Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia essays

There is nothing actionable here
The only thing which actually does more than describe what essays are is a mention that MFD can be used to delete them, which doesn't need a new guideline for. What is proposed? -Amarkov moo! 05:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. This is entirely redundant with WP:POL.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  09:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Redundancy is non-meaningful; much of the content of Wikipedia guidelines are redundant to others. The WP:POL page only describes the "The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc." It does not do a particularly good job of delineating the utility of essays, or the misuses. The only other place where there is a description of "essays" is at Category:Wikipedia_essays, but category-space is not where guidelines should be placed. -- LeflymanTalk 22:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * And why would we need a guideline delineating the utility of essays, or the misuses? Is there any particular problem that this proposal intends to alleviate? Is there actually such a thing as "essay misuse", and is it worthwhile to define that term?  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  08:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Stop redirecting this page to the essays category, please
If there's anything wrong with this page as it stands, I'm not aware of it. If you'd like to inform me why it should be redirected, explain here.-h i s  s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 17:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * See the section above.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  15:16, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, you're in essence "claiming" a common term that should point to the definition of that term. I'll fix that, at least.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  15:17, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I saw the section above but that was when this page was proposed as a guideline, not when this page was an essay as it stands currently.--h i s  s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 08:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Page is also wrong
Essays are not there for freedom of speech. They are there to describe how wikipedia works, just like policies and guidelines. There is something seriously fubared about everyones constant attempts to deprecate the value of essays, especially since people have not been moving or removing essay tags much at all. If we are to actually believe this essay, then we need to start removing many essay tags, as many pages so tagged do not fall under this definition! --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, Rather than tear my hair out, I've edited practically everything. Here's my comments on the original text. (emphasis mine)

Essays on Wikipedia are editor-created opinions on topics that may be relevant to the function and purpose of creating and managing an online encyclopedia. Essays have no formal standing as part of the constellation of rules and policies, although some essays have been cited in Articles for Deletion and Request for Comment discussions. In general, essays should only be regarded only as the beliefs of the author or authors of the essay , which may or may not be reflective of others'  ideas about Wikipedia. Many essays are kept as subpages of particular users, while others have been created or moved into Wikipedia project space (prefixed by "Wikipedia:" or "WP:") to allow greater comment. Being part of Project namespace does not confer more authority for essays ; nor does tagging as an essay prevent such content from being edited by others. Like the content of user pages, essays which fail to adhere to the tenants of Wikipedia inappropriate content may be removed or brought to Miscellany for Deletion.

Originally, the Wikimedia Foundations's Meta-wiki began to allow editors to describe their thoughts on Wikipedia in essay format, and many historical essays are contained at Category:Essays. There is ongoing discussion as to whether new essays should be allowed in anywhere except Meta user-space.

The advantage of essays

As an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, not only is Wikipedia's content changing all the time, but the policies and guidelines that govern the encyclopedia are too. As such, personal opinions and input surrounding the running of the encyclopedia are highly valued, and while it is difficult for these to gain full consensus and become a policy or guideline, essays allow their authors to have freedom of speech about the encyclopedia and have a great potential to generate new ideas which may in turn have a huge positive influence over Wikipedia as a whole. Thus Wikipedia essays, if they present any views on the encyclopedia, whether positive or negative, should not be deleted as they constitute a valuable resource, unless extremely inappropriate as described above.

Hopefully this covers all the points.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 21:13, 11 January 2008 (UTC) ''I chose an arbitrary format for criticism of text. Is there some standard one could follow?''


 * I haven't scrutinized your changes, but they look to me to be an improvement.--Father Goose (talk) 02:51, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, now I've scrutinized them. This is as wrong as the other version was.  But it is shorter, I'll give you that.  The most clearly wrong thing is "The long term intent of any essay is that eventually it will become policy, after all."  There are essays that aren't any form of guidance, and never will be, but that still belong in the Wikipedia namespace.  The bits about consensus are either contradictory or a tautology, I'm not sure which, and don't explain things well.--Father Goose (talk) 08:36, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It was very wrong before. Now it's just not nuanced enough yet. Feel free to sofixit further. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:39, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Roger wilco. No, I don't know who Wilco is and why we're supposed to roger him. --Father Goose (talk) 05:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Essays need Essay in title
I just got reamed by an abusive admin for mistaking an essay for a guideline or policy. Sure it says so in that box on top, but people don't read the boxes all the time, do they? Why not put essay in the title? Where do I have to go to get this done?? CarolMooreDC (talk) 13:09, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Moved from main space
This pargraph:
 * Essays that are in the Wikipedia project space (prefixed by "Wikipedia:" or "WP:") should ideally represent a consensus amongst the broad community of Wikipedia editors. Those that reflect the beliefs of a limited number of editors should be edited to present a view more representative of the community.  Poor candidates for broadening should be userified — relocated to a subpage of the user that authored them.  Such "user essays" are categorized into Category:User essays.

