Wikipedia:Don't overuse shortcuts to policy and guidelines to win your argument
Summary
Essay on editing Wikipedia
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.
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This page in a nutshell: Editors in the midst of a dispute should not offer links to policy, guideline, or essay pages in place of reasoned rebuttals. Doing so may intimidate newcomers, may be perceived as insulting regular editors, and may confuse everyone.
In the course of a disagreement on Wikipedia, participants may post links to policy and other pages in place of reasoned arguments. Even when done in good faith, such actions may sometimes be confusing to the readers, especially when linking to large and complex pages. It may be unclear which of the many points in that page one intends to refer to. Such behavior may also be interpreted as equivalent of saying "talk to the hand", i.e. uncivil.
This type of behavior is especially common in articles for deletion, where links to arguments to avoid in deletion discussions abound.
Biting newcomersedit
Familiarity with various policies, guidelines, or essays is something that comes from experience with the project. Only people who have already committed themselves to fairly extensive involvement in the project get deep enough into the mechanics and politics of editing to read that material.
As such, quoting them as gospel to newcomers to the project is intimidating, may be seen as hostile, and contradicts current guidelines: "Nothing scares potentially valuable contributors away faster than hostility or elitism". It is a bad idea to announce that opinions on these discussions will be discounted unless they are argued with reference to insider jargon.
Insulting the regularsedit
Participants in debates should ask themselves who their audience is: and specifically, if the person to whom a policy, guideline, or essay is cited can realistically be expected to be familiar with it. If not, the discussion takes on the unwelcoming demeanour of insiders lecturing outsiders on the Way Things are Done. The goal ought not to be to impress Wikipedia admins with forensic skills, but to assume good faith and assist the creators or editors of flawed articles to write better ones.
Some issues specific to deletion debatesedit
What's wrong with saying something is "encyclopedic"?edit
UNENCYC discounts reference to what is "encyclopedic" or "unencyclopedic" as arguments.
A body of cultural expectations about the sorts of things you could expect to find in an encyclopedia existed long before Wikipedia, and long before the World Wide Web. The words "encyclopedic" and "unencyclopedic" are used by some editors to identify conformity or non-conformity with those expectations. You'd expect an encyclopedia to contain information on ancient Romans whose recorded contributions to history are rather sketchy, obscure nineteenth century politicians, and species of lichen that grow in Greenland. "Notability" is a poor fit for a word that describes why these topics belong. Being encyclopedic—encyclopedicity?—is a much more satisfactory label.
Of course, what printed encyclopedias contained was largely at the discretion of their editors. Diderot's Encyclopédie contained a gunpowder recipe. The 1954 Encyclopedia Americana contained a long list of trivia about the King James Bible, including data of a kind disliked by some editors: the longest name appearing in the Bible, the middle verse, word counts, and other such adventitious features of the text. An encyclopedia from the 1950s aimed at children, The Book of Knowledge, contained instructions on how to build a shortwave radio, verbatim poems or extracts of poems, and retellings of fairy tales. Original research and fringe theories were occasionally presented as fact in printed encyclopedias; for a long time, from 1929 until 1969, the Encyclopædia Britannica contained an article on witchcraft written by Margaret Murray, in which she advanced her contested theory of pagan survival. (Later editions have revised the entry considerably.) Such matters are "encyclopedic"; they have, in fact, appeared in printed encyclopedias. The references cited in print encyclopedias are often lacking; only longer articles even have them.
The point is that analogical arguments based on the sorts of articles that have in fact appeared in printed encyclopedias are not always valid, but not necessarily invalid. There is no grounds to preemptively dismiss arguments from analogy from printed encyclopedias. Those works give rise to legitimate expectations, and referring to them by a shorthand phrase does not make an argument discountable or invalid.
What's wrong with arguments from analogy?edit
There's also an essay that discusses what it pleased its author to label the Pokémon test. This is explicitly designed as a device to preemptively belittle and disqualify "keep" opinions.
