Wikipedia:No disclaimers
 | This page documents an English Wikipedia content guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Warnings about content should not generally appear in articles. All articles are already covered by the Wikipedia disclaimers. |
For the purpose of this guideline, a disclaimer is some text or template within an article that is intended to serve as a content warning. Although such content warnings have frequently been proposed, community consensus is that articles should not include additional warnings that duplicate the standard Wikipedia disclaimers.
Standard Wikipedia disclaimers
[edit]Every Wikipedia page includes, right at the bottom, a link to the Wikipedia:General disclaimer (Wikipedia makes no guarantee of validity), which itself provides further links to five other standard disclaimers that apply to all articles:
- Wikipedia:Content disclaimer: Wikipedia contains content that may be objectionable
- Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer: Wikipedia does not give legal opinions
- Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer: Wikipedia does not give medical advice
- Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer: Use Wikipedia at your own risk
- Wikipedia:Survey disclaimer: Wikipedia has some rights when you participate in one of their survey
In addition, by longstanding policy, Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors.
Unacceptable disclaimers
[edit]Here are some examples of unacceptable disclaimers. These are not permitted in articles, whether in template form (as illustrated here) or as text:
 | Spoiler alert This article contains spoilers. |
| Warning This article contains vulgar, profane, or otherwise offensive language. |
| Content warning This article contains media that may potentially trigger seizures for those diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy. |
| Malware warning Opening this link may expose you to malware. |
 | This article contains content that is suitable only for ages 18 and older. Viewer discretion is advised. |
Acceptable warnings
[edit]Certain warnings are acceptable. These serve different purposes from the standard Wikipedia disclaimers:
- "Technical" warnings assisting the user with display problems, such as {{Contains special characters}}. These refer not to article content but to display issues that some readers might run in to.
- Temporary current event and temporal templates such as {{current}} or {{recent death}}. These alert the reader that the article may be subject to a flux of recent and upcoming significant changes for reasons beyond the control of Wikipedia.
- Temporary cleanup templates, such as {{POV}}, {{original research}} or {{cleanup}}. These point to deficiencies in the article that should be corrected promptly.
Rationale
[edit]The following points summarise the rationale for this guideline:
- Disclaimers are redundant with the general disclaimer, in combination with the content, legal, medical, risk and survey disclaimers.
- Wikipedia is not censored.
- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a how-to guide.
- It is challenging to define which articles should be allowed to have a specific disclaimer. For instance, the definition of "adult content" varies widely across cultures and individuals. Allowing disclaimers would lead to significant disputes over boundaries, diverting editors from more productive tasks.
- Including disclaimers may create a misleading impression that all potentially problematic content is flagged, leading readers to assume an article is "safe" in the absence of a disclaimer.
- Disclaimers, especially when presented as banners, consume considerable page space.
See also
[edit]- Wikipedia:Perennial proposals
- Wikipedia:Spoiler
- Wikipedia:Templates for discussion
- Wikipedia:Content labeling proposal (failed proposal)