Wikipedia:List of guidelines

This list of Wikipedia guidelines includes a summary of the most important guidelines that are currently in use. For a list of policies see List of policies. For a comprehensive but less detailed listing of policies and guidelines, see List of policies and guidelines. For categories of guidelines, see Category:Wikipedia guidelines and its subcategories. See Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines for a general overview of what policies and guidelines are about, how they are made, and why we have them.

Shortcuts WP:LGL WP:GUIDELINES

Because there are a large number of guideline pages (over 200), they are subcategorized (using the {{subcat guideline}} template) according to their purpose.

• Behavioral guidelines outline ways for editors to behave and interact with each other on talk pages and elsewhere at Wikipedia.
• Content guidelines apply only to the article namespace (unless otherwise specified in the guideline), and offer advice on identifying and including encyclopedic information in articles.
• Deletion guidelines explain criteria and procedures for deleting unwanted pages.
• Editing guidelines usually provide non-content advice about categorization, navigation or other how-to-edit advice.
• Naming conventions detail the correct ways to name articles on particular topics.
• Notability guidelines outline the criteria that a subject must meet to merit a Wikipedia article.
• Style guidelines contain extensive advice on writing style, formatting, grammar, and more.

Guidelines can also be navigated via the other directory, categories, the navigation template or by a custom search box (as seen below)

Behavioral guidelines expand on the twelve conduct policies. Please read these first.

Assume good faith

Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it.

Conflict of interest

Do not use Wikipedia to promote yourself, your website, your mixtape, or your organization.

Disruptive editing

Participants with a pattern of edits that has the effect of disrupting progress toward improving an article or the fundamental project of building an encyclopedia may be blocked or banned indefinitely.

Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point

State your point. However, do not spam Wikipedia, disingenuously nominate articles for deletion, push rules to their limits, or otherwise create work for other people just to prove your point.

Etiquette

Editors have different views, perspectives, and backgrounds, sometimes varying widely. Treating others with respect is key to collaborating effectively in building an encyclopedia.

Please do not bite the newcomers

Many new contributors lack knowledge about Wikipedia policies. Nevertheless, always understand that new contributors are prospective "members" and are therefore our most valuable resource.

Signatures

Sign all of your posts on Wikipedia talk pages by typing ~~~~ to be accountable and to help others understand the conversation, but do not sign in articles.

Talk page guidelines

Talk pages are for polite discussion serving to improve the encyclopedia, and should not be used to express personal opinions on a subject.

User pages

You can use your user page to add a little information about yourself or to help you to use Wikipedia more effectively. However, remember that Wikipedia is not a blog, webspace provider, or social networking site.

Appealing a block

A block is not a punishment but a way to prevent disruption. Blocked users should understand the reasons for the block and convince administrators that they won't disrupt the project if they are unblocked.

Canvassing

When notifying other editors of discussions, keep the number of notifications small, keep the message text neutral, and don't preselect recipients according to their established opinions. Be open!

Changing username

How global renamers and stewards approach rename requests.

Courtesy vanishing

Courtesy vanishing means any user in good standing—upon leaving Wikipedia forever—may request renaming of their account; deletion or blanking of user pages; and possibly the deletion or blanking of discussions related to their conduct.

Deceased Wikipedians guidelines

An organized procedure for dealing with the accounts, userpages, and user rights of deceased Wikipedians as established by community consensus.

Gaming the system

Playing games with policies and guidelines in order to avoid the spirit of consensus, or thwart the intent and spirit of policy, is strictly forbidden.

Linking to external harassment

Links that contain privacy violations or malicious harassment should be avoided. Links in articles are a matter for sound editorial judgement.

Responding to threats of harm

Threats of harm (including self-harm) should be treated seriously and reported to the Wikimedia Foundation and to administrators.

Reviewing pending changes

Reviewing consists of determining whether a new revision is broadly acceptable for public view, and if not, editing the article to obtain an acceptable revision.

Rollback

Rollback is available to all administrators, and can be given to other users upon request, subject to the approval. It allows the last user's consecutive edits on a given page to be undone with a single mouse click.

Spam blacklist

The Spam blacklist is a control mechanism that prevents an external link from being added to an English Wikipedia page when the URL matches one listed at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist.

Content guidelines expand on the eight content policies. Please read those first.

Autobiography

Avoid writing or editing an article about yourself, other than to correct unambiguous errors of fact.

Citing sources and Scientific citation guidelines

For writing and formatting references using different citation styles.

Content forks

A content fork is a piece of content (such as an inter-wiki object, a page, or a page section) that has the same scope as another piece of content that predated it, essentially covering the same topic. There are acceptable and unacceptable content forks. This guideline explains them all.

External links

External links should be kept minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article. Wikipedia is not an advertising opportunity.

Fringe theories

Care must be taken when writing content about fringe theories. Fringe theories should be covered only where their influence has been recognized by independent reliable sources; otherwise, they should be removed.

No disclaimers in articles

Wikipedia contains spoilers, potentially objectionable material, and more. There is generally no need to warn readers of this.