In the words of this essay's author:
The Pokémon test is a device sometimes used . . . in defense of a keep vote. In particular, it asserts that the subject of that article is "more notable than the average Pokémon". In that, it is frequently used in error, given the amount of publicity and renown the "average Pokémon" has gotten worldwide, as part of a multinational billion-dollar enterprise.
Each of the 493 Pokémon has its own page,[1] all of which are bigger than stubs. While it would be expected that Pikachu would have its own page, some might be surprised to find out that Bellsprout has its own page, as well. Some people perceive Pokémon as something "for little kids" and argue that if that gets an article, so should their favorite hobby/band/made-up word/whatever.
It is true that our articles on Pokémon are one of the marvels and glories of the encyclopedia. They have been carefully tended and grown by authors who are interested in that series of entertainments. And, eventually, most of the stub articles about individual, lesser known Pokémon were merged, preserving the majority of the information.
What this argument does, however, is to seek to preempt perfectly valid arguments from analogy. In fact, precedent and analogy are perfectly good arguments to use in deletion discussions. WP:NOT observes that "there is no practical limit to the number of topics we can cover, or the total amount of content;" if it pleases our editors to expatiate at obsessive length on comic books or 1970s TV shows, they should be encouraged to do so provided their contributions are verifiable, sourced, and original. The fact that our Pokémon articles are thorough and informative stands as a testament to the power and usefulness of "fancruft". And the argument that a similar series may eventually become its equal is a perfectly valid argument from analogy. It does not deserve to be belittled or preemptively discounted.
Some things are, indeed, useful and interestingedit
Searchability, indexing, and browser-friendliness (in the sense of human browsers, not web browsers) remain issues to which lists (the source of endless and tiresome arguments, it seems; some people seem to hate any and all lists) and categories are as yet only imperfect solutions. Useful lists and directories that point readers to related articles ought therefore to be welcomed. The mere fact that someone has chosen to arrange a list in a way they find interesting or useful is a perfectly valid argument that ought not to be preemptively discounted.
Answering questions from the curious is ultimately our reason for being here. The fact that people consider the observation that an article is "interesting" or "useful" an invalid or even a weak argument for keeping an article ought to boggle the mind.
Weighting argumentsedit
Admins should not perform a "headcount" when closing a debate, but should give appropriate weight to comments that provide the most convincing arguments based on policy. If a party in the debate claims that the references used in the article are reliable sources, and gives an explanation why, this argument should be given more weight than an argument that merely claims the references are not reliable with no explanation. Similarly, if another party claims that the article is not notable and provides strong reasoning for why this is, the comment should be given more weight than someone who simply claims that the article is notable. Explanations for votes provide the strongest basis for arguments, however, numbers can sometimes be an indication of consensus: uncomplicated agreement may represent the best evidence of consensus. Your "just a vote" shows that you concur with another editor's judgement.
Constructive suggestions as to what to do with problematic articles should always be encouraged. If you have nothing more to add to anyone else's comment, you should not be discouraged from saying so. Delete per nom. or Keep per User:Username are not useless gestures that add nothing constructive to a debate, especially if an issue is contested. To announce that these opinions should be preemptively disregarded is to ignore the fact that they do constitute evidence of consensus.
Alternativesedit
If the aim of posting links is to educate newcomers, consider making one comment which points to Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions and recommend that newcomers read it. By using this method, you won't end up insulting someone by implying that their opinion doesn't matter, or their opinion should not be considered, like you would if you posted an insulting link to Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions.
Notesedit
^Not the case anymore, minor characters are now grouped in lists
See alsoedit
Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
Deletion debates
Deletion guidelines for administrators
Deletion policy
Deletion precedents
Deletion process
Deletion review
Deletion review guide
Don't cite essays or proposals as if they were policy
Guide to deletion
Introduction to deletion process
Undeletion policy
WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!
v
t
e
Wikipedia essays (?)