...contradicts official current policy Policies_and_guidelines:
 * An essay is a page reflecting the views of an editor or a group of editors. The term is used for many opinion pages that do not fall into other categories. Essays may become guidelines if they have sufficient support, although in practice this happens rarely. A link to an essay should not imply that it represents a policy or guideline.

Essays need not be proposed or advertised; you can simply write them, as long as you understand that you do not necessarily speak for the entire community.

I think this contradiction should be worked out before this text is reinserted. Ikip (talk) 02:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * My impression was that a mainspace essay, while it may not have widespread consensus, should not go against such either, and one found to be doing so should be userfied. This principle would give a long-standing essay a bit of weight when dealing with a recurring problem. See, for example, how an essay which went directly counter to WP:DTTR was userfied, while DTTR was kept. PSWG1920 (talk) 19:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it's fine to go against policy in an essay. User space is only for essays that should not be edited by others. I agree though that essays that directly oppose consensus without making this very clear in the text need some sort of remedy. Worse, though, are the essays (like this one) that replicate policy, or are redundant, or give helpful official-seeming advice, but which themselves have little basis in policy. The potential for abuse is rather high. The potential for 'what the hell, why is there so much stuff that I have to read before I can even get started??" is even higher.    M   19:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Supplement
Would some uninvolved editor please look at Supplement and, if you agree that a template that begins ""While this essay is not a policy or guideline itself..." and places the essay in the relevant essay cats is really, truly an essay tag, please mention it on this page?

There's a remarkably silly dispute at OUTCOMES on whether its (presumably accidental) exclusion from this page is important evidence that it can't be used to tag essays. I think it might be cleaner if I don't add it to this page myself while that dispute is active. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Consensus and essays
There are essays which have had formal attempts to judge their consensus; indeed one way to deal with permanent divisions of opinion is to have an essay from each camp. (How many inclusionist and deletionist essays are there?)

On this basis, I have tuned down the generalization in the lead. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:25, 24 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Changing it to say "essays don't have consensus" doesn't work, though -- plenty do, especially those that largely reflect existing policy, and those that express simple common sense in a way that doesn't need to be "legislated".


 * Broadly speaking, when you read an essay, you don't know whether you can ignore its advice at will or not. It's not formal legislation, in the way that policies/guidelines are, but it might still reflect the community's position well, and contain advice one should heed.


 * Whatever explanation we offer here should reflect that.--Father Goose (talk) 23:08, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion clarification for "Improving existing essays"
In response to the situation currently unfolding over at WP:HARDCORE, I think we ought to clarify whether or not what I would call edits hostile to the thesis of an essay are or are not welcome.

In the section WP:ESSAYS, I would propose adding a short statement between the second and third paragraph. Either this:
 * ''However, if one is opposed to the basic thesis of an essay (as usually expressed in its nutshell and opening statements), one should not edit the essay to deliberately weaken it or to introduce opposing views. Better responses to essays to which one is opposed include nominating it for deletion (if it is eligible) or writing one's own essay and linking to it from the See Also section of the essay you object too."

Or this:
 * You do not have to agree with the basic thesis of an essay in order to edit it. Indeed, the introduction of material which refutes or repudiates the essay's original basic thesis may provide useful balance to the essay. (On consideration, refutes or repudiates may be too strong, maybe something like... contradicts or disagrees with or presents opposing views to or something).

Or if anyone can come up with better wording that would be fine. I prefer the first, but can live with the second, as long as it's one or the other; I think the operative guideline needs to be made clear. Adoption of the second would be a pretty major change, I think, with some good and some bad implications - mostly bad is my guess. Thoughts? Herostratus (talk) 19:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Here's my shot at it:  Naturally, you're invited to improve on it... ;)

Well, since this page is a guideline we want to be conservative about making changes. Here's what you wrote:
 * Disputes between editors writing an essay should be handled differently than when writing an article, because there's no need to agree on a single "right" version. Disputes should be resolved by ensuring both sides are represented, rather than deciding which side is right.  When your viewpoint differs significantly from that expressed in the essay, it may be best to start a new essay of your own to provide a rebuttal or alternative solution.  You might consider starting the new essay as a subpage of the original name (i.e. "WP:Wikipedia essays/Subpage").  Template:dablink provides a familiar format for linking your rebuttal from the original essay and vice versa''

