Wikipedia talk:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays

Reisio's changes

Reisio, the mere fact that I object to your changes is proof that you don't have consensus for them.

Would you like me to enumerate the precise problems I see?

• There is no bright-line rule, but there are many "useful definitions" for advice pages.
• Trying to figure out the differences is not a waste of time. Grasping the distinction can be very helpful to editors.
• You struck out a heading.
• You used HTML markup to strike out the heading, despite this being officially discouraged.
• Violating some policies cannot result in a block; they simply don't deal with blockable issues. For example, I can't imagine how anyone could manage to "violate" WP:POLICY in a blockable fashion.
• Who wrote WP:TE, and whether he wrote something else, and whether you think it's silly is irrelevant to the statement being made.
• Nobody gets blocked solely for failing to cite their sources.
• Most policies and guidelines don't directly contradict each other.
• WP:IAR does not invalidate any policy, guideline, or essay, much less itself.

I could go on, but frankly I think you can see the pattern at this point. Please revert your inappropriate changes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:46, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

"Reisio, the mere fact that I object to your changes is proof that you don't have consensus for them."

No... it isn't. "Consensus" is not the status quo. (you agree with me here)

"Would you like me to enumerate the precise problems I see?"

I asked you to twice, so... yes.

"There is no bright-line rule, but there are many "useful definitions" for advice pages."

Why not name some, then? I couldn't find one.

"Trying to figure out the differences is not a waste of time. Grasping the distinction can be very helpful to editors."

This depends on the preceding.

"You struck out a heading."

Yes... it was inaccurate. Breaking policies does get people blocked, every day.

"You used HTML markup to strike out the heading, despite this being officially discouraged."

Where's it discouraged? If you have a better way to strike out text than with HTML, by all means change the markup.

"Violating some policies cannot result in a block; they simply don't deal with blockable issues. For example, I can't imagine how anyone could manage to "violate" WP:POLICY in a blockable fashion.'"

WP:POLICY gives all other policies their legitimacy, but that's irrelevant — if "violating (some) policies can get you blocked", then "violating…policies can get you blocked", too. If you think the distinction is useful, I've no objection to you adding "some" back in.

"Who wrote WP:TE, and whether he wrote something else, and whether you think it's silly is irrelevant to the statement being made."

Even if that were so, I changed the statement being made. It seems relevant to me to associate them, as both works are historically nonsensical, by the same author, and for all I know writ for the same reasons.

"Nobody gets blocked solely for failing to cite their sources."

That would be fairly hard to prove either way; "with almost no one" is more likely than "without anyone", as the latter represents an absolute, and the former only a generalization. I imagine some people have been blocked for blatant, serial abuse of WP:VERIFY. It's hard for me to imagine otherwise.

"Most policies and guidelines don't directly contradict each other."

Sure they do. If you'd like to pick out a handful, I'd be happy to explain how they contradict each other. You admit they contradict ("conflict" with) each other here. If all you're suggesting is "Most" should be "Many", I don't have a problem with that.

"WP:IAR does not invalidate any policy, guideline, or essay, much less itself."

It contradicts them all. "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." Imagine an eleventh commandment that said "none of these commandments matter, ignore them if you like". This is the very definition of "contradictory".

¦ Reisio (talk) 15:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Let's try focusing on a couple of the bigger issues. I'll split them up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Let's not — there's no point trying to reason with you, as you can't even keep your own reasonings straight. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:06, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Bright line

There is no bright-line rule, but there are many "useful definitions" for advice pages.

WP:POLICY#Role itself provides some definitions. Some editors find these definitions useful for certain purposes. Therefore "useful definitions" exist, contrary to your assertion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Heading

You struck out a heading.

The heading is supposed to be wrong; it's one of the many "all wrong" theories that is put forward by some editors. (<del> is not recommended in wikitext markup, which uses <s>). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I have to comment on this one, though, because it's so silly. :p It was wrong in being wrong. It's wrong because breaking policies does get people blocked, not because breaking policies doesn't get people blocked (which is what would be implied by "Breaking policies gets you blocked." if it was meant to be wrong). ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:06, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

No, you seem to have fallen for the fallacy. Breaking WP:EW (a policy) can get you blocked. Breaking WP:DE (a guideline) can get you blocked or permanently banned. Breaking WP:TE (an essay) can get you blocked or permanently banned.

