Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
Many of the content restrictions listed above apply to your user page as well. Your user page is not a personal homepage, nor is it a blog. More importantly, your user page is not yours. It is a part of Wikipedia, and exists to make collaboration among Wikipedians easier, not for self-promotion. See User page help for current consensus guidelines on user pages.
And finally...
Wikipedia is not any of a very long list of other terrible ideas. We cannot hope to anticipate every bad idea one of our millions of editors is going to have. Almost everything on this page made it here because somebody managed to come up with some new bad idea that we had not previously anticipated. (See WP:BEANS — it is in fact strongly discouraged to anticipate them.) In general, "that is a terrible idea" is always sufficient grounds to avoid doing something, provided there is a good reason that the idea is terrible.
When you wonder what to do
When you wonder what should or should not be in an article, ask yourself what a reader would expect to find under the same heading in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes is not official policy, but can be referred to as a record of what has and has not been considered encyclopedic in the past.
When you wonder whether the rules given above are being violated, consider:
- Changing the content of an article (normal editing)
- Changing the page into a redirect, preserving the page history
- Nominating the page for deletion if it meets grounds for such action under the Deletion policy page. To develop an understanding of what kinds of contributions are in danger of being deleted you have to regularly follow discussions there.
- Changing the rules on this page after a consensus has been reached following appropriate discussion with other Wikipedians via the Talk page. When adding new options, please be as clear as possible and provide counter-examples of similar, but permitted, subjects.
Notes
- ^ Note: Wikipedia pages may not be used for advocacy unrelated to Wikipedia, but pages in the Wikipedia namespace may be used to advocate for specific viewpoints regarding the improvement or organization of Wikipedia itself. So essays, portals, project pages, etc. are part of what Wikipedia is.
- ^ Note that the English Wikipedia incorporates many images and some text which are considered "fair use" into its GFDLed articles. (Other language Wikipedias often do not.) See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.
- ^ This provision is not intended to encompass lists of links to articles within Wikipedia that are used for internal organization or to describe a notable subject.
- ^ Note the how-to restriction does not apply to the Wikipedia: namespace, where "how-to"s relevant to editing Wikipedia itself are appropriate, such as Wikipedia:How to draw a diagram with Dia. Also telling the reader how something is used is encyclopedic, telling how to use something is not.
- ^ If you believe that your legal rights are being violated, you may discuss this with other users involved, take the matter to the appropriate mailing list, contact the Wikimedia Foundation, or in cases of copyright violations notify us at Wikipedia:Request for immediate removal of copyright violation.
Similar official policies on other sister projects
- Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks
- Wikinews:What Wikinews is not
- Wikisource:What is Wikisource?
- Wiktionary:What Wiktionary is not
- Wikiquote:What Wikiquote is not
- Wikiversity:What Wikiversity is not
See also
- Several texts on what Wikipedia is and is not
- Wikipedia:Alternative outlets
- Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not/Outtakes
- Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents
- Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?
- Wikipedia:What the GFDL is not
- Wikipedia:1000 things not to write your article about
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day
- Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup#Style of writing - for a list of templates that can be used to tag potentially inappropriate content.
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