 | This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia is free, not gift-wrapped: Wikipedia should not be specially formatted, or custom-tailored, to meet the special needs of particular users or mirror websites. In general, Wikipedia articles are formatted for the general public by following project standards, such as the WP:Manual of Style and WP:Accessibility. However, when trying to specially format articles to better fit some particular group of users, then the results can lead to incompatible, conflicting data formats or excessive complexity, which becomes unbearable for many editors, who might then wish to abandon the effort.
Some end-users might want all images to be enlarged for extra visual impact, while other users might want images to be condensed to tiny thumbnails leaving more space for the text, and hence the solution that Wikipedia offers is to allow images to WP:Autosize by keyword "upright=0.90" or such, but not be forced to display as either large or tiny, just to please one set of users. It is important to strike a balance, in providing some common-ground formatting, without overwhelming the volunteer editors with excessive rules and special data formats. In that sense, although Wikipedia is free for reuse by other users and websites, it is not " gift-wrapped" for decorative presentation to special end-users.
| This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia is free, not gift-wrapped: Wikipedia should not be specially formatted, or custom-tailored, to meet the special needs of particular users or mirror websites. In general, Wikipedia articles are formatted for the general public by following project standards, such as the WP:Manual of Style and WP:Accessibility. However, when trying to specially format articles to better fit some particular group of users, then the results can lead to incompatible, conflicting data formats or excessive complexity, which becomes unbearable for many editors, who might then wish to abandon the effort.
Some end-users might want all images to be enlarged for extra visual impact, while other users might want images to be condensed to tiny thumbnails leaving more space for the text, and hence the solution that Wikipedia offers is to allow images to WP:Autosize by keyword "upright=0.90" or such, but not be forced to display as either large or tiny, just to please one set of users. It is important to strike a balance, in providing some common-ground formatting, without overwhelming the volunteer editors with excessive rules and special data formats. In that sense, although Wikipedia is free for reuse by other users and websites, it is not " gift-wrapped" for decorative presentation to special end-users.