Breaking WP:V (a policy) will not get you blocked. Breaking WP:RS (a guideline) will not get you blocked.

Whether the community calls a page a "policy" or a "guideline" does not determine whether violations of that page produce blocks. What makes a difference is the nature of the activity: violating "behavioral" pages will get you blocked; violating stylistic pages will not get you blocked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:32, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Contradictions

Most policies and guidelines don't directly contradict each other.

Conflicting advice isn't the same as a direct contradiction, and the existence of a small number of pages that offer conflicting advice (or that directly contradict each other, which has happened on occasion: e.g., WP:REFPUNC and the main MoS) is not the same as either "Most" or even "Many".

The most common source of conflicting advice is a situation to which more than one set of advice applies. Consider this set of "conflicting" advice:

• Don't let people cut you with a knife, because you might die.
• Let the surgeon remove your infected appendix, or you might die.

The medical/safety advice "conflicts", but nobody really has any trouble figuring out which rule should be followed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Invalidation

WP:IAR does not invalidate any policy, guideline, or essay, much less itself.

IAR does not contradict any policy, guideline, or essay; it also does not invalidate them. IAR does not make these pages untrue, incorrect, unacceptable or inappropriate (the definition of "invalidate").

IAR says that (for sufficiently good reason), you are permitted to not apply the usual rules.

As a comparison: The usual pages say to use a fork when you're eating dinner. IAR says "Forks are usually good, but if you're eating soup, you might be better off with a spoon". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Typical...

I have to say this is really typical of on-wiki disagreements: the two versions don't really seem very far apart on this, possibly because I disagree with both of them. I hate to knock your contributions here, but I think WP:ESSAYWP:ESSAYS already helpfully explains the differences between the three levels. I personally feel that the tone of neither version of this page is really appropriate for project-space, and I would ask you both to agree to re-redirect this to WP:ESSAYWP:ESSAYS and have done. I would have no objection to either or both of you having this as a userspace essay. (If you respond to this, please let me know on my talk page, since I don't check my watchlist much.) Cheers, --Aervanath (talk) 16:26, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

"I would ask you both to agree to re-redirect this to WP:ESSAY and have done."

Fine by me. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:49, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The point behind this essay is to expand WP:POLICY#Role, so that its talk page can avoid repeatedly re-hashing the same errors. As the primary subject is the difference between a policy and a guideline, redirecting it to a category that lists Wikipedia essays would be entirely pointless. (Aervanath, I suspect that WP:ESSAY doesn't point to the page that you think it does... There's actually zero explanation of "the three levels" at that page.)

As for the differences between the two versions, I think that the differences are substantial in both tone (Reisio's is a sarcastic rant) and content (Reisio's introduces major factual errors). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Your grasp of what is and isn't factual has already been brought into question, thanks mostly to your own actions, and also contradicted by... yourself. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:18, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, you are correct, I looked too quickly at the shortcut, it is WP:ESSAYS (note the plural) that I meant, which is an alternate redirect for WP:POLICY#Role, which IS an explanation. I apologize for the inadvertent error. As to the differences between the two versions, I concede that there are differences in tone and content, but reviewing them again, I still don't feel that they're really that big, and I think the two of you could come to a consensus version if you work point by point. However, as I said, I disagree with both of you, which I've explained more thoroughly below.--Aervanath (talk) 11:24, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Could you be specific about what you disagree with, Aervanath?--Father Goose (talk) 05:17, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

My major objection is that it is not written as something which tries to explain the affirmative differences between the different levels: it is written to explain what the differences are NOT. Both versions are written to clarify "the most common misconceptions". I feel that this is not helpful because it doesn't explain what the actual differences are (or should be). An essay in project space should be mostly of an affirmative tone: "This is what is TRUE"; not "This is what is FALSE". (This is one of the major problems with a policy such as WP:NOT, but that's a whole different issue.) If this essay is to truly help newbies understand the differences between the three levels, the majority of it should consist of an affirmative definition of the three levels: "A policy is A, a guideline is B, and an essay is C." The essay in its current form would be a minor subheading at the end: "Some common misconceptions...".