There's a lot that is good here, but I'm not sure "ensuring both sides are represented" is right. I'm not saying it's not right, and maybe it depends on the essay - for instance, should WP:BRD include other suggestions (such as "Bold edits should not be reverted, instead get consensus to remove them first" or whatever), and so forth. Herostratus (talk) 02:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I would endorse a shortened version of Wnt's draft, and change the last sentence:
 * ''Disputes between editors writing an essay should be handled differently than when writing an article, because there's no need to agree on a single "right" version. When your viewpoint differs significantly from that expressed in the essay, it may be best to start a new essay of your own to provide a rebuttal or alternative solution. You might consider starting the new essay as a subpage of the original name (i.e. "WP:Wikipedia essays/Subpage"). Essays putting forward opposing views should prominently link to each other." -- JN 466  03:27, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * From the note at front I saw that this was an essay, not a policy or guideline. On further examination I see that the note claims it to be in a category called a "guidance essay" and they hedge on whether it is consensus or not and tell people to look at the talk page, which to me, seems like a bad tag and a bad idea wherever it might pop up.  Even proper guidelines are not supposed to be absolute, and I think we should have essays just be essays, without establishing a fourth gradation of authority.
 * In any case, as this is in my mind just an essay, I'm not going to edit-war or play 20 questions with my addition here. Someone else will have to put the text or part of it back in again if they want it. Wnt (talk) 08:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that essays should remain true to their point. It would be pretty silly to have WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue tell you that you do need to cite that the sky is blue.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Moving essay protocol?
WP:TR, a rebuttal to WP:DTR is a long standing essay in the user page of a apparently not longer active editor. I'm interesting in extending it (slightly). Is their a protocol for moving it into the WP space? Gerardw (talk) 13:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think there's an official method for doing this. Have you tried e-mailing the user?  E-mail is enabled for the account, although it may go to an account that s/he no longer has access to.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:50, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

New templates: User Essay; Policy dispute essay
Following my thoughts at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Monty845/Sanctions against editors are punishment, I think we need a user essay template that emphasizes the possible disputed and single author nature of a user essay. Also, maybe we could use Policy dispute essay for these few essays that express an opinion disputing policy. More than rarely MfD sees such policy-disputing essays nominated for deletion on the grounds that they could seriously mislead an unsuspecting reader. This says that there is a need for a clearer tag. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:16, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with this idea. Reyk  YO!  21:26, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with your reasoning here. Might save a few MfD's as well. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:12, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. DrKiernan (talk) 14:34, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia essays → Wikipedia essays (essay) – "Wikipedia essays" should be a link to the policy or guideline about essays (as of the time of this writhing Policies and guidelines) not a mere essay about essays. To use IAR as an example, Ignore all rules is the title of the policy, essays about the policy use a different title (e.g. What "Ignore all rules" means). Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 07:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC) Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 08:36, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose Certainly WP:ESSAYS and WP:Essays shouldn't redirect to different places, but I prefer this page as a destination. It may be "only an essay," but it's much more helpful on the topic of essays. The section of Policies and guidelines is just a little bit about the difference between essays and policies and guidelines. --BDD (talk) 16:51, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. There is a general abhorrence of creating policy/guideline wp:creep. This can certainly be renamed if there was a guideline or policy explicitly about essays, but it seems that the paragraph at WP:Policy is about all there is going to be. Apteva (talk) 23:56, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Upgrade this page to guideline instead.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:01, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Too many guidelines and policies already. I would ask, is there anything at Policy that really needs to be expanded into a guideline here? That is a policy, this would be a guideline. Apteva (talk) 03:23, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The rigid thinking along the lines of policies > guidelines > essays is imho myopic and shortsighted. Just leave it alone. Wikipedia space is host to policy pages, guidelines, essays and process pages. Why should a policy or guideline be the preferred target for any redirect by default? Enough with the self-appointed policy police. --84.44.182.148 (talk) 00:28, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

#s

 * 1) s are awesome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.231.176.35 (talk) 20:22, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia essay as genre, and possible need for disambiguation
I didn't know about Wikipedia essays until I googled tl;dr and the essay came up before the article. Thinking the essay was the article, I was surprised to find that what I believed to be an article was so free with opinion--certainly not NPOV. I wouldn't want to share that essay with a colleague, for example, because it's so specific to Wikipedia and doesn't include the ironic self-mockery that tl;dr can convey in other contexts. At any rate, I do worry that Google searches can light on essays instead of articles, and will further convince my non-Wikipedian colleagues that the site is rife with controversy and inaccuracy. I have no suggestions for action, at this point; my note is merely a request for discussion and information. Thanks. Gcampbel (talk) 19:16, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

TPE Sex Dolls
, an WP:SPA left a paragraph here that looks like it was intended for article space, not as a contribution to how WP:Wikipedia essays should be used. I've put it in a hide box. If no one defends its presence here, I suggest it be excised, as off-topic. Excision is preferable to draftifying, as they only made the single edit, and the material would require a 100% complete rewrite to meet our inclusion standards. Geo Swan (talk) 15:29, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

History has witnessed the popularity of sex slaves in all era and every civilization. Dutch sailors used cotton love dolls in their voyages in the seventeenth century. They were called “Dame De Voyage” in French, “Dama De Vinje” in Spanish. With the, technical breakthrough and advancement in elastomer engineering, the latest life like sex dolls are manufactured of silicone and TPE with a light weight skeleton system to emulate the human counterpart both in beauty, softness and flexibility. TPE sex dolls are light weight, softer and less priced than the silicone ones. TPE material contains high percentage of oil and should not be placed on unsealed or heated surfaces that may leach the oil and dry out the skin causing it to crack or split. They require constant dusting and if left in a sitting position or laying on a surface for a length of time can create compression marks so it is better to hang the doll using a suspension kit.

Doll Junction (talk) 18:07, 18 July 2018 (UTC)