Wikipedia:Policy sculpting: inclusion versus exclusion
Essay Version A, The way many people think it should be[edit]
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Some sculptors have described the process of sculpting as removing the parts of the stone that are not part of the sculpture. I think that this analogy applies for the core content policies of WP:Verifiability and WP:Due_weight. WP:Verifiability is a rule for inclusion. WP:Verifiability is like picking the block of stone from which the sculpture will be made. What happens next is that in WP:Due_weight we have rules for exclusion. Here we remove un-interesting parts of the block of stone. In the end we want balance (WP:NPOV), not a mound of what wasn't removed.
Essay Version B, with current protection against exclusion in WP:V[edit]
| This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Some sculptors have described the process of sculpting as removing the parts of the stone that are not part of the sculpture. I think that this analogy applies for the core content policies of WP:Verifiability and WP:Due_weight. WP:Verifiability is primarily a rule for inclusion WP:Verifiability is like picking the block of stone from which the sculpture will be made. What happens next is that in WP:Due_weight we have rules for exclusion. Here we remove un-interesting parts of the block of stone. In addition, WP:Verifiability protects from exclusion verifiable material that editors might otherwise spend time debating as being untrue. In the end we want balance (WP:NPOV), not a mound of what wasn't removed.