TL;DR summary: make it affirmative, not negative; explain what the situation IS, not what it is NOT. (Please forgive the overusage of capital letters.)--Aervanath (talk) 11:24, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

The community's consensus on what the affirmative differences are is extremely limited. Every possible statement with an even slightly reasonable level of support is already recorded at WP:POLICY#Role -- and it's not much, frankly. You may notice that it does not contain a hierarchy, a definition of 'policy', or any but the most basic and weaselly descriptions.

IMO this is similar situation to the one that produced WP:NOT: Nobody could come up with a widely acceptable definition of what Wikipedia "is", but we can at least rule out some things. WP:NOT isn't less helpful for having been written in the negative; to the extent that this essay informs people about actual, documentable misconceptions that have been discussed and rejected by editors, I think the essay provides (for this small area) the same type of benefit that Wikipedia receives from one of its fundamental policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

The tone of the essay could be changed a bit, but I have to support WhatamIdoing in that this is the clearest explanation of the differences that I've ever seen. The fact that the explanation isn't "A policy is A, a guideline is B, and an essay is C" is a product of the fact that the community has never managed to draw bright lines between each. What the essay does is point out where the blurry lines are -- that's valuable instruction in itself.--Father Goose (talk) 05:35, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I think maybe the problem I see is not with the content as such, but with the disconnect between the content and the title. Perhaps it should be titled "What policies, guidelines and essays are not", since I believe that is a more correct description of the current content.--Aervanath (talk) 18:55, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Essay Title is misleading

This is a list of common misconceptions, not a discussion of the differences between the three types of page. It should be titled as such. Colincbn (talk) 03:02, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. When I came to this article I was hoping for something that resembled the title. Sadly, the title reflects a very important question, since many admins and editors abuse guidelines as if they were policies or act very arbitrarily about policies and treating them more like guidelines. Essays should be treated as neither. --(no I'm not going to create an account) 173.13.177.204 (talk) 23:36, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

This page accurately documents the non-existence of a reliable difference. So what is the difference between policies, guidelines, and essays? Nothing that you can count on, exactly like this page says.

It sounds to me like your complaint is much closer to "I wanted this page to declare that an important difference exists between these types of pages, and it reflects reality instead of my personal preferences."

I'm not going to tell you that this is a good state of affairs, because your personal preference is much closer to mine, but there really is no reliable distinction, and this page is only useful to the extent that it reflects reality instead of what we wish was reality. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Verifiability

I reckon that nowadays, WP:V is talking much more about sourcing than true verifiability. WP:cite is a guideline, therefore it's easy to follow strictly the wikipedia's spiritual rules without applying most of what the page known as Wikipedia:Verifiability contain. However, one should strive to report as clearly as possible, if not the "real" truth (because it's hard to prove), what we can verify as the most popular beliefs with alternative views whenever it's relevant. And THAT is written right into the core of the five pillars. Nobody should knowingly introduce informations that cannot be fact checked. That's what is called, as far as I'm concerned, "verifiability" in english.

So I reckon that, while true, that sentence in #1 is poorly stated and should be revisited ASAP. So nobody is leaded to think he can introduce self made "facts" or such. Iluvalar (talk) 04:33, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

You should probably read about WT:Five pillars/FAQ. Five Pillars itself is "just an essay", and was written years after the core policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:39, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Is a guideline different to a policy?

See discussion at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines. ··gracefool☺ 19:32, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing:: Being highly involved in the application of our policies and guidelines (which hereafter I'll call "rules," knowing that begs the question somewhat) while doing dispute resolution, I've considered writing my own essay on how I see the prescriptiveness question, but I wasn't aware of this essay. (I've refrained from jumping in at the discussion referenced by Gracefool, above, because I thought that the weight of comments there were getting it right and I'd just be piling on.) Now that I've seen this one, would the following be of any value to this essay? Or do you think my inner lawyer is showing too much?

