Misplaced Pages

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This page documents an English Misplaced Pages 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.

Shortcuts WP:NDT WP:NDIA WP:DISCLAIM WP:NODISCLAIMERS

This page in a nutshell: Warnings about content should not generally appear in articles. All articles are already covered by the Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages disclaimers.

Standard Misplaced Pages disclaimers

Every Misplaced Pages page includes, right at the bottom, a link to the Misplaced Pages:General disclaimer (Misplaced Pages makes no guarantee of validity), which itself provides further links to five other standard disclaimers that apply to all articles:

• Misplaced Pages:Content disclaimer: Misplaced Pages contains content that may be objectionable
• Misplaced Pages:Legal disclaimer: Misplaced Pages does not give legal opinions
• Misplaced Pages:Medical disclaimer: Misplaced Pages does not give medical advice
• Misplaced Pages:Risk disclaimer: Use Misplaced Pages at your own risk
• Misplaced Pages:Survey disclaimer: Misplaced Pages has some rights when you participate in one of their survey

In addition, by longstanding policy, Misplaced Pages is not censored for the protection of minors.

Unacceptable disclaimers

Here are some examples of unacceptable disclaimers. These are not permitted in articles, whether in template form (as illustrated here) or as text:

Spoiler alertThis article contains spoilers.

WarningThis article contains vulgar, profane, or otherwise offensive language.

Content warningThis article contains media that may potentially trigger seizures for those diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy.

Malware warningOpening this link may expose you to malware.

Trigger warningThis article contains content that is suitable only for ages 18 and older. Viewer discretion is advised.

Acceptable warnings

Certain warnings are acceptable. These serve different purposes from the standard Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages.
• Temporary cleanup templates, such as {{POV}}, {{original research}} or {{cleanup}}. These point to deficiencies in the article that should be corrected promptly.

Rationale

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.
• Misplaced Pages is not censored.
• Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, not a how-to guide.
• Misplaced Pages:Spoiler, which prohibits spoiler warnings in articles.
• It would be almost impossibly challenging for editors 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 could 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

• Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals
• Misplaced Pages:Spoiler
• Misplaced Pages:Templates for discussion
• Misplaced Pages:Content labeling proposal (failed proposal)

Talk page disclaimer templates

• Template:Censor

• Misplaced Pages content guidelines