User:Mscuthbert/Does this improve the encyclopedia?

Wikipedia is the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" (emphasis added). To best achieve this definition, Wikipedia has five pillars that are the principles at its core and a small number of policies. Because policies are often too general to provide specific recommendations of best practices in individual cases, Wikipedia also has a somewhat larger number of guidelines which are largely distilled from experiences that editors (including but not exclusive to administrators) have had in being contributing members of the Wikipedia community. The guidelines let editors point to precedent in guiding discussions and making judgments and to a comfortingly high degree agree with common sense about what building an encyclopedia of reliable knowledge requires.

Occasionally, however, the precedent in guidelines conflicts with an editor's common sense about the choice of action that will be most useful for readers and for Wikipedia's core mission.

Where guidelines and precedent seem to contradict common sense, look at the material again, then ask yourself the question, "Does this improve the encyclopedia?" If the answer is yes, try to keep it. If the answer is no, get rid of it. Wikipedia policies of "Ignore all rules" and "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy" are on your side.

This essay is not an invitation to blissfully contradict core precedents. Answers that seem to do so are usually contrary to a pillar. (For instance, including a copyrighted image without fair use might seem to improve the total amount of content in the encyclopedia but it makes it far less free to use. Its inclusion would not improve the encyclopedia.) But guidelines, essays, and uninscribed precedent often have gray areas on all sides.

When to apply DTITE

Consider, as an example, two biography articles that might be up for deletion. One is of a researcher without tenure, with significant contributions but which fall slightly below the usual standards for academic notability. The other is of a researcher just beyond tenure whose contributions to the field might be slightly above those standards. Generally, the first article would be deleted while the second would be retained.

The first article, however, is a masterpiece of clear writing, without any sense of promotion or conflict of interest. All statements are backed up by clear citations from reliable sources. Every edit since the initial creation has improved the article and its development has advanced without the need for cleanup from volunteer editors. The subject's career trajectory is also documented to be proceeding towards clear notability. Furthermore, she works in a field (say dance history) with extreme holes in coverage and that the community has already identified as hurt by systematic bias by the editing community.

The second article, on the other hand, is and always has been a mess of puffery, clear advertising, and uncited assertions. Sockpuppets of blocked editors continually add wild statements that need to be reverted by other editors. Web searches do confirm that reliable sources exist which corroborate the basic outline of a notable career. But no information appears in the article that cannot also be found in a dozen other free, online sources. The subject might work in field, say, computer science, with many, many existing articles of far higher quality on much more prominent figures.

The notability guideline states that, "Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article..no amount of improvements to the Wikipedia content can make the subject notable. Conversely, if the source material exists, even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the subject's notability."

These are very good guidelines for cases such as a well-written but uncited article about your roommate's hamster vs. a terribly written article about Mother Theresa. Even if it's no bother to keep the first and a huge pain to maintain the second, keeping the rodent and dumping the saint would contradict Wikipedia's claim to being an encyclopedia.

The most difficult decisions on Wikipedia, however, do not fall neatly into one side or another of policy or guidelines. In the case of the dance historian and the computer scientist, the general guideline might be read as saying to ignore the article content, ignore the fact that the first article is already great and the second article will always be a mess, ignore the frustration and editor loss that would come from defending the second article, and ignore the inspiration that readers with underrepresented interests might get from the first article. But there's a conflict between this guideline and the pillars that Wikipedia is not a Bureauacracy and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The times when such conflicts arise will be few, but when they do, it is absolutely appropriate to Ignore all rules and use common sense as to which choice will best help the encyclopedia.

See also

User:Antandrus/IAR -- User essay by Antandrus interpreting Ignore all Rules.