Perhaps the best way to think of the degree to which policies and guidelines are prescriptive and how they interact with IAR is to regard the policies and guidelines as the equivalent of legal presumptions. In law, a presumption is a rule which applies unless evidence is provided to show that it should not apply in a particular case. As it is often said at Wikipedia, we have no rules, but the proper understanding of that is twofold: Most important for the purposes of this essay, unlike statutes or laws where exceptions cannot be made except when they are specifically allowed by the statute or law in question, all of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are subject to being set aside at any time at any article. This essay explores when and how that can happen. At Wikipedia, policies and guidelines are the established consensus of the community and should be followed unless it is established, through consensus if necessary, that they should not be followed in a particular instance. The burden is upon the editor who wants to do something which is against policy or guidelines to prove that following the policy or guideline is not in the best interest of the encyclopedia in the particular instance at issue. That burden should be fairly difficult to satisfy in the case of policies and moderately easy to satisfy in the case of guidelines. Concomitantly, an editor who asserts that a policy or guideline should be applied is not under any obligation to explain or defend that assertion except to show that the situation in question comes within the scope of the policy or guideline or as needed to counter another editor's substantive IAR arguments for why the policy or guideline should not be followed in a particular instance. References

Even if you don't think that this is of value in this essay, I'd like to hear your comments on it in case I want to publish it as a separate essay. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:34, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The linked discussion happened a year ago; I've updated the link to point to the archive. Your inner lawyer is showing here, but I won't say that it's showing "too much". It may be a bit difficult for average editors to follow some parts, though. Footnote #3 could probably be folded into the main text by writing "are subject to being set aside or change at any time".

I'd like you to think about your last sentence (in the main body) again, specifically with article WP:OWNers and people who use the undo button destructively in mind. It will be read, for example, that I can revert any change about any BLP simply by saying that the material in question falls under the scope of BLP. "But that material already complies with that policy," I hear you say. So? Your essay says that I don't have to "explain or defend" anything.

Or, if you want a less trollish example, then pretend that you've added something perfectly reasonable about health, and I've reverted you "per WP:MEDRS" because your reliable source wasn't one of the anointed source types? Wouldn't you rather that I collaborated with you, perhaps by providing a citation to gold-plated source myself? And what should happen next, given that your edit violates MEDRS but my reversion violates PRESERVE? Every wholesale reversion of good-faith, accurate, encyclopedic material "comes within the scope of" PRESERVE.

I can't decide whether to recommend that you add this information here (it's obviously related to the one point) or separately, as a page entirely dedicated to the question of how normative our advice pages are (supposed to be). If you did the latter, then there would be an opportunity to talk about descriptivism (as in, all of these pages ought to be codifying actual practice).

Finally, as you say in footnote #5, you are writing about the ideal policy or guideline, as opposed to what we've actually got. IMO the written policies are generally pretty close to The Real Policies™ (i.e., what the community actually supports in practice), but the guidelines vary dramatically in quality. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:36, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, I really appreciate them. And your comments on "scope of the policy" are spot-on (and my failure to recognize that does come from my inner lawyer, which interprets "show that the situation in question comes within the scope of the policy" to mean what I really meant: "show that the policy applies to and controls the situation in question" because when we lawyers talk about "coming within the scope" we don't mean that something is of the same subject matter, but that the statute actually applies to and controls it). I've worked on a couple of revisions of that, now that you've pointed it out to me, but I've not yet devised one which both gives that meaning, avoids terms such as "rules" which aren't acceptable in this context, and aren't subject to other misinterpretations. If I can presume on your patience, I may ask you to take another look if I come up with something (I'll ping you again). (Oh, and I didn't look closely enough at that link: I thought it pointed to this current discussion.) Again, thanks very much and best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:10, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Sources

