Wikipedia:Manual of Real Essentials

This essay, Manual of Real Essentials, addresses issues which have a larger effect on Wikipedia, and ways of interacting with other people.

Biographies of living people are difficult to write

Almost half of all new Wikipedia articles, created every day, attempt to write a bio page for a specific person, perhaps an author or artist or scientist, and many of those people are still living. Such articles face severe restrictions, per policy WP:Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP), where any controversial text must be traced to a page in a WP:Reliable source. Also, if anyone challenges anything written about a person, then that text must also be defended by adding a footnote which verifies the wording of that text. Due to privacy laws, most children under the age of 18 (such as families of celebrities) are rarely allowed to have a separate article, but limited information about them (avoiding their birthdays) can be placed in an article related to their notability, in the world at large.

Be careful who you meet

Many users, met across the Wikipedia project, are genuinely friendly, in the limited amount of time they can afford. However, there are some people who seem to be quite charming, when first posting messages with you, but later it turns out they were assessing how they would control you in the areas which they tend to dominate. Wikipedia policies try to treat most people equally, with only 846 admins having a higher rank, out of nearly 49 million registered users (live count: 48,402,990 users). So, a highly experienced user, with perhaps 6 years of editing articles, typically has the same rank as a 1-day user (but might know more users who can help get things done). As time permits, try to contact a wider variety of users, to gain a broader perspective of what is happening in different areas of Wikipedia. In general, "There is safety in numbers" - the greatest danger often comes from relying on a few people too much, only to be disappointed later down the line. Be careful who you meet, but try to talk with several people, rather than just a few.

Only free or famous iconic photographs can be copied

If a photo was submitted by a user, as their own work, then such photos can typically be displayed in any article. However, most photos found on the Internet are not allowed to appear in Wikipedia pages. The rare exceptions are typically album covers in an article specifically about each album, or book covers in each book's article. For that reason, an author's article or a rock band's article might not have a photo, at all, whereas their book or album article can show the cover. The catch is to describe the book, from sources written by critics, along with the photo of the cover. A book cover can be shown, in an author's article, only when that book is extensively described in that article. Even more rare are media photos of major events, such as a hurricane or earthquake, unless the photo was known to be iconic, such as the first photo broadcast of the event, as documented by reliable sources. For that reason, an article cannot display most news photos of people, except for a rare situation such as a mugshot, where the exact photo itself is tied to the notable event. If a news photo is used to identify a person, then it will likely be rejected, on the basis of claiming how the person would likely appear, again, in public, where someone would take a free photo and upload it to Wikimedia Commons for general use. Consequently, many people have no photos in their articles, unless a user uploads a free photo they took when they saw that person at a public event. For a news photo to be used in a WP:Fair-use display, then the photo itself must be notable, such as a publicity photo, rather than the fame of the subject in the photo.

Official policies and guidelines

There are many strict policies, along with numerous suggested guideline documents (described in the project page "WP:Policies and guidelines"), which are used to steer decisions about writing articles and working with other users. For example, a person caught insulting another user, perhaps only mildly, might get blocked from editing for 24 hours, or even a week. The table below has links to the various policy names and guideline documents.

Bear in mind, because of "WP:Ignore all rules", numerous people try to ignore the various guidelines suggested for improving articles, where perhaps each person could better edit articles in another manner. However, avoiding the rules can cause real problems of WP:Accessibility, where an article cannot be cleanly displayed on a narrow window, because someone formatted an article to only fit on a wide window, rather than follow the guideline to also support narrow windows (of size 800x600 pixels).

Try to prioritize

There are over 6,923,478 in the English Wikipedia alone, so it is important to spend time on articles which are likely to have a greater effect, perhaps articles read by more people. So, it helps to sort out priorities as to which pages need to be updated first. Follow the 80/20 Rule, to fix problems in the roughly "20%" of pages which affect the overall majority (the so-called "80%"). By focusing on more important issues, the work can be perhaps 5x times easier, but still have a wide-ranging effect on the system at large. A few spelling errors do not matter much, compared to having current information in articles which many people are reading. Similarly, it is more important for the intro of an article to summarize the subject, concisely, rather than have extreme precision near the bottom of an article. Articles are not "graded" in Wikipedia, so small errors later in an article are typically not a major worry.

For an idea of what kinds of articles are read the most, see the essays:

• WP:Most read articles in 2008
• WP:Most read articles in 2009

Outside the Top 1,000 articles, many articles are written by people who speak other languages, where English might be their second language. Also, some people might rarely speak English at home, so expect some unusual grammar errors, even in articles which were written by older adults.

Other issues

More high-level issues should be added to this essay.