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# Wikipedia policy

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Comment on Wikipedia processes and policies here. There are many unofficial policies and few official ones. Your opinions are solicited on all manner of policy questions. Or, if you simply want to raise a policy issue, raise it here.

Policy issues that have their own pages

- Naming conventions and topic creation - all about how to name new pages
- NeutralPointOfView - policy and debate about the desirability of writing unbiased articles
- What Wikipedia is not - an attempt to say what Wikipedia is, by saying what it isn't
- RulesToConsider - a variety of rules
- RefactoringPolicy - on the importance and function of revising pages

A few other issues

- CategorySchemes and CategorySchemesTalk - about Wikipedia's top-level category scheme
- How to - how to write "how to" articles
- Wiki Administrators - what roles Wikipedia "administrators" have
- /Foul Language - keep it clean, except when reporting someone else's profanity
- LinkingToExternalImages - policy on using images found outside Wikipedia
- PolicyPolicy - our policy on formulating policy

Unclassified, random, but interesting policy discussion:

Add new comments at the top, not the bottom, so the fresh stuff is easy to find.

Q: What is the target audience for the articles? Obviously, one would write an article targeted at 8-year olds on a very different level from one targeted at Ph.D.'s. I have generally tried to aim for the level of college students, who are not necessarily experts in the given field. Is this the appropriate audience? -- Matt Stoker

Q: Many of the pages on letters (A, etc.), languages, and related terminology use conventions such as /a:/ and [N] to indicate pronunciation or phonetic variations. It wasn't until I stumbled across the SAMPA article that I could interpret them correctly. Would it be unreasonable to request that when a specialized symbology or terminology is used, a link pointing to an explanation be provided?

I think we could use software support and a community standard here (let's decide on the standard first, then we can work on the software). Whatever method we use to represent pronunciations, it should be possible to derive IPA from it unambiguously so that real IPA can be used sometime in the future without having to re-edit all the pages. SAMPA is certainly one such system, though I gather some dislike it for being overly complex. The system used by the folks on the sci.lang Usenet group is another. I do understand though that such systems are not simple to understand for novices, so maybe a simplified one would be appropriate. I'm not a linguist, so I don't have an informed opinion on what would be best--but I do have definite opinions on how the data ought to be represented in the Wiki database and on the Web.

With software support, we can have our cake and eat it too--that is, it will be possible for the authors to include an IPA-based pronunciation guide, and have the software translate that into any display form, perhaps based on a user preference, and even create sound clips. -- Lee Daniel Crocker

Many further comments appear at Language/Talk

I searched on World War 2 and found no matches. So on the World War II page, I added World War 2, except in a white font that should be invisible in most people's browsers (because it is on a white background). We could add lists of keywords onto a page in this manner to improve the search engine results. This will work so long as we do not switch to a different method of indexing (which we may have to do).

Actually, for a different method, we could add something like keywords: world war two, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchil, Pearl Harbor, etc., but make that invisible, and teach the search engine to look only at the keywords in that list. This would make it easy for anyone to add keywords without dealing with meta tags, xml, or other things the average user might not understand.

Strongly disagree. To start with, what happens if I have my window colors set up differently, or if I am working with a text-only program, or copy the contents to some such environment?

OK, but why not just add keywords, visible, to the bottom of every page? So the end of article scheme would be (approximately): "See also" then a line, then "Keywords" followed by a list of keywords (unlinked). Would be useful for a variety of purposes. I think it's worth considering. The only trouble I have with it is that it seems like too much trouble. We've already got thousands of articles that would need keywords, if we started adding them! Ambiguously yours, LMS

Never use the phrase 'of course' in an article. 'Of course' assumes the reader shares the author's context and perspetive and reaches the same obvious and intuitive conclusions. This is not always the case. Do not assume what the reader knows. Additionally, 'of course' is authoritarian and brooks no dissent, and is used when one wants to tell and assert rather than show and explain. This is not the attitude we should aim for in Wikipedia.

This is just wrong. ;-) The reason why this phrase is sometimes useful is that, in order to keep a line of reasoning flowing, one must sometimes say something that is totally uncontroversial. (Yes, some things are totally uncontroversial.) The point of saying them is to explain the context, and one doesn't want to lead the reader to think that the context-setting is at all controversial. So you say "of course" to alert the reader that, yes, indeed, the point you're making just now really is as obvious as it appears to be.

Of course, this can be overused.

The Nirvana page included two entries, one for the band Nirvana and one for the Buddhist concept of nirvana. I created two new pages, one for each entry, and on the Nirvana page linked to both with a brief description of the contents of each page. Because there are countless cases where we will have this problem (Alabama is a state and a band, [Paul Simon]? is a singer and a Senator from Illinois, et cetera ad infinitum) some solution will be necessary. WikiPedians can check out my solution and comment.