Essays on building, editing, and deleting content
Philosophy
Article content
Articles must be written
All Five Pillars are equally important
Avoid vague introductions
Be a reliable source
Civil POV pushing
Cohesion
Competence is required
Concede lost arguments
Dissent is not disloyalty
Don't lie
Don't search for objections
Editing Wikipedia is like visiting a foreign country
Editors will sometimes be wrong
Eight simple rules for editing our encyclopedia
Explanationism
External criticism of Wikipedia
Here to build an encyclopedia
Leave it to the experienced
Levels of competence
Most ideas are bad
Need
Neutrality of sources
Not editing because of Wikipedia restriction
The one question
Oversimplification
Paradoxes
Paraphrasing
POV and OR from editors, sources, and fields
Process is important
Product, process, policy
Purpose
Reasonability rule
Systemic bias
There is no seniority
Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
Tendentious editing
The role of policies in collaborative anarchy
The rules are principles
Trifecta
Wikipedia in brief
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
Wikipedia is a community
Wikipedia is not RationalWiki
Article construction
100K featured articles
Abandoned stubs
Acronym overkill
Adding images improves the encyclopedia
Advanced article editing
Advanced text formatting
Akin's Laws of Article Writing
Alternatives to the "Expand" template
Amnesia test
A navbox on every page
An unfinished house is a real problem
Articles have a half-life
Autosizing images
Avoid mission statements
Be neutral in form
Beef up that first revision
Blind men and an elephant
BOLD, revert, discuss cycle
Build content to endure
Cherrypicking
Chesterton's fence
Children's lit, adult new readers, & large-print books
Citation overkill
Citation underkill
Common-style fallacy
Concept cloud
Creating controversial content
Criticisms of society may be consistent with NPOV and reliability
Deprecated sources
Dictionaries as sources
Don't demolish the house while it's still being built
Don't get hung up on minor details
Don't hope the house will build itself
Don't panic
Don't "teach the controversy"
Editing on mobile devices
Editors are not mindreaders
Encourage the newcomers
Endorsements (commercial)
Featured articles may have problems
Formatting bilateral relations articles
Formatting bilateral relations templates
Fruit of the poisonous tree
Give an article a chance
How to write a featured article
Identifying and using independent sources
History sources
Law sources
Primary sources
Science sources
Style guides
Tertiary sources
Ignore STRONGNAT for date formats
Inaccuracy
Introduction to structurism
Mine a source
Merge Test
Minors and persons judged incompetent
"Murder of" articles
Not every story/event/disaster needs a biography
Not everything needs a navbox
Not everything needs a template
Nothing is in stone
Obtain peer review comments
Organizing disambiguation pages by subject area
Permastub
Potential, not just current state
Presentism
Principle of Some Astonishment
The problem with elegant variation
Pro and con lists
Printability
Pruning article revisions
Publicists
Put a little effort into it
Restoring part of a reverted edit
Robotic editing
Sham consensus
Source your plot summaries
Specialized-style fallacy
Stub Makers
Run an edit-a-thon
Temporary versions of articles
Tertiary-source fallacy
There are no shortcuts to neutrality
There is no deadline
There is a deadline
The deadline is now
Try not to leave it a stub
Understanding Wikipedia's content standards
Walled garden
What an article should not include
Wikipedia is a work in progress
Wikipedia is not a reliable source
Wikipedia is not being written in an organized fashion
The world will not end tomorrow
Write the article first
Writing better articles
Writing article content
Avoid thread mode
Copyediting reception sections
Coup
Don't throw more litter onto the pile
Gender-neutral language
Myth vs fiction
Proseline
Use our own words
We shouldn't be able to figure out your opinions
Write the article first
Writing about women
Writing better articles
Removing or deleting content
Adjectives in your recommendations
AfD is not a war zone
Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
Arguments to avoid in deletion reviews
Arguments to avoid in image deletion discussions
Arguments to make in deletion discussions
Avoid repeated arguments
Before commenting in a deletion discussion
But there must be sources!
