My philosophy on Wikipedia in 100 essays, more or less (a lot less). Essays in italics were written by me. Essays in bold are the ones I wish to emphasize.

Conduct and community

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Conduct best practices

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Community-building and editor retention

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Discussions and consensus

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  • Catch Once and Leave – Don't hang around a discussion to argue with everyone after you've made your point.
  • Consensus venue – Consensus doesn't mean anything when it's formed by a small group, such as a WikiProject.
  • Hold the pepper – Instead of replying to everyone individually, leave one comment expressing all of your thoughts.
  • Ignore all precedent – "This is how we always do it" is not helpful.

Responding to conduct violations

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Administration

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Writing and editing

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Content-writing pitfalls

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Inclusion and due weight

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Neutrality

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  • A POV that draws a source. – Find the sources and let them decide. Don't start with an understanding of a topic and then find sources that verify it.
  • Activist – If an editor predominantly contributes to bring awareness to a cause or to promote a belief, then they are not here to build an encyclopedia, no matter how long they've been editing.
  • Be neutral in form – Neutrality is just as much about how info is organized.
  • Beware of the tigers – People with strong emotional opinions on a subject will usually damage the project when they try to edit that subject.
  • Let the facts speak for themselves – If you truly believe your POV reflects the facts, describing the facts neutrally is more convincing than slanting the article.
  • Nationalist editing – Editing to make a country look bad should not be tolerated.
  • Objective sources – Don't use opinionated sources if ones with a dispassionate tone are available.
  • We shouldn't be able to figure out your opinions – It doesn't matter if their edits comply with the letter of policy. If they show a pattern of pushing for the same side, the editor should not be allowed in that topic area.
  • Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia – This isn't the place to promote your minority view on science, politics, society, medicine, etc. We write content based on mainstream sources.
  • Writing for the opponent – If you're writing about an idea you dislike, work even harder to find strong sources about it and write the best treatment of it you can.

Notability and deletion

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  • Alternative outlets – Wikipedia is not the only place to put stuff online. Non-encyclopedic things shouldn't be kept if they're "useful", they should be useful somewhere else.
  • Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions – These arguments should not be factors in what articles we keep or delete.
  • Delete the junk – Unhelpful articles are often worse than no article at all.
  • Don't cite GNG – Simply saying that someone meets GNG does not mean that the sourcing is adequate.
  • Existence ≠ Notability – "Here are sources verifying it" isn't enough if they don't give some indication of significance.
  • News articles – Wikipedia should not create stand-alone articles for news stories until after they're recognized as major historical events.
  • Overreliance upon Google – If you want to confirm notability, look beyond a simple Google search. Consider the Wikipedia Library.
  • Too soon – Things that just happened rarely warrant stand-alone articles.

Sources and verifiability

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Misc. pet peeves

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See also

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