User:Swpb/CreepFighter

WikiProject CreepFighter seeks to fight the harmful effects of Instruction creep, by creating and maintaining a set of clear and concise summary pages corresponding to Wikipedia's various instruction pages. If you would like to help, please join the project, inquire on the talk page, and see the to-do list below.

Background
Instruction creep is the growth over time of instructions, which may become unmanageably large and confusing, and are thus frequently ignored, defeating the entire purpose of having instructions to begin with. Wikipedia has, over the years, developed a large base of policies, instructions, and guidelines. These instruction pages are an important part of maintaining and improving the quality of Wikipedia. It is the responsibility of all users who edit these pages to be mindful of instruction creep, and to strive to create instructions that are clear, concise, and well-organized, and to avoid micro-managing.

Herein lies a conflict: a complex project such as Wikipedia demands extensive and detailed instructions, to maintain consistency and quality throughout the encyclopedia, and to consolidate and formalize consensuses. However, such a large instruction base presents a steep learning curve to new editors, who are often reprimanded for their mistakes, and may become discouraged from editing, when in fact new editors should be encouraged as much as possible, for the strength of Wikipedia lies in the ability of everyone to contribute.

The goal of WikiProject CreepFighter is to minimize the harm created by this conflict, by creating and maintaining concise summary pages corresponding to each of Wikipedia's various instruction pages. New or inexperienced editors can then be directed to these summary pages, rather than to the corresponding full instruction pages, thus minimizing the learning curve. Editors who want to understand the instructions in more detail can then easily go to the full instruction page.

Summary page guidelines
Summary pages should be created in the Wikipedia namespace, and should be named "[Policy/guideline] Dos and Don'ts", or similar.

Each summary page consists of a brief table of "dos" and "don'ts", which summarize what the underlying policy, guideline, or instruction page encourages editors to do and not to do. Each "do" and "don't" entry should link to the relevant section of the underlying instruction page(s), and key words in each entry should be in bold.

Entries should be complete sentences in the imperative mood (e.g., "Check that links point to the intended target."). The first "do" entry should direct users to the underlying policy or guideline(s), e.g. "Be familiar with Manual of Style (foobar)". "Don't" entries should begin with the word "Don't". The summary page should be topped with a main idea statement, which summarizes in an even briefer form the goal or rationale of the policy or guideline. In addition, a table caption may provide additional information.

There should be no more than ten entries each of "dos" and "don'ts". Each entry should have no more than ten to fifteen words, and should fit on a single line within the table.

The template dd allows for easy creation of summary pages in this style.

Templates

 * dd – creates a summary page
 * CreepFighterProj – to be put on talk pages of summary pages
 * User CreepFighter – userbox

Pages

 * Disambiguation dos and don'ts

Tasks

 * Create summary pages for every major instruction page, policy page, and guideline
 * Create links from each instruction page to its summary page
 * Maintain summary pages to reflect changes to the underlying instruction pages
 * Create user-talk templates to direct users to summary pages

Participants

 * » Swpbτ • ¢