User:Improv/Namespace Policy

A few issues have come up recently on when to apply what policies, and I've come to some conclusions on the way things should be relating to these. Not all policies on how things should be done apply equally to each area of the project, and we should have more clear lines for how the different parts are governed.

Overarching principles

• No copyvios. For legal reasons, no copyvios can be permitted to remain no matter what.

We can basically divide Wikipedia into the following parts:

Article Namespace

The article namespace's policies should not be changed. Things in this namespace are actual articles on real encyclopedia topics. The 3 revert rule is used to handle contention, as noone owns any content in any sense in the article namespace. VfD is used to handle deletion of articles.

Article Talk Namespace

Article Talk pages are normally in a comment-reply stream on various topics relating to the relevant article. Straw polls are nonbinding resolutions on article content, and are the closest approach to policy that can be made on an article talk page. Binding polls on any topic (including article renaming or deletion) should not occur on article talk pages, and should be considered nonbinding, nonsanctioning, and unofficial when they do occur there. The 3 revert rule should not apply in article talk namespaces, and users are not to edit the content of comments that have been made (except for their own comments when noone has replied yet), nor to remove them. In certain circumstances, striking out comments may be acceptable when they constitute a personal attack or are designed to disrupt the page. Archiving of article talk pages, done in the standard way, is acceptable in moderation. Article Talk pages should not be removed on VfD.

Wikipedia Namespace

Wikipedia namespace pages are used for meta-information on the encyclopedia, either being pages about the project as a whole, organization for wikipedia articles (e.g. BJAODN or notice boards), or being discussion pages. Articles in the Wikipedia namespace should have deletion requests happen seperately from normal VfD. Policy pages should not be edited contrary to gathered consensus, are not subject to the 3 revert rule, and read like an article. Policy pages should be marked inactive or edited rather than deleted when their life is up. Vote pages should have at the top a plain description of what the vote is about (no rebuttals), with votes following, and discussion beneath. Vote text may not be edited (but may be struck out or moved to sections for invalid votes or in case of vote changes if needed). Vote pages should not be deleted, and no substantial reorganization or added votes on closed vote pages is permitted (although new interpretations/summaries for closed vote pages can be modestly linked to from the top of the page). Talk pages (whether Wikipedia talk or simply wikipedia-namespace pages that are primarly for talk) follow roughly the same rules/organization as article talk pages.