Non-free content and Non-free use rationale guideline

Non-free content—including all copyrighted content—can only be used in specific cases, and must be employed judiciously. Its usage must be considered fair use under US copyright law, and comply with the non-free content criteria policy.

Plagiarism

Duplicating the work of others without proper attribution is unethical and can bring the project into disrepute. Give credit where it's due.

Reliable sources and Reliable sources for medicine

Information about identifying and using appropriate sources to comply with Wikipedia's Verifiability policy.

Spoiler

It is not acceptable to delete information on the basis that it might "spoil" a reader's experience of a narrative work.

Wikipedia is not for things made up one day

Resist the temptation to write about the new, great thing you or your friends just thought up.

Accuracy dispute

Articles for which much of the factual accuracy is actively disputed, should have a {{Disputed}} warning place at the top, and are listed at Category:Accuracy disputes.

Do not create hoaxes

Do not deliberately add hoaxes, incorrect information, or unverifiable content to articles. Articles about notable hoaxes are acceptable.

Do not include the full text of lengthy primary sources

Quotes of any original texts being discussed should be relevant to the discussion (or illustrative of style), and should be kept to an appropriate length.

Logos

When using images of logos, care must be taken about copyright, trademark and editorial concerns.

Non-US copyrights

A work that is in the public domain in its home country can sometimes be under copyright in the United States, and so can not be used on Wikipedia, which is subject to US law.

Offensive material

Wikipedia articles may contain offensive words and images, but only for a good reason. Do not use disclaimers.

Patent nonsense

Guideline for dealing with nonsense text.

Portal guidelines

General guidelines and best practices for portals.

Spam

Spam is the inappropriate addition of links or information to Wikipedia, with the purpose of promoting an outside organization, individual or idea.

Miscellaneous content guidelines

Record charts. WikiProject Days of the year articles. Video games articles.

Deletion guidelines expand on the eight deletion policies. Please read these first.

Deletion process

An overview of the processes by which articles get deleted.

Speedy keep

Closing debates at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, and related pages, with a result of "speedy keep".

Deletion guidelines for administrators

Administrators should mostly use the Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion pages when they think a page should be deleted. There are a few limited exceptions, which are given at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion.

Article size

discusses the optimal size for articles.

Be bold

Wikis develop faster when people fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure the language is precise, and so on. We expect everyone to be bold. It is okay.

Disambiguation

Resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous—when it refers to more than one topic covered by Wikipedia.

Technical articles

Strive to make each part of every article as understandable as possible to the widest audience of readers.

Categories, lists, and navigation templates

This guideline helps editors choose appropriate grouping techniques.

Categorization guidelines

Categorization. Categorization of people including by year or by ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. Redirect categories. User categories.

Overcategorization

Overcategorization makes categories more crowded and less useful.

Reviewing good articles

Provides advice on how to fairly review good articles.

Subpages

Creation of subpages in main namespace is not allowed. Subpages may be created in other namespaces using the slash (/) character.

Copying within Wikipedia and Wikimedia

When copying content from one article to another, at a minimum provide attribution and a link back to the source page in the edit summary at the destination page.

Edit filter

Guidelines on usage and administration of edit filters.

Hatnote use

Hatnotes are short notes placed at the top of an article or section, and provide links to a possibly sought article, or to a disambiguation page.

High-risk templates protection

High-risk templates and Lua modules may be fully protected or template protected. Edits to such pages should be infrequent.

Page blanking

Don't blank articles; instead, request deletion.

Preparing images for upload

When uploading image files to Wikipedia or, preferably, to the Wikimedia Commons, it is important to use the right file format for the content.

Recent years

This guideline is intended for recent year articles.

Red links

Red links for subjects that should have articles, but do not, are not only acceptable, but needed.

Reference desk guidelines and Reference desk guidelines: medical advice

Keep the Five pillars in mind when responding on the reference desk, and try to make it useful for our readers, and a benefit to Wikipedia.

Substitution use

Certain templates should be substituted, while others should be transcluded.

Summary style

Sections of long articles should be spun off into their own articles, leaving summaries in their place.

Updating articles and "as of" technique

Guidelines on updating time-sensitive articles.

Version 1.0 Editorial Team assessment

Assessment of articles by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team.

Miscellaneous editing guidelines

Broad concept articles. Recent year articles. Stubs. Set index articles. Redirects and Soft redirects.

Article titles

The main page for naming conventions for article titles. Also has links to topic-specific conventions on article titles.

Category names

Category names should be specific, neutral, inclusive, and follow certain conventions.

File names

Image files, and other files, should have readable file names.

Naming conventions (acronyms)

Acronyms should be used in a page name if the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation, and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject.

Naming conventions (capitalization)

Always lowercase any words following the first in an article title, unless they are part of a proper noun.

Naming conventions (country-specific topics)

In general, country-specific articles should be named using the form: "(Item) of (Country)".

Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)

There are some situations where they are warranted, but many where they are not.

Naming conventions (events)

These apply to events and incidents, such as military conflicts, terrorist attacks, transportation accidents, natural disasters, and the like.