Confusing arguments mean nothing
Content removal
Counting and sorting are not original research
Delete or merge
Delete the junk
Deletion is not cleanup
Does deletion help?
Don't attack the nominator
Don't confuse stub status with non-notability
Don't overuse shortcuts to policy and guidelines to win your argument
Follow the leader
How to save an article proposed for deletion
I just don't like it
Identifying blatant advertising
Identifying test edits
Immunity
Keep it concise
Liar liar pants on fire
Nothing
Nothing is clear
Overzealous deletion
Relisting can be abusive
Relist bias
The Heymann Standard
Unopposed AFD discussion
Wikipedia is not Whack-A-Mole
Why was the page I created deleted?
What to do if your article gets tagged for speedy deletion
When in doubt, hide it in the woodwork
No Encyclopedic Use
Essays on civility
The basics
Accepting other users
Apology
Contributing to complicated discussions
Divisiveness
Don't retaliate
Edit at your own pace
Encouraging the newcomers
Enjoy yourself
Expect no thanks
High-functioning autism and Asperger's editors
How to be civil
Maintaining a friendly space
Negotiation
Obsessive–compulsive disorder editors
Please say please
Relationships with academic editors
Thank you
Too long; didn't read
Truce
Unblock perspectives
We are all Wikipedians here
You have a right to remain silent
Philosophy
A weak personal attack is still wrong
Advice for hotheads
An uncivil environment is a poor environment
Be the glue
Beware of the tigers!
Civility warnings
Deletion as revenge
Failure
Forgive and forget
It's not the end of the world
Nobody cares
Most people who disagree with you on content are not vandals
Old-fashioned Wikipedian values
Profanity, civility, and discussions
Revert notification opt-out
Shadowless Fists of Death!
Staying cool when the editing gets hot
The grey zone
The last word
There is no Divine Right of Editors
Most ideas are bad
Nothing is clear
Reader
The rules of polite discourse
There is no common sense
Two wrongs don't make a right
Wikipedia clichés
Wikipedia is not about winning
Wikipedia should not be a monopoly
Writing for the opponent
Dos
Assume good faith
Assume the assumption of good faith
Assume no clue
Avoid personal remarks
Avoid the word "vandal"
Be excellent to one another
Beyond civility
Call a spade a spade
Candor
Deny recognition
Desist
Discussing cruft
Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass
Encourage full discussions
Get over it
How to lose
Imagine others complexly
Just drop it
Keep it concise
Keep it down to earth
Mind your own business
Say "MOBY"
Mutual withdrawal
Read before commenting
Settle the process first
Don'ts
ALPHABETTISPAGHETTI
Civil POV pushing
Cyberbullying
Don't accuse someone of a personal attack for accusing of a personal attack
Don't be a fanatic
Don't be a jerk
Don't be an ostrich
Don't be ashamed
Don't be a WikiBigot
Don't be high-maintenance
Don't be inconsiderate
Don't be obnoxious
Don't be prejudiced
Don't be rude
Don't be the Fun Police
Don't bludgeon the process
Don't call a spade a spade
Don't call people by their real name
Don't call the kettle black
Don't call things cruft
Don't come down like a ton of bricks
Don't cry COI
Don't demand that editors solve the problems they identify
Don't drink the consensus Kool-Aid
Don't eat the troll's food
Don't fight fire with fire
Don't give a fuck
Don't help too much
Don't ignore community consensus
Don't knit beside the guillotine
Don't make a smarmy valediction part of your signature
Don't remind others of past misdeeds
Don't shout
Don't spite your face
Don't take the bait
Don't template the regulars
Don't throw your toys out of the pram
Do not insult the vandals
Griefing
Nationalist editing
No angry mastodons
just madmen
No Nazis
No racists
No Confederates
No queerphobes
No, you can't have a pony
Passive aggression
POV railroad
Superhatting
There are no oracles
There's no need to guess someone's preferred pronouns
You can't squeeze blood from a turnip
UPPERCASE
WikiRelations
WikiBullying
WikiCrime
WikiHarassment
WikiHate
WikiLawyering
WikiLove
WikiPeace
Essays on notability
Advanced source searching
All high schools can be notable
Alternative outlets
Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
Articles with a single source
Avoid template creep
Bare notability
Big events make key participants notable
Businesses with a single location
But it's true!
