful, anyway. It's possible that this makes me a "wiki reductionist."

Supporters of this rule include LarrySanger JerryMuelver

See DeletePatentNonsenseDebate