User:Sennalen/Write the Infinite Article
 | This is an essay on the Original research policy. 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: Verifiable information belongs on any page where it serves the reader. |
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
[edit]Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. The topic of an article isn't a word or a phrase. An article is about a concept.
Conceptually, main articles and spinoff articles should be thought of as parts of one long page. The main article in turn is a facet of some even broader article. All together, the sum of all articles forms a pyramid whose tip is the Infinite Article - the main topic of all knowledge. When you add information to Wikipedia, write like you're writing part of the Infinite Article. That means including whatever information is most useful to a reader right at the moment it is useful, even if it muddles the boundaries between topics. The boundaries are artificial. If Summary Style is practiced well, a sub-article will contain, "enough information about the broader parent subject to place the subject in context for the reader, even if this produces some duplication between the parent and child articles."
Editors are empowered
[edit]To uphold the pillar of Verifiability, every claim needs a reliable source before it can appear at all, anywhere on the encyclopedia. No source is needed to decide which page to put it on. The boundaries of a topic are decided by editors. Per WP:N, "Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article." Editors sometimes believe they need a reliable source in order to authorize the existence of an article with a particular title, or that they need authorization to combine two ideas on the same page. That is incorrect. Every claim needs to be verifiable, but a claim does not need additional proof about which pages it can be on. A claim is either original research everywhere, or it is original nowhere.
Identifying synonymous terms, and collecting related information under a common heading is also part of writing an encyclopedia. Reliable sources do not always use consistent terminology, and it is sometimes necessary to determine when two sources are calling the same thing by different names. This does not require a third source to state this explicitly, as long as the conclusion is obvious from the context of the sources.
Editorial judgement is not limited to identifying synonyms. It's up to editors to decide what context should surround a claim. Consider how authors from different points of view may frame an issue in different ways. One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Restricting an article to sources that use particular terminology can create an article that is not Neutral, or it may create a point-of-view fork.
Sources may be written in a fictional, nationalistic, religious or other narrow context. Material from these sources incorporated into Wikipedia must be placed in a broader, more encyclopedic context; this is different from taking things out of context. (...) This is not original research when good editorial judgment is used.