Template talk:Guideline one liner

Goal

The goal of this project is to give every policy and guideline a "one line summary" which appears at the head of the page, and which appears on WP:RULES. Why? No one (except me) will ever read all the guidelines. But people may read a page which features a single line summary of every official policy and guideline. Stevage 23:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Headline "one line summary"

I originally put the words there to give some sort of tangible name to this summary. The goal is eventually to have a list of all these guidelines and policies reduced down to their "one line summaries". While I can see Radiant!'s point about it being redundant, at least it sort of indicates to subsequent editors that they should keep it down to one line.

What do you think? Stevage 23:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Well, yes, it should probably say something. Maybe a link to a central page listing all of those oneliners, or something. But having it display "one-line summary" is about as useful as having it state "this is a blue box" :) Radiant_>|< 23:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. At the time I didn't have anything to link to. I like your idea of expanding the policy/guideline summary, the only problem being that not all the pages have such templates.Stevage 23:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• All policy/guideline pages have a policy/guideline template, to my knowledge. Not all have a summary, but if people like them that could easily be fixed. Parts of the tl I suggested below can easily be blank. Radiant_>|< 23:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Oneliners

[moved from Stevage's talk page] Not a bad idea at all! Please see WP:NUT which is an earlier attempt to do likewise, which hasn't gotten around to being finished yet. Merging may be useful. Radiant_>|< 22:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, the goal is the same as what I'm trying to achieve, but the format a bit different. I pictured the final result looking something like this:

• The 3 revert rule: Don't make more than 3 reverts to a single page within 24 hours or you may be blocked.

etc. Where it always features the actual name of the guideline, with the description being the one liner from its page. Stevage 23:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• I have no problem with that either, but note that some pages don't easily translate to a single line (e.g. the blocking policy). Categorizing the lines (e.g. content/behavior/...) seems useful, though. Radiant_>|< 23:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • True, some don't - the ones that don't actually have a coherent policy underneath, but are just a bunch of special cases. You can still summarise them as "Users may be banned for as little as 24 hours for 3RR or indefinitely for serious personal attacks" etc. You still get the gist from that line. It's an art compressing a page into a line! :) Stevage 23:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Don't stick to one line if two explain it better, that's all I'm saying. The blocking policy is coherent but extensive. So is CSD. Radiant_>|< 23:58, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Fair enough. Obviously I'm not advocating replacing a complex policy with a single line - that would be foolish. But reading one line to understand a policy is better than reading nothing at all. Stevage 00:00, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

---

• To prevent messy layout of boxen on the page, how about a single box (and a single template) that looks a bit like this...

This page is considered a policy on Wikipedia. It is widely accepted yadda yadda yadda.	Shortcut: WP:BLAH.
One line summary: users should never eat bananas while editing.

• Radiant_>|< 22:58, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Like this?

This page is an official policy on Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Feel free to edit the page as needed, but please make sure that changes you make to this policy reflect consensus before you make them.
One line summary: users should never eat bananas while editing.

_→AzaToth 00:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that's the example of the "messy layout of boxen" :) Stevage 01:07, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe something like this, but a little prettier:

	This page is an official policy on Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Feel free to edit the page as needed, but please make sure that changes you make to this policy reflect consensus before you make them.	Shortcut: WP:BLAH
	One line summary: Monkeys eat green bananas

Simple minded

Policies, guidelines and standards should be approached with a degree of subtlety and care. Nearly every application of this box that I've seen so far encourages a simpleminded approach, and usaully one that has a very serious misstatement of the document in it. One of them said "Make waht changes you like to a page, and don't worry about the state you leave it in.", which is an obviously crazy way to phrase it, and is the meaning neither of Wikipedia:Editing policy nor WP:BOLD.

The wording I used was "Improve any page without hesitation, regardless of the state you leave it in. Avoid removing information wherever possible." Naturally that's a simplification, but IMHO it captures pretty well what the guideline is about. From the actual guideline: "During this process, the article might look like a first draft—or worse, a random collection of notes and factoids. Rather than being horrified by this ugliness, we should rejoice in its potential, and have faith that the editing process will turn it into brilliant prose. " I would love you or anyone to improve it further.

I don't think a summary "encourages a simpleminded approach". I think lack of summary discourages anyone from reading the guideline, and lack of summaries in general discourages people from reading guidelines in general. I'd like to hear others' viewpoints on this, particularly wrt the stated "Goal" above. Stevage 00:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

If people won't read the very first sentence of a page they are not going to be helped by an ultra-selective extraction of essence from the page, especially when it is often wrong. This should go to TfD. -Splash^talk 00:01, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

It is obviously difficult to condense a page into a line, but I think it's generally possible without distorting the meaning. I don't mind if you nominate this template for TfD, as that will surely stimulate some discussion on the topic. Stevage 00:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

The template suggests to someone in a hurry that this one line, powerpoint-esque boiled down summary is all they need to know, or, that it is at least far the most part of what they need to know. In almost no case can a policy be adequately so stripped down without losing important parts of its function and, most important, its practise. If people want to read only one sentence, they can stop at the end of the first: at least that way, when they finish up with an incomplete understanding it their own fault. -Splash^talk 00:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

