Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep: Difference between revisions

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This essay is about creep in policies and guidelines. For creep in articles, see WP:Article creep.

This is an explanatory essay about the Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy subsection.

This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

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This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia policy and guideline pages should only include things which really belong there.

Instruction creep, informally referred to as "bloat," occurs when Wikipedia guideline or policy pages expand beyond brief and simple explanations of community norms.

Why instruction creep is discouraged

Policies and guidelines are meant to be very broad in scope, and thus specifics must be handled with care. So policy and guideline pages should not strive to cover every minute aspect of the issues with which they deal.

Policies aim to document the consensus of the community on what is acceptable. However, few users actually read lengthy instructions from start to finish. The lengthier and more complex instructions become, the harder it becomes to see if the community agrees with them.

How instruction creep develops

Frequently, somebody thinks that such-and-such a point should be addressed, or that readers would benefit from more explanation, and adds more requirements, restrictions, or examples. Editors involved at a policy page may not be a representative sample of the community at large — this is why instruction creep can persist.

Avoiding instruction creep

Keeping policies and guidelines relatively brief and simple is the most effective way to prevent instruction creep. Substantive additions to policy should generally be rejected unless:

There is an actual problem to solve, and not just a hypothetical or perceived problem.
The proposal truly solves this problem (as opposed to treating symptoms or making symbolic gestures).
The instructions have few or no undesirable effects (such as false positives, overcomplexity, or unnecessary prohibitions).

It is usually better for a policy or guideline to be too lax than too strict. Not everything allowable under WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:OR, and other content policies should be included in a given article—people come to consensus on disputed content. Consensus-building on article talk pages can be undermined by an over-strict policy, as an editor who wants to follow it literally can claim that the issue is already decided.

If you just think that you have good advice for Wikipedians, consider adding it to an essay. Essays are not rules, and do not necessarily need to represent a broad consensus.

Dealing with instruction creep

Since things can sometimes "creep in" without much scrutiny, even longstanding instructions should be subject to review. The mere fact that something has been in a policy for a long time does not in itself prove that it has solid consensus.

If an instruction does not make sense or does not seem to describe accepted practice, check the page history to see when it was added and how it may have changed over time. Then check the talk page and talk archive, to find out whether the instruction was discussed. If you think it lacks community consensus, either open a new discussion or boldly remove it, giving your rationale in the edit summary. If your edit is reverted, discuss the matter further. Avoid edit-warring over a policy or guideline, as such disruption will not help your cause.

What is not instruction creep

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WP:NOTCREEP

Instruction creep refers to things which more or less "crept" into policy, with limited or no discussion. When a policy discussion was well-advertised beyond the principal talk page, resulting changes cannot be described as creeping, provided the changes accurately reflect a consensus reached in said discussion.

"WP:CREEP" should not be used in place of coherent arguments. Rules do sometimes need to be expanded; the important thing is that such updates do more good than harm.

Source

This page was inspired by the meta-wiki concept: m:instruction creep.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 [[Image:Kudzu on trees in Atlanta, Georgia.jpg|thumb|250px|Like [[:en:Kudzu|kudzu]], instructions can grow much too fast.]]
-'''Instruction creep''' occurs when Wikipedia [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines|guideline or policy pages]] expand beyond what they are supposed to be: straightforward explanations of community norms.
+'''Instruction creep''', informally referred to as "'''bloat'''," occurs when Wikipedia [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines|guideline or policy pages]] expand beyond brief and simple explanations of community norms.
-==How instruction creep develops==
+==Why instruction creep is discouraged==
+Policies and guidelines are meant to be very broad in scope, and thus specifics must be handled with care. So policy and guideline pages should '''not''' strive to cover every minute aspect of the issues with which they deal.
-Policy and guideline pages function much like articles in that they can generally be edited by anyone. Frequently, somebody thinks that such-and-such a point should be addressed, or that readers would benefit from more explanation, and adds more requirements, restrictions, or examples. Unlike articles, however, project pages should '''not''' strive to cover every minute aspect of the issues they deal with. For one thing, few users [[WP:TLDR|actually read]] lengthy instructions from start to finish. Moreover, policies and guidelines are meant to be very broad in scope, and thus specifics must be handled with care.
-Policies aim to document the consensus of the ''community'' on what is acceptable. Editors involved at a policy page may not be a representative [[Sampling_(statistics)#Accidental_sampling|sample]] of the community at large&mdash;this is why instruction creep can persist. The lengthier and more complex instructions become, the harder it becomes to see if the community agrees with them, since fewer users will read and understand them.
+Policies aim to document the consensus of the ''community'' on what is acceptable. However, few users [[WP:TLDR|actually read]] lengthy instructions from start to finish. The lengthier and more complex instructions become, the harder it becomes to see if the community agrees with them.
+==How instruction creep develops==
+Frequently, somebody thinks that such-and-such a point should be addressed, or that readers would benefit from more explanation, and adds more requirements, restrictions, or examples. Editors involved at a policy page may not be a representative [[Sampling_(statistics)#Accidental_sampling|sample]] of the community at large &mdash; this is why instruction creep can persist.
 ==Avoiding instruction creep==