User:Wolfkeeper/Wikipedia is
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Naturally, when you see Wikipedia for the first time, it can be confusing. Many of the entries are stub entries, at present, are brief, and nearly all of them only cover nouns. So some people started an article, listing only the noun meaning and then stopped working on that article, as though they were interested only in that!
This is not a habit to be encouraged.
The goal of this project is to create the Wikipedia! Nearly everyone here agrees that brief, noun articles are to be encouraged. There are some differences of opinion as to whether just definitions of nouns are acceptable. If you want to make everybody happy, add a little usages of the term of some sort. Don't just give the meanings of the noun and talk about the thing. If you do just give the meaning of the noun, nobody is going to be mad at you (except maybe Larry Sanger, but then, he gets mad at everybody :-) since he cares about Wikipedia so much). They'll simply take the entry to be a "stub" article, which will be expanded later into a full article. That's probably OK, in most cases.
Actually, the Wikipedia's stub policy is, as of September 2010, being used as a justification to delete stub entries on nouns. The AFDs say that the articles are too long, and are not well designed. In fact articles can be almost as long as you want, it's not about length, it's what you do with it.
Moreover, there are plenty of senses of terms that aren't being covered in the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is seriously lacking in adjectives, verbs, pronouns (we have some but there's over a hundred in English alone!), adverbs, prepositions, prefixes, postfixes.
While on the one hand we are all certainly delighted that Wikipedia is growing in depth on nouns, some (but not all) of us view depth at the expense of the very notion of what we are working on--as a bad idea.
The journey has barely begun!
Fundamental, unalterable principles of the Wikipedia
The fundamental unalterable principles by which Wikipedia operates have been summarized by editors in the form of five "pillars". [1] Jimbo Wales also set down some similar principles.[2]:
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Wikipedia is a dictionary. It incorporates elements of general and specialized dictionaries. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, an advertising platform, a vanity press, but it is an experiment in anarchy and the ultimate democracy, it is an indiscriminate collection of words, or a web directory of words. It is not a encyclopedia, newspaper, or a collection of source documents; that kind of content should be contributed instead to the Wikimedia sister projects. |
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Wikipedia has a neutral point of view. We strive for articles that advocate no single point of view, but do cover our favourite English words. Sometimes this requires representing multiple definitions of words, presenting each definition accurately and in context, and not presenting any definition as "the truth" or "the best interpretation". All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy: unreferenced material may be removed, so please provide references. Editors' personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong here.[3][4] |
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Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit and distribute.[5] Respect copyright laws.[6] Since all your contributions are freely licensed to the public, no editor owns any article; all of your contributions can and will be mercilessly edited and redistributed.[7] |
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Wikipedians should interact in a respectful and civil manner.[3] Respect and be polite to your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree.[3] Apply Wikipedia etiquette,[3] and avoid personal attacks.[8] Find consensus,[3] avoid edit wars,[9] and remember that there are 6,852,500 articles on the English Wikipedia to work on and discuss.[3][10] Act in good faith, never disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, and assume good faith on the part of others.[9] Be open and welcoming.[11] |
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Wikipedia does not have firm rules besides the five general principles presented here. Be bold in updating articles and do not worry about making mistakes.[9] Your efforts do not need to be perfect;[3] prior versions are saved, so no damage is irreparable.[12] |
Policies and guidelines
Wikipedia policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia.[13] Although Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules,[14] its policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-known practices. Policies describe standards that (within the limits of common sense) all users should normally follow, and guidelines are meant to contain best practices for doing so.[15]
Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other Wikipedia page,[16] but edits that would imply a change to accepted practice, particularly such edits to a policy page, should usually be discussed in advance to ensure that the change reflects consensus, before being disallowed. Note that references to other organisations policies, guidelines and standards are forbidden.
References
- ^ It's OK, nobody has to follow them anyway, we only follow the policies and guidelines.
- ^ But nobody ever listens to him, we just put them here to keep him quiet. Shhhhh! Please don't tell him!
- ^ a b c d e f g Except in AFDs
- ^ Unless you've been on TV, and are famous due to your personal life
- ^ Please add more content from wherever you find it, songs and movies should uploaded to wikimedia so everyone can enjoy them
- ^ We suggest at least a 9mm round to show proper respekt.
- ^ It's just like selling really, only you don't get a cut
- ^ Except in AFDs, where you can go for it extra
- ^ a b c Any Wikipedian worth their salt are always right anyway
- ^ n.b. In an AFD only the two articles that support your point count.
- ^ In detail, the correct interpretation is: newcomers are always vandals, give them what they deserve!
- ^ Except to your reputation when they are laughing at you after the AFD when they emailed their pet admin to close it early and decide to do something none of the participants had suggested.
- ^ And the world is full of milk and honey
- ^ See also mob rule
- ^ In practice, guidelines are more binding than policies or principles, by common agreement that nobody dare write down- see WP:Notability.
- ^ Except people will revert you even quicker