"to someone in a hurry that this one line, powerpoint-esque boiled down summary is all they need to know, or, that it is at least far the most part of what they need to know" I actually pretty much agree with that. Obviously there are special cases and caveats to any guideline. But for the example you chose, "Improve any page without hesitation, regardless of the state you leave it in. Avoid removing information wherever possible.", *is* all you really need to know about that guideline. IMHO. :) Stevage 00:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Well, it's a nice quandary. Not all policies can meaningfully be simplified to one sentence. On the other hand, I would encourage simplistic thinking about policy rather than rules lawyering over excessive bits of policy. Almost daily, you see comments like "you can't block him, he only reverted three times", or "you can't nominate that for deletion without valid grounds" or "you can't protect that page because there was no edit war", or similar misconceptions. Nearly all policy is intended to be simple (e.g. you can do so-and-so if there is a good reason, and it's generally impossible to enumerate all reasons in policy). People must understand that users can be blocked for disruption, without the need to specifically define all possible kinds of disruption. Etc. Most policies are simpler than what most people think. Radiant_>|< 12:38, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I question the need for a one line summary of these policy and/or guideline pages. In almost every case, we already have a very concise statement of the purpose of the page - the page title. Remember that there are few constraints on the page title. If the policy can be boiled down into a single powerpoint-esque (great word, by the way) bullet, that bullet should be the page title. The next layer of detail to understand the page is the introductory paragraph. That first paragraph should give you an overview of the entire policy page. It should be short, concise and lead you into the rest of the page. Now I will concede that some of the introductory paragraphs are not well written or concise enough but I don't see how a one-line summary fixes that. I would much rather see the time spent refining the introductory paragraph than this exercise. The template draws the eye away from the text. Some people will ignore it; others will focus only on it. I fear that the inevitable discrepancies will increase rather than reduce confusion among users. Rossami (talk) 13:41, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Examples

Here are the summaries that have been implemented so far. Some have been removed pending further discussion.

• wikipedia:Editing policy: Improve any page without hesitation, regardless of the state you leave it in. Avoid removing information wherever possible.
• wikipedia:Build the web: Link articles sideways to neighbours, and upwards to categories and contexts to create a useful web of information.
• wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages: Sign all your posts on Wikipedia talk pages by typing ~~~~ to be accountable and to help others understand the conversation.
• wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources: Don't copy lengthy poems, speeches or other source text into Wikipedia. Put them in Wikisource if you need to.
• wikipedia:Subpages: Don't use slashes (/) in the names of articles to create subpages.
• wikipedia:Edit summary: Always type at least a brief summary of the change that you made in the Edit Summary box. Avoid misleading summaries.
• wikipedia:Disambiguation: If an article's name is very similar to another, make a note at the top. If many articles share a name, create a disambiguation page.
• wikipedia:Deletion policy: If no page appropriate for Wikipedia could ever be written on an article's topic, nominate it for deletion. Otherwise, try and fix it.
• wikipedia:Semi-protection policy: Pages undergoing frequent vandalism can be semi-protected to block edits by very new or unregistered users.
• wikipedia:No binding decisions: All decisions, including poll results, can be reversed later as Wikipedia develops.
• wikipedia:Ownership of articles: You agreed to allow others to modify your work. So let them.
• wikipedia:Harassment: Don't make life miserable for other users, such as by wiki-stalking them, or you may be blocked.
• wikipedia:Sock puppet: Do not use duplicate accounts to rig votes, mislead others or circumvent policy. Good-faith uses are fine.
• wikipedia:Banning policy: Users may be banned for varying times. They may appeal, but must not circumvent the ban, so don't bait them or help them to try.

You may not have known that some of these policies even existed. If so, consider the summary here, read the policy, and decide for yourself whether the summary distorted the policy, and if so, consider fixing it. Also please don't hesitate to create summaries for other guidelines and policies. Ideally they should be "one line" with this template at "normal" font settings - whatever that means :) Stevage 00:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Those one-liners tend to oversimplify, or even misrepresent, the policies. Work on making the intro sections more succent and descriptive, just please don't resort to huge message boxes. -- Netoholic @ 01:07, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, the presentation is a separate issue - the idea of combining the summary and the shortcut into the template:policy is a good one that will probably help there. But which oversimplifications and misrepresentations do you see? Stevage 14:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Remember that all blanket statements are false. Any "one-liner" for a policy is going to have to be simplistic. Even the full text of the policy tends to omit nuances and things that fall to common sense. The idea here should not be to devlop the ideal, perfect sentence which describes a policy, but give a super-quick summary. With that, you can drill-down as needed. --DragonHawk 07:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• Hm, it is less good than I thought. I agree with Neto that many of those oneliners misrepresent what the policy is about. Radiant_>|< 13:12, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Which ones? Are there any that you think are right? Stevage 14:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• The ones that are still in place that I haven't removed, reworded or commented on are, in my opinion, appropriate. The ones that I have reworded are, in my opinion, potentially appropriate. Radiant_>|< 17:05, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I like this

Not sure where to say this on this page, so I made a new section... I like it! Many policies already have a one-line version, but making them stand out certainly won't hurt. Dan100 (Talk) 16:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Changing to nutshell template

There were two main objections to this template:

1. It is ugly
2. It is misleading to "summarise" a policy into a single line.

To adress these I have created a new template Template:Policy in a nutshell (and will soon make one for guidelines). Hopefully it will be clear that by expressing a policy/guideline "in a nutshell" it only attempts to capture the most important features of the policy/guideline, and is not intended to simplify the whole policy/guideline into a single line. You can see this at WP:SOCK (until someone removes it :)). Stevage 14:50, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I have also created Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to collect all such summaries and to provide a "policies at a glance" page. All help/comments appreciated. Stevage 22:55, 9 January 2006 (UTC)