Common sourcing mistakes
Clones
Coatrack
Discriminate vs indiscriminate information
Don't cite GNG
Drafts are not checked for notability or sanity
Every snowflake is unique
Existence ≠ Notability
Existence does not prove notability
Extracting the meaning of significant coverage
Google searches and numbers
High Schools
Inclusion is not an indicator of notability
Independent sources
Inherent notability
Insignificant
Masking the lack of notability
Make stubs
Minimum coverage
News coverage does not decrease notability
No amount of editing can overcome a lack of notability
No big loss
No one cares about your garage band
No one really cares
Notability/Historical/Arguments
Notability cannot be purchased
Notability comparison test
Notability is not a level playing field
Notability is not a matter of opinion
Notability is not relevance or reliability
Notability means impact
Notability points
Notability sub-pages
Notabilitymandering
Not every single thing Donald Trump does deserves an article
Obscurity ≠ Lack of notability
Offline sources
One hundred words
One sentence does not an article make
Other stuff exists
Overreliance upon Google
Perennial websites
Pokémon test
Read the source
Reducing consensus to an algorithm
Run-of-the-mill
Solutions are mixtures and nothing else
Subjective importance
Third-party sources
Trivial mentions
Video links
Vanispamcruftisement
What BLP1E is not
What is and is not routine coverage
What notability is not
What to include
Wikipedia is not Crunchbase
Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause
Wikipedia is not the place to post your résumé
Two prongs of merit
Humorous essays
Adminitis
Akin's Laws of Article Writing
Alternatives to edit warring
ANI flu
Anti-Wikipedian
Anti-Wikipedianism
Articlecountitis
Asshole John rule
Assume bad faith
Assume faith
Assume good wraith
Assume stupidity
Assume that everyone's assuming good faith, assuming that you are assuming good faith
Avoid using preview button
Avoid using wikilinks
Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense
Barnstaritis
Before they were notable
BOLD, revert, revert, revert
Boston Tea Party
Butterfly effect
CaPiTaLiZaTiOn MuCh?
Complete bollocks
Counting forks
Counting juntas
Crap
Don't stuff beans up your nose
Don't-give-a-fuckism
Don't abbreviate "Wikipedia" as "Wiki"!
Don't delete the main page
Editcountitis
Edits Per Day
Editsummarisis
Editing Under the Influence
Embrace Stop Signs
Emerson
Fart
Five Fs of Wikipedia
Seven Ages of Editor, by Will E. Spear-Shake
Go ahead, vandalize
How many Wikipedians does it take to change a lightbulb?
How to get away with UPE
How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle
How to vandalize correctly
How to win a citation war
Ignore all essays
Ignore every single rule
Is that even an essay?
Mess with the templates
My local pond
Newcomers are delicious, so go ahead and bite them
Legal vandalism
List of jokes about Wikipedia
LTTAUTMAOK
No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
No one cares about your garage band
No one really cares
No, really
No sorcery threats
Notability is not eternal
Oops Defense
Play the game
Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you
Please bite the newbies
Please do not murder the newcomers
Pledge of Tranquility
R-e-s-p-e-c-t
Requests for medication
Requirements for adminship
Rouge admin
Rouge editor
Sarcasm is really helpful
Sausages for tasting
The Night Before Wikimas
The first rule of Wikipedia
The Five Pillars of Untruth
Things that should not be surprising
The WikiBible
Watchlistitis
Wikipedia is an MMORPG
WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!
What Wikipedia is not/Outtakes
Why not create an account?
Yes legal threats
You don't have to be mad to work here, but
You should not write meaningless lists
About essays
About essays
Essay guide
Value of essays
Difference between policies, guidelines and essays