Wikipedia:Scope

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community.

Scope is what you can expect to find in Wikipedia and its articles. Wikipedia is not intended to include everything.

Scope of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias summarize knowledge, rather than try to contain all of it. While the promotional slogan "the sum of all human knowledge" is sometimes used to describe Wikipedia or its goal, that is an exaggeration. The world's knowledge is vast. Bigger than the collections of all libraries. Larger than the works of all publishing companies combined. Greater than the Internet. It is not Wikipedia's goal to duplicate all the effort that went into creating and maintaining those resources. Instead, Wikipedia provides introductions and overviews of notable subjects, to help alleviate the need to sift through all knowledge to understand the essentials. Once readers are familiar with the basics of a subject, and its jargon, they are better prepared to study and understand the rest of it.

Wikipedia's scope, what it should and should not include, is defined in its content policies and guidelines. For details, refer to the pages listed in the navigation box to the right.

Scope of articles

The scope of an article is the range of material that belongs in the article, and thus also determines what does not belong in it (i.e., what is "out of scope").

The title together with the lead section (ideally, the introductory sentence or at least the introductory paragraph) of an article should make clear what the scope of the article is. However, the title doesn't determine the scope. Instead, editors should determine the scope first, and then the article title.

Effects

An article should contain all the material that is appropriate, verifiable, and expected by readers.

It should not contain material that is inappropriate, unverifiable, or that readers would likely believe to be irrelevant or off-topic. If a reliable source has information that is out of scope for the decided-upon subject of this article, that information can be moved to another article whenever possible, or removed. See WP:SPLIT for more instructions about copying within Wikipedia.

Choosing the scope

Article scope, in terms of what exactly the subject and its scope is, is an editorial choice determined by consensus.
When the name of an article is a term that refers to several related topics in secondary reliable sources, primary topic criteria should be followed to determine if any of the uses of that term is the primary topic. If so, then the scope of the article should be limited to, or at least primarily, cover that topic. For example, the article "Cat" is limited in scope to the primary topic for cat, the domestic cat (which is a redirect to "Cat"), even though lions and tigers are considered to be "cats" in the broad sense of that term.
Looking at what scopes other encyclopedias have chosen can often be useful.
Scope is different from balance. Balance has to do with how much of the article covers any given subject. Scope has to do with whether the subject should even be covered at all.
Artificially or unnecessarily restricting the scope of an article to select a particular point of view on a subject area is frowned upon, even if it is the most popular point of view. Accidental or deliberate choice of a limited scope for an article can make notable information disappear from the encyclopedia entirely, or make it highly inaccessible. Since the primary purpose of the Wikipedia is to be a useful reference work, narrow article scopes are usually to be avoided.

Examples of common mistakes
Title	Current contents	Article scope	Possible actions
Foo	Legal regulation of foo in the US	Whatever editors want the article to become	N Do not simply rename the article to match the current contents ("Foo regulation in the United States"). Y Do talk to other editors and decide what the scope of the article should be, including what content is currently missing.
Ketogenic diet	Treatment for pediatric epilepsy	Treatment for pediatric epilepsy	N Do not add information about diets that are not treatments for pediatric epilepsy. Y Do move information about other diets to pages such as Ketogenic diet (fad diet).
Standardized test	Descriptions and examples of standardized tests, particularly for older students	Standardized testing, especially giving non-school examples and differentiating standardized testing from: non-standardized tests, testing methods (e.g., multiple-choice tests), scoring methods, and consequences (e.g., low-income people perform worse on school tests)	N Do not confuse standardized testing with High-stakes testing, multiple choice tests, or the inequalities in educational systems. N Do not over-emphasize Standardized testing in education N Do not over-emphasize Standardized testing in the United States Y Do talk to other editors and decide what the scope of the article should be, including what content is currently missing.

v t e Relevance and scope
Policies and guidelines	What Wikipedia is not Notability Image relevance WP:CONTEXT (linking) WP:ONUS (verifiability does not guarantee inclusion) WP:DETAIL (levels of detail) WP:CONSPLIT (content split) WP:LISTCRITERIA (list selection criteria)
Essays	Scope Relevance WP:IRRELEVANT (content removal) WP:TOPIC (stay on topic) Relevance of content Out of scope Relevance emerges What claims of relevance are false Germane Indirect relevance is sometimes OK Notability is not relevance or reliability Exclusion Coatrack articles How to apply WP:NOR's "Directly related" principle Meaningful examples in pop culture Inclusion Content removal
See also	Template:Handling miscellanea Category:Wikipedia essays about notability

Wikipedia:Scope

Scope of Wikipedia

Scope of articles

Effects

Choosing the scope

See also