Naming conventions (geographic names)

Conventions for determining the titles of Wikipedia articles on places, and for the use of place names in Wikipedia articles.

Naming conventions (numbers and dates)

How numbers and dates are represented in article titles.

Naming conventions (long lists)

Long stand-alone list articles are split into subsequent pages (alphabetically, numerically, or subtopically), to adhere to the Wikipedia guidelines on article size.

Naming conventions (people)

Contains conventions on how to name Wikipedia articles about individual people.

Naming conventions (plurals)

In general, Wikipedia articles have singular titles; for example, the article on everyone's favorite canine is located at dog, not dogs.

Naming conventions (technical restrictions)

Technical restrictions with article titles, category names, file names, and other page names.

Naming conventions (use English)

The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject that is most common in the English language, as found in reliable sources. This makes it easy to find, and easy to compare information with other sources.

Miscellaneous naming conventions

Aircraft. Ancient Romans. Armenian. Astronomical objects. Australian roads. Baseball players. Belgium: castle, country house, château and kasteel. Belgium: alternate language names. Books. Broadcasting. Brussels. Burmese. Chemistry. Chinese. Clergy. College football. Comics. Companies. Ethnicities and tribes. Fauna. Films. Flora. Geographic names. Government and legislation. Greek. Hebrew. Ice hockey. Indic. Irish categories. Korean. Languages. Law enforcement agency categories. Latter Day Saints. Macedonia. Manuscripts. Mining. Mongolian. Music. New Zealand. Norse mythology. Operas. Political parties. Royalty and nobility. Ships. Sports teams. Sportspeople. Stations in Poland. Swiss municipalities. Television. Tibetan. UK Parliament constituencies. UK stations. US state and territory highways. Video games. West Bank. Writing systems.

Notability

Only subjects that have received significant outside attention warrant being included on Wikipedia.

Other notability guidelines

Academics. Astronomical objects. Books. Events. Films. Geographic features. Music. Numbers. Organizations and companies. People. Sports. Video games. Web.

Manual of Style

This is the most important style guideline, and the "parent" of all the other style guidelines. It provides guidance on matters such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and formatting.

Dates and numbers

Consistent standards in the use and formatting of dates and numbers make articles easier to read, write, and edit.

Layout

Common principles guide formatting of large-scale article components in most cases. Complicated articles may be best modeled on the layout of an existing article of appropriate structure.

Lead section

The lead should define the topic and summarize the body of the article with appropriate weight.

Linking

Provide links that aid navigation and understanding, but avoid cluttering the page with obvious, redundant and useless links.

Words to watch

Be cautious with expressions that may introduce bias or can be interpreted in more than one way. Use clear, direct language.

Accessibility

Make Wikipedia pages easy to navigate and read for those with accessibility limitations.

Other formatting and layout style guides

Abbreviations. Capital letters. Pronunciation. Proper names. Spelling. Text formatting. Titles. Tables. Trivia sections.

Style guidelines for images

Images. Captions. Icons.

List style guidelines

Lists. Embedded lists. Lists of works. Road junction lists. Stand-alone lists.

Other content style guidelines

Biographies. Article message boxes. Disambiguation pages. Infoboxes. Self-references to avoid.

Arts and humanities

Anime- and manga-related articles. Comics. Film. Lyrics and poetry. Novels. Philosophy. Television. Visual arts. Writing about fiction.

Music

Music. Music samples. Record charts. Stringed instrument tunings.

Legal

Legal. Trademarks.

Regional

Canada. China. France. Hawaii. India. Ireland. Japan. Korea. Philippines. Poland. Singapore. Trinidad and Tobago.

Religion

Islam-related articles. Latter Day Saints.

Science

WikiProject Computer science. Computing. Chemistry. Mathematics. Medicine-related articles. Taxobox template.

Sports

Cue sports. Snooker.

• Wikipedia template guidelines: guidelines concerning templates.
• Wikipedia project content guidelines.

• All recent changes to guideline pages.

• List of policies and guidelines – a list of the principal policies and guidelines.
• List of policies – a comprehensive descriptive directory of policies.
• Manual of Style contents – a comprehensive descriptive directory of the pages which make up the Manual of Style.
• Community standards and advice – a quick directory of community norms and related guidance essays.
• Advice pages – WikiProject Council Guide about advice pages.

Tutorials

• Introduction to policies and guidelines – a quick introduction to the major policies and guidelines for very new users.
• Keep in mind – a quick introduction on how to apply policies and guidelines as you go about editing.

Related essays

• Simplified rule-set – some basic aspect of Wikipedia norms and practices.
  • Eight rules for editing  – if you start out by following these simple rules, the rest should come naturally.
  • Ten rules for editing  – Wikipedia can be daunting, but here we provide tips to make editing smoother.
  • Trifecta – ultra fast overview of foundational principles related to policies and guidelines.
• Avoiding common mistakes – tips on avoiding the most common faux pas.
• The rules are principles – policies and guidelines exist as rough approximations of their underlying principles.