 | 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. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Policies and guidelines should be consistently applied across projects as much as possible. |
In general, projects should strive for consistency across their respective length and breadth. People shouldn’t be expected to follow different rules for different articles unless there’s a good reason for it, as is the case for Wp:BLP or WP:MEDRS. There are a few obvious reasons for this:
- There are no borders between articles. Generally it’s not obvious when you’ve “crossed over” into a new “jurisdiction” so you can’t really blame people for not knowing “local laws and customs”.
- It’s confusing. If there’s not an obvious reason for an inconsistently applied policy or guideline, people won’t think to follow it. Policies and guidelines should be extensions of common sense and have as few caveats as possible.
- It’s a time sink. Because somebody has to enforce these confusing rules when they’re inevitably broken by people who don’t understand that X is not a universal standard.
Decentralized rules creation
editNew policies and guidelines should generally be drafted at the Village Pump, which is a centralized discussion point where as many potential voices as possible can be heard. WikiProjects are explicitly prohibited from making their own rules, so any rules made by one are not only completely invalid but also constitute canvassing and multi-user ownership. Thus, WikiProjects should not be treated as some kind of “local government” with a given topic area as its “territory”.