User:Moxy, why did you bother adding citations to this page? The sources were written by Wikipedia editors, whose opinions IMO don't become more authoritative just because they published them off-wiki, and two of the three were published after this one, so they're even WP:CIRCULAR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Simply there for more information as they contain much more in depth coverage then we have here...if you think its best not to have them no big deal to me. It is great to hear that we have Dariusz Jemielniak still with us and that Nicola Bidwel a Professor of Computer Science edits here.--Moxy 🍁 21:16, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@Moxy, Bidwel was one of the editors of the book. The chapter you're citing was written by User:Pgallert and Maja van der Velden. User:Pundit's most recent edit here was last week, so he's "still with us".

They're not bad sources (in fact, I'm keeping Gallert and van der Velden's chapter open in another tab, and reading little bits as I can), but it feels strange to make it seem like there is an "external" source for our internal decisions, and the fact that these "external" sources are written by individual Wikipedia editors is not going to be clear to most people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

The reason for this kind of incest is that someone who isn't regularly editing Wikipedia cannot develop a good understanding of our regulations. Scientific repositories are full of examples of outsiders misunderstanding what's going on here. BTW, Maja van der Velden occasionally is editing, too, and so are many other researchers writing about Wikipedia.

At the very least, the sources we produce have taken another hurdle, that of admission to scientific publications. I'm thinking of somehow tagging authors of references that disclosed their account here but I can't think of a clever way to do that. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 08:50, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe the |author-link= parameter would suit, and point it at their user pages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Interesting idea. But then the rendering would look like "authored by a famous scientist who has a Wikipedia page", that might make it worse. How about a bot adding such pages to {{UserboxCOI}}? I guess that there's a conflict of interest, however small, in every editor publishing about Wikipedia. --Pgallert (talk) 06:28, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

P.S.: I just tested |author-link=: Linking to a user page in {{cite}} works well, but it is not rendered as User:XYZ, which would make clear there is no Wikipedia page, but just as XYZ. See here. --Pgallert (talk) 06:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I suppose we could do something like |last1=Wales |first1=Jimmy (User:Jimbo Wales), which would result in "Wales, Jimmy (User:Jimbo Wales)". Someone might complain about corrupting the metadata, but it'd make it obvious at a glance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:52, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

That could work. The cleanest solution IMO would be a new |user-link= parameter, but I can't really mess with this monster of a template. --Pgallert (talk) 08:58, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fgnievinski, yes, I removed the needless sources. I did so because the policy WP:NOTPART says "It is therefore not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Wikipedia's administrative pages", because I think the sources are weak (they are all written by Wikipedia editors, and say nothing that can't be supported directly on wiki). Also one of them is 14 years old (views have changed since then), and the other two were written after this page (so they're just repeating what's already on this page, in an example of Circular reporting). I think that citing them as any sort of authority is a bad idea. Wikipedia rules are determined on wiki by Wikipedians. When it comes to determining the meanings of labels Wikipedians use, there is no independent reliable source that is stronger than what we write on wiki ourselves.

On the "pro" side for including them, little blue clicky numbers make us feel fancy and official. Also, some Wikipedia editors may not know that other Wikipedia editors have written books about Wikipedia. However, IMO this page is not the place to tell editors that they can write books about Wikipedia.

I think these footnotes should be removed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself (current ref4): The reasoning is not circular because we did not consult this essay. We otherwise would have cited it, of course. That said, I'm on the fence as to whether the essay is better with or without such references. --Pgallert (talk) 18:47, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it'd be appropriate to move the references to a further reading section, without citations in the text. fgnievinski (talk) 07:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Have you read the sources yourself? Did you learn anything from them that should be covered in this page but isn't? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I have moved the sources to the end, as agreed by @Fgnievinski and added usernames as discussed above. @Pgallert, I don't think that Maja has publicly disclosed her account name on wiki, and since she's not a super-experienced editor, I think it would be unfair to do so, as well as a violation of the WP:OUTING policy. I leave this note here in case anyone wonders why all of the other authors have links to their accounts except her. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 13 July 2022 (UTC)