MU Wiki:Simplified ruleset

Wikipedia is a continuous, endless process&mdash;if you write something good, it could be around for centuries! While editing, keep in mind the following things, and you will soon find yourself making useful contributions to the project.

The primary objective of Wikipedia is to produce a high-quality encyclopedia, and most pages are encyclopedia articles. However, given that there is no official structure policing the quality of articles, the Wikipedia community has spawned its own rules, procedures and values, which continue to evolve. Some of these values are informal and you will learn them from observing, asking, or being told by other editors. Some are formal (and their page titles are preceded by "Wikipedia:", like this page). While there are rules and procedures covering everything from serious, right down to fun, a few are really important. These few are mostly common sense about respecting how Wikipedia works and what it tries to do, but also reflect the accumulated experience of hundreds of editors who are constantly learning and refining core values, which help us avoid or resolve conflicts over content, and which guide us in our constant effort to improve articles.

If you follow these behaviors, you will likely be treated with kindness and respect. As you gain experience, you might learn of additional style guides, handy ways to do things etc. But don't worry too much if you don't understand at first. Someone will clean up after you, and, as time goes on, you'll learn more of the subtleties of how to be a great Wikipedian!

There is no strict set of rules. Instead there is a set of policies and guidelines, the latter of which you can choose to follow. You might see people do things that are plainly not in accordance with these guidelines, but which may still be well within the actual Wikipedia policies. The "be gracious" guideline applies in those situations too. In many cases, well-informed and well-intentioned editors working on an article just have to sort out among themselves the most appropriate way to improve the article.

Writing high-quality articles

 * 1) Neutral point of view. Write from a neutral point of view. This is a fundamental principle of the Wikimedia Foundation, which allows us to make a fair representation of the world around us. Even if material is verifiable, it is still important to put it into a balanced and representative form so that it conveys a fair impression of the various points of view on a subject.
 * 2) Verifiability. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources. Editors should cite reliable sources for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, otherwise it may be removed by any editor. The obligation to provide a reliable source is on the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it.
 * 3) No original research. Articles may not contain previously unpublished arguments, concepts, data, or theories; or any new analysis or synthesis of published arguments, concepts, data, or theories that serves to advance a position.

Safe behaviors
The intent of these guidelines is to provide a safe set of rules of thumb. Follow these behaviors, and you'll likely not get into trouble. (And adhering to these ideals may improve the prospects of aspiring administrators.)

Encourage others, including those who disagree with you, likewise to Be bold!
 * 1) Be bold! in updating pages.  Go ahead, it's a wiki! No mistake can break Wikipedia, because any edit can be undone.
 * 1) Be civil to other users at all times.
 * 2) When in doubt, take it to the talk page. We have all the time in the world. Mutual respect is the guiding behavioural principle of Wikipedia and, although everyone knows that their writing may be edited mercilessly, it is easier to accept changes if the reasons for them are understood. If you discuss changes on the article's talk (or discussion) page  before you make them, you should reach consensus faster and happier.
 * 3) Clear edit summaries and straightforward and transparent explanations are universally appreciated. Other editors need to understand your process, and it also helps you yourself to understand what you did after a long leave of absence from an article. Please state what you changed and why. If the explanation is too long, elucidate on the discussion page.  It is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia that anyone may edit articles without registering, so there are a lot of changes to watch; edit summaries simplify this.
 * 4) Assume good faith; in other words, try to consider the person on the other end of the discussion to be a thinking, rational being who is trying to positively contribute to Wikipedia. Even if you're convinced that they're evil reptilian kitten-eaters from another planet, still pretend they're acting in good faith. Ninety percent of the time, you'll find that they actually are acting in good faith (and wouldn't you have looked stupid if you'd accused them of being evil).
 * 5) Particularly, don't revert good faith edits. Reverting is a little too powerful sometimes, hence the three-revert rule. Don't succumb to the temptation, unless you're reverting very obvious vandalism (like "LALALALAL*&*@#@THIS_SUX0RZsammygoo", or someone changing "4+5=9" to "4+5=30") . If you really can't stand something, revert once, with an edit summary something like "(rv) I disagree strongly, I'll explain why in talk." and immediately take it to talk (the discussion page).
 * 6) Be gracious: Be liberal in what you accept, be conservative in what you do. Try to accommodate other people's quirks the best you can, and try to be as polite, solid and straightforward as possible yourself.
 * 7) Signing. Sign on talk pages (using ~ which gets replaced by your username and timestamp when you hit submit), but don't sign on mainspace articles.
 * 8) Use the Show preview button; repeatedly saving the same page clutters the history-page view.
 * 9) Fundamental principles: there are certain principles which are considered fundamental by the Wikipedia community; these are summarized in the five pillars, and at interwiki level on the Founding principles page. Wikipedia is also subject to the policies of the Wikimedia Foundation, which provides its servers. If you disagree strongly with any of these principles, you may want to consider whether Wikipedia is the right place for you. While anything can theoretically be changed on a wiki, the community up to this point has been built on these principles and is highly unlikely to move away from them in the future. A lot of thought has been put into them and they've worked for us so far; do give them a fair shake before attempting to radically change them or leaving the project.
 * 10) Don't infringe copyright. Wikipedia uses the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License. Everything you contribute must be compatible with Wikipedia's licenses.
 * 11) Ignore all rules – rules on Wikipedia are not fixed in stone.  The spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule. The common purpose of building an encyclopedia trumps both.

The above mainly focuses on practice, rather than actual content; for content discussions, see List of bad article ideas for a discussion of article ideas that show up (and get deleted) frequently on articles for deletion, Wikipedia's method of removing articles that don't constitute vandalism in and of themselves.