An accepted policy or guideline may become obsolete because of changes in editorial practice or community standards, may become redundant because of improvements to other pages, or may represent unwarranted instruction creep. In such situations editors may propose that a policy be demoted to a guideline, or that a policy or guideline be demoted to a supplement, informational page, essay or historical page. In certain cases, a policy or guideline may be superseded, in which case the old page is marked and retained for historical interest. The process for demotion is similar to promotion. A talk page discussion is typically started, the {{Under discussion|status|Discussion Title}} template is added to the top of the project page, and community input is solicited. After a reasonable amount of time for comments, an independent editor should close the discussion and evaluate the consensus. The {{Disputed tag}} template is typically used instead of {{Under discussion}} for claims that a page was recently assigned guideline or policy status without proper or sufficient consensus being established. Essays, information pages, and other informal pages that are only supported by a small minority of the community are typically moved to the primary author's userspace. These discussions typically happen on the page's talk page, sometimes with an RfC, but they have at times also been conducted at Miscellany for deletion (despite the MFD guidelines explicitly discouraging this practice). Other pages are retained for historical reference and are marked as such. Content changes Shortcut WP:PGCHANGE Further information: Wikipedia:Editing policy ยง Edits to policies and guidelines See also: Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other Wikipedia page. It is not strictly necessary to discuss changes or to obtain written documentation of a consensus in advance. However, because policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure they are faithfully reflecting the community's view and to be sure that they are not accidentally introducing new sources of error or confusion. Because Wikipedia practice exists in the community through consensus, editing a policy/guideline/essay page does not in itself imply an immediate change to accepted practice. It is, naturally, bad practice to recommend a rejected practice on a policy or guideline page. To update best practices, you may change the practice directly (you are permitted to deviate from practice for the purposes of such change) and/or set about building widespread consensus for your change or implementation through discussion. When such a change is accepted, you can then edit the page to reflect the new situation. Substantive changes Shortcuts WP:TALKFIRST WP:PGBOLD Further information: Wikipedia:Be bold ยง Wikipedia namespace Talk first. Talk page discussion typically precedes substantive changes to policy. Changes may be made if there are no objections, or if discussion shows that there is consensus for the change. Minor edits to improve formatting, grammar, and clarity may be made at any time. If the result of discussions is unclear, then it should be evaluated by an administrator or other independent editor, as in the proposal process. Major changes should also be publicized to the community in general; announcements similar to the proposal process may be appropriate. If wider input on a proposed change is desired, it may be useful to mark the section with the tag {{Under discussion|section|talk=Discussion Title}}. (If the proposal relates to a single statement, use {{Under discussion-inline|Discussion Title}} immediately after it.) Or be bold. The older but still valid method is to boldly edit the page. Bold editors of policy and guideline pages are strongly encouraged to follow WP:1RR or WP:0RR standards. Although most editors find advance discussion, especially at well-developed pages, very helpful, directly editing these pages is permitted by Wikipedia's policies. Consequently, you should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there was no formal discussion indicating consensus for the change before it was made. Instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it and, if one hasn't already been started, open a discussion to identify the community's current views. Editing a policy to support your own argument in an active discussion may be seen as gaming the system, especially if you do not disclose your involvement in the argument when making the edits. Conflicts between advice pages Shortcut WP:POLCON If policy and/or guideline pages directly conflict, one or more pages need to be revised to resolve the conflict so that all of the conflicting pages accurately reflect the community's actual practices and best advice. As a temporary measure during that resolution process, if a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, editors may assume that the policy takes precedence. More commonly, advice pages do not directly conflict, but provide multiple options. For example, WP:Identifying reliable sources says that newspaper articles are generally considered to be reliable sources, and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) recommends against newspaper articles for certain technical purposes. Editors must use their best judgement to decide which advice is most appropriate and relevant to the specific situation at hand.