One fun way to WikiOff is to hit the RandomPage? link, then search whatever page comes up for a topic that hasn't been edited yet. Then you add something for that topic.

Let's post links to PublicDomainResources (for both images and text)!

I would guess that the policy is that the contents is licensed by the GNUFreeDocumentationLicense. Since I think that this information is important I will boldly add that to the HomePage. --LinusTolke

You were very right to do so. I am astonished that no one thought to do so before now. -- Larry Sanger

Q. For the Math articles there is a crying need to have more symbols, like the Greek alphabet, Integral and Summation symbols, infinity, and more, as well as the capability to show graphs, depict figures, and much more. Are there any tools to do this, other than linking to a another web page? RoseParks

A. I can't answer the question definitively but I can say that you can easily link to images elsewhere. So, perhaps as a temporary solution, you can always upload, elsewhere, an image, then link to it from Wikipedia. The wiki programmers must know more, though...

A2. The next release of the wiki software (usemod 0.92) will allow special characters to be used like ∞ for the infinity symbol, Δ for the Delta symbol (the triangle), etc. See the [list of standard characters] for more information. Most graphical browsers should implement these common symbols. For now, and for other symbols later, an image link to another site will be required. (I'm not sure if image uploading will make it into the next release, but it is a planned feature.) --CliffordAdams (working on the wiki code today)

I think we should discuss references (bibliography but not only) if this going to be an encyclopedia.

- Human knowledge is still very much in books.
- To avoid bias it seems important to gather evidence and to acknowledge the sources we have drawn our knowledge upon.

One Way to Process a Wiki First try...Play

I've noticed that the GNU General Public License is posted. It is under following restriction:

     Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document,
    but changing it is not allowed.

Does this restriction actually prevent us from putting the license in a Wikipedia article, since anyone has the power to edit it?

Nope. The GPL does not require us to prevent people from breaking the rules, merely to inform them what they are. If we could post the license as read only, that'd be ideal...

  I would have to disagree: policy says that we should license all our articles to the public under GFDL. However, nobody (maybe excluding RMS) has the right to offer the text of the GPL to the public under GFDL. --[AxelBoldt]

Policy on advertizing? See StateStreetCorporation / State Street Corporation -- perhaps they're a corporate sponsor (heh)?

  Heh, yeah, right. No, they're not. We have no corporate sponsors other than Bomis, Inc., (i.e., Jimbo Wales and his minions). The article seems unbiased enough though it seems like propaganda as well, somehow. But as long as it's not taking up other namespace, and its not biased, it shouldn't matter. --LMS, a minion

About all pages that are homes for a large subject area, and consist mostly of links to sub-topics. (Examples include History, Mathematics, Games.) Each of these pages should include a link near the bottom called [/lost and found]?. Yes, it should be a sub-page i think.

In the lost and found page, we should place any pages that are relevant to topic, but are too unimportant in the great scheme of things to be listed individually on the main topic page, but also can not currently be found from the main topic page in any reasonable number of logical hops.

Also, if you want to write a new article, which no-one has linked to yet, and aren't sure how to link it in yourself, put a link in the appropriate lost and found and let someone else figure it out. (This includes articles from the request page. Remember that the request link goes away soon after you write the article!)

The stuff put into lost and found would be a good target for people doing large scale refactoring, trying to make all of the pages here fit together.

Yes, there is the search feature, but even with the enhancements it is going to need as we get bigger, it is sometimes easier to find something from a well designed tree of links than from a search feature.

Ps, feel free to move this discussion somewhere more appropriate, comment, mutilate or delete, i don't feel i own this discussion, the discussion has no long term importance in itself, we just decide then do it or don't. Geronimo Jones

Telling people of valuable books is a fine thing! To give the ISBN number is good. But do we have to introduce all major (and whynot minor?) booksellers? I would like to have commercialization(??) as least as possible in a thing like wikipedia. I propose a page where all booksellers can meet and every bibliography can link to it. booksellers? like in ISBN-1-234-5679-00?. Copying the number into an search field is not to much work if one really wants to buy that book, isnt it?? What do you think? --StefanRybo I discovered that this is done via automated script as you can see in this example: (ISBN 0-06-091082-8 (Amazon, Pricescan)) (you can look at editbox). --StefanRybo

The use of colors
In mathematical texts there is more and more stuff appearing in red. What is this good for? I think red color should be reserved to alert, error / correcting, heavy work-on messages for example. The first color for me to highlight something is blue. But please use not to often because links appear in that color on my browser. Is there a color style guide? I propose to add some Recommendations(??) Pages to wikipedia. Use color sparingly(??).. First draft: /Layout recommendations --StefanRybo

Is there a possiblity of discarding Wikipedia in favour of Nupedia Chalkboard ?
I fear that Wikipedia is meant just as a fun project that is to be utilized by Nupedia and discarded afterwards.
--Kpjas

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Last edited August 15, 2001 8:35 pm (diff)
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