Template talk:Policy

message: There has been a substantive change to this widely used template  based on a discussion held on a different talk page that did not have wide participation.  In order to assess if the change is widely supported by the Wikipedia community at large, I am starting a greater discussion here.  The RFC question is:
*Does the community support the change in this template from "...should normally follow..." to "...must normally follow..."  --Jayron32 12:06, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion now exists in the archive Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines/Archive 13#Is a guideline different to a policy?. Mz7 (talk) 20:53, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: *Yes.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

text: * Agreed. Yet it is often hard to know the "why". I think policy (and guideline) pages would be better server having some kind of "cite your sources" policy. At least pointing to relevant discussions (like this one) so that anyone can get a grasp of the "whys" and the "why nots", and moreover be confident that the current policy text is not just whatever the last editor decided to write down but actually the result of a discussion (and how long, how old, by how many, etc.) - Nabla (talk) 11:55, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFC re changing "should" to "must" in first sentence {{anchor|RFC for change to this page}} 

message: #The old wording "should" better captures Wikipedia's ethos of no firm rules, and of discussion and consensus taking primacy over rules and bureaucracy.  --Jayron32 12:06, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support "should" 

message: #Policies carry weight that guidelines do not. Policies include WP:CIVIL, WP:BLP, WP:NPOV, and even WP:IAR.  Guidelines include all the other norms (other than essays) that we follow but not as ironclad law. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:15, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support "must" 

message: "This page documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors must normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus."
#Fits better "policy is descriptive not prescriptive".  If editors don't normally follow, the policy is obviously wrong.  The should/must introduces an imperative tone at odds with "community consensus" and "no firm rules".  Should/must language begs "or what?".  Should/must language belongs with enforceable mediation solutions.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:18, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support neither 

message: *For the record, the previous discussion (linked in the edit summary for the diff above) to implement the change exists at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines#Is a guideline different to a policy?. Mz7 (talk) 20:09, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion now exists in the archive Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines/Archive 13#Is a guideline different to a policy?. Mz7 (talk) 20:53, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: *Yes.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

text: * Agreed. Yet it is often hard to know the "why". I think policy (and guideline) pages would be better server having some kind of "cite your sources" policy. At least pointing to relevant discussions (like this one) so that anyone can get a grasp of the "whys" and the "why nots", and moreover be confident that the current policy text is not just whatever the last editor decided to write down but actually the result of a discussion (and how long, how old, by how many, etc.) - Nabla (talk) 11:55, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Threaded discussion 

message: During the above RfC a suggested wording change to drop the word "should" may not have been clear. The proposal was this: "This page documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus" A later suggestion to also drop the word "all" was supported, but came very late. As such there was no clarity on support for that particular suggestion. So I think it's worth considering the proposed wording changes in isolation from the must/should debate. Is there support/opposition for the following wording:
The words "all" and "should" have been removed, leaving the notice wording neutral, informative and factual, with the only obligatory wording being the final sentence, which is the active part of the notice. 
This is set up as a simple support or oppose discussion for this template, though it will have implications for the wording on Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, so this discussion is linked from Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines. 05:10, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, a little bit WP:ILIKEIT-y...Forbidden User (talk) 13:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

text: *I have advertised this as an RfC and at Template:Centralized discussion. Cunard (talk) 05:10, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

text: That's a rather strange reason, given that nobody has any plans to promote this template to policy status.  However, I'm happy to have more people join the conversation.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:13, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion to remove "should" from first sentence {{anchor|Suggested wording change}} 

message: Should anything like this come up again, please ping all previous respondents in these RfCs, and myself as well (and anyone else who asks), and list it at WP:Village pump (policy).  This looks like trivial copy-editing (and on a template like Template:Wikipedia how-to it might be), but in the WP:PAG context it is not. Such proposed wording alterations deserve careful and community-wide consideration.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:08, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Post-RfC discussion 

message: Is there any rationale for the undocumented  parameter?  I cannot think of a legit use case, and would just as soon strip it out, so that the code for shortcuts here is precisely the same as that in Template:Guideline.  I suspect someone added this to get around the five-shortcut limitation, but this is silly; just use a separate Template:Shortcut.  And it's discouraged to display more than five at a time, anyway.  Some pages have 20+ shortcuts, but we do not need to "advertise" any but the most common and useful.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:04, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Useless (?) "shortcutoverride" parameter 

message: I believe that the recent changes to this and related templates make them look outdated. The  stuff was removed from the mainspace cleanup templates around 2009; the consensus to introduce it to the projectspace templates contradicts precedent. KMF (talk) 04:08, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverse recent decisions related to line break and font size 

message: *The established (classic) version for this page is the current version (04:21, 23 July 2017). The "small" version is 06:19, 13 July 2017. I support the established version. The small stuff is too finicky and at variance from established styles. If the small text is unimportant, delete it. For this discussion, I don't think the headings are needed. Johnuniq (talk) 06:00, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: An editor recently quoted "Changes made to it should reflect consensus" from this box in support of the proposition that Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus" does not apply to policies and guidelines. This seems to conflict with WP:PGBOLD. I'm wondering whether anyone recalls a discussion of this possible conflict between the text in this template and the policy reflected at PGBOLD. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Has this issue come up before?