Stock car racing:Policy

's policies and conventions are developed by the community to describe best practices, clarify principles, resolve conflicts and otherwise further our goal of ''creating a reliable and free encyclopedia.

Stock car racing does not have rigid rules, but publishers are expected to abide by the principles set out in policies and conventions, except when there is good reason not to. If by ignoring these principles a publisher is found to be acting detrimentally, that person risks being blocked or restricted from editing.

Policies and conventions can be edited like any page, bearing in mind that they are intended to reflect the Consensus of the publishing community. Issues that would imply a change in accepted practice normally require prior discussion to ensure that the community truly accepts the change.

Bypass
is operated by the non-profit organization Mediawiki which reserves certain legal rights (see here for a list of its policies). However, in normal operation, Wikipedia is a stand-alone project run by its community. Its policies and conventions are intended to reflect the Consensus of the community, and The five pillars are intended to express its most important principles. Other similar pages include:

Role
The policies are widely accepted by publishers and describe standards that all users must normally follow. They are often closely related to five pillars. All policy pages are in the Category:Policies.

The conventions or guides are primarily to advise on good editing practices and how to apply policies under specific circumstances. When a convention seems to contradict a policy, the policy takes precedence. Convention pages can be found under Category:Conventions.

Essays are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors, for whom general consensus has not been established. They do not speak for the entire community and can be created and written without approval. Essays that the author does not want others to edit or that are found to flatly contradict the general consensus belong to User space. See Category:Essays.

Pages that can be found in the namespace: include community process pages (which facilitate the application of policies and conventions), historical pages, pages of How or help pages (also found in Help Namespace), community discussion pages, and bulletin boards.

Adherence
Use common sense when interpreting and applying policies and conventions; there will be occasional exceptions to these rules. Conversely, those who violate the spirit of a rule may be reprimanded even if technically no rule has been broken.

The community determines, through Consensus, whether a policy or convention is an accurate description of a best practice. Major changes to a policy or convention page are discussed first on the discussion page, especially with policies, but it is acceptable to edit them directly if the edit is not a substantial change.

Shortcuts are often used on discussion pages and edit summaries to refer to policies and conventions. For example, WP: NFP, WP: PVN and WP: P. Similar shortcuts are also sometimes used for other types of project pages. A shortcut does not necessarily imply that the page you link to has a policy or convention status.

Application
The application on is similar to that of other social interactions. If an editor violates the community standards outlined in the policies and conventions, other editors may try to convince the person to adhere to acceptable standards of conduct, and may resort to stronger measures over time, such as actions by librarians and stewards. In the case of community standards, they are more likely to resort to such measures more quickly. Going against the principles set out in these pages, particularly the policy pages, is unlikely to be considered acceptable, although it is possible to convince fellow editors that it is. This means that individual publishers (including you) enforce and apply policies and conventions.

In cases where it is clear that a user is acting against policies (or against a convention that in some way conflicts with a policy), especially if they are doing so intentionally and persistently, editing by that user may be blocked temporarily or indefinitely by a administrator.

Content
The policy and convention pages should:


 * Be clear and concise. Avoid esoteric legal terms and verbose simplified language. Be both clear and concise. Clarity and brevity are not in opposition: brief and direct writing is clearer. Footnotes can be used for further clarification.


 * Highlight the spirit of the rule. Verbosity is not a defense against misinterpretation. Be unambiguous and specific: avoid the obvious and the general. Don't theorize and omit unnecessary words, especially adjectives. If the spirit of the rule is clear, say no more.


 * Maintain scope (avoid redundancy). Both purpose and scope should be clearly provided in the introduction, and not simply as a separate thing. Content must be within the scope of your policy. Policies should not be redundant with other policies or in themselves. Do not summarize, copy or extract text. Avoid unnecessary reminders.


 * Avoid over-linking. Links should be used only when clarification or context is needed. Links to other policies, conventions, or trials may unintentionally or intentionally defer authority to them. Clarify when links differ authority and when they don't.

They are not part of the encyclopedia
has many encyclopedic content policies and conventions. These standards require verifiability, neutrality, respect for living people, and more.

The policy, convention and process pages themselves are not part of the encyclopedia itself. Therefore, they generally do not need to conform to content standards. Therefore, it is not necessary to provide reliable sources,  verify 's rules or formulate the rules in a  neutral or citing external authority to determine 's own rules and procedures. Instead, the content on these pages is controlled by Broad Community Consensus and the style should emphasize clarity, sincerity, and usefulness to other publishers.

Life cycle
Many of the stronger policies and conventions are closely related to  Founding Principles. Others were developed as solutions to common problems and damaging issues. Policy pages are seldom set without precedent, and always require strong community support. Policies can be established through new policy proposals, the promotion of trials or conventions, and the reorganization of existing policies through separating and merging.

Current policy proposals can be found at Category:Proposals.

Proposals
The new proposals require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion to a convention or policy. Adding the policy template to a page without the required consensus does not mean that the page is political, even if the page summarizes or copies a policy. The Voting process is typically used to determine consensus for a new policy. A voting proposal must be left open for at least one week.

If a proposal is rejected, the rejected label should not normally be removed. It is typically more productive to rewrite a rejected proposal from scratch to address the problems than to rename the proposal.

Downgrading
An accepted policy or convention may become obsolete due to changes in editorial practice or community standards, it may become redundant due to improvements on other pages, or it may represent an unjustified overflow of instructions. In these situations, publishers may propose that a policy or convention be downgraded to a convention, essay, or historical page. The downgrade process is similar to that of promotion. Typically you start a discussion on the talk page,

The template under discussion can also be used to claim that a page was recently assigned the status of policy or convention without establishing the appropriate or sufficient consensus.

Content changes
Typically, a discussion on the talk page precedes substantive policy changes, although not necessarily. Changes can be made if there are no objections or if the discussion shows that there is consensus for the change. Minor edits to improve formatting, grammar, and clarity can be done at any time.

If the outcome of the discussions is not clear, then it should be evaluated by a librarian or other independent publisher. Important changes should also be announced to the broader community; Announcements similar to those in the proposal process may be appropriate.

Editing a policy to support your own argument in active discussion can be seen as manipulating the system, especially if you do not reveal your participation in the discussion when you do the editing.