Wikipedia:Policy condensing
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It's been mentioned before that our policies have been sprawled over what must be hundreds of associated guidelines, sub-policies, supplements, summaries, and essays that only serve to repeat what has already been said or else further confuse the matter. This is a perpetually increasing problem on Wikipedia, and it's getting to the point it needs to be stopped, or at least cut off from getting any worse.
This page is intended to act as a workshop, a sort of policy project, to reduce the amount of policy, guideline, and essay pages on Wikipedia to condense them into their most useful format. Having multiple pages that all essentially say the same thing only confuses newbies and makes it easier for people to game the system. Here, we'll identify where these duplications or alternate interpretations exist, and will determine how best to condense them into their most usable format. Obviously, this won't work perfectly in all cases, and that will also be a point of discussion. It may be better to have umpteen zillion separate notability guidelines, or on the other hand, it may be better to merge them all to the main page. That's what we're dealing with here.
Suggestions for how to work this out can be posted to the talk page; the format as currently set up was conceived by User:Hersfold, so yell at him if you think it sucks.
How we're going to do it
[edit]The two templates at right, and the navbox at the bottom of this page, outline most of our more important policies and guidelines. We can use these as sort of starting point to determine what needs fixing up first. On subpages of this page (to avoid clutter), we can list the various duplications, and (either there or on the respective talk pages) sort out how best to condense them. There are a few starting examples below.
Anyone is welcome to participate in this: it's certainly not limited only to administrators, and the input of new users is particularly encouraged, as it's mainly them that are adversely affected by this. Experienced users know of all the policies and (for the most part) how to interpret them, but new users may not be as well versed in this. This is an open project to everyone, and everyone is encouraged and welcome to add their opinions.
How to start a discussion
[edit]To avoid creating a massive amount of clutter on this page and its talk page, edits here and to this page's talk page should relate to the general workings of this project, rather than taking action on the project itself. Discussions on various related policy pages should instead be started on subpages of this page, so that there is as little confusion as possible.
To begin such a discussion, enter the name of the relevant policy where indicated in the form below and click the button. List the overlapping policy pages there, and consider making some suggestions as to how they can be merged together, trimmed, or (if a blatant duplication that provides no additional value) put up for deletion at WP:MFD. Other solutions to help reduce the mess we have will of course work just as well.
Once you've started the subpage, come back here and post a link to the discussion you started in the "Currently Active" section below, so that others know to take a look and where to go.