finiki:Policies and guidelines

This page documents a finiki policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

This page in a nutshell: finiki's policies and guidelines are pages that serve to document the good practices that are accepted in the finiki community. This policy describes how finiki policies and guidelines should normally be developed and maintained.

finiki policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable knowledge base of financial subjects, that are written from a Canadian perspective. There is no need to read any policy or guideline pages before starting editing.

Although finiki does not employ hard-and-fast rules, finiki policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-known practices. Policies explain and describe standards that all users should normally follow, while guidelines are meant to outline best practices for following those standards in specific contexts. Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense.

This policy page specifies the community standards related to the organization, life cycle, maintenance of, and adherence to policies, guidelines, and related pages.

Derivation

finiki is operated by the Financial Webring Ltd. (FWR), which reserves certain legal rights. Nevertheless, normally finiki is a self-governing project run by its community. Its policies and guidelines are intended to reflect the consensus of the community.

Role

Policies have wide acceptance among editors and describe standards that all users should normally follow. All policy pages are in finiki:List of policies and guidelines and Category:Wiki policies.

Guidelines are sets of best practices that are supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Guideline pages can be found in finiki:List of policies and guidelines and Category:Wiki guidelines.

Adherence

Use common sense when interpreting and applying policies and guidelines; there will be occasional exceptions to these rules. Conversely, those who violate the spirit of a rule may be reprimanded even if no rule has technically been broken.

Whether a policy or guideline is an accurate description of best practice is determined by the community through consensus.

Enforcement

Enforcement on finiki is similar to other social interactions. If an editor violates the community standards described in policies and guidelines, other editors can persuade the person to adhere to acceptable norms of conduct. Going against the principles set out on these pages, particularly policy pages, is unlikely to prove acceptable, although it may be possible to convince fellow editors that an exception ought to be made. This means that individual editors (including you) enforce and apply policies and guidelines.

In cases where it is clear that a user is acting against policy (or against a guideline in a way that conflicts with policy), especially if they are doing so intentionally and persistently, that user may be temporarily or indefinitely blocked from editing by an administrator.

Content

Policy and guideline pages should:

be clear. Avoid esoteric or quasi-legal terms and dumbed-down language. Be plain, direct, unambiguous, and specific. Avoid platitudes and generalities. Do not be afraid to tell editors directly that they must or should do something.
be as concise as possible—but no more concise. Verbosity is not a reliable defense against misinterpretation. Omit needless words. Direct, concise writing may be more clear than rambling examples. Footnotes and links to other pages may be used for further clarification.
emphasize the spirit of the rule. Expect editors to use common sense. If the spirit of the rule is clear, say no more.
maintain scope and avoid redundancy. Clearly identify the purpose and scope early in the page. Content should be within the scope of its policy. When the scope of one advice page overlaps with the scope of another, minimize redundancy. When one policy refers to another policy, it should do so briefly, clearly and explicitly.
avoid overlinking. Links to policies, guidelines, essays, and articles should be used only when clarification or context is needed. Links to other advice pages may inadvertently or intentionally defer authority to them. Make it clear when links defer, and when they do not.
not contradict each other. The community's view cannot simultaneously be "A" and "not A". When apparent discrepancies arise between pages, editors at all the affected pages should discuss how they can most accurately represent the community's current position, and correct all of the pages to reflect the community's view. This discussion should be on one talk page, with invitations to that page at the talk pages of the various affected pages; otherwise the corrections may still contradict each other.

Life cycle

Many of the most well-established policies and guidelines have developed from principles which have been accepted as fundamental since Wikipedia's inception and adapted for use on finiki. Others developed as solutions to common problems and disruptive editing.

Deletions

The finiki deletion policy describes how pages that do not meet the relevant criteria for content of the knowledge base are identified and removed from finiki.

Deletion of a finiki article removes the current version and all previous versions from public view. Deletion can be performed only by administrators. Administrators can also view deleted pages and reverse ("undelete") any deletion. All such actions are logged. If in doubt as to whether there is consensus to delete a page, administrators will normally not delete it.