- WP:VALUE redirects here. You may also be looking for WP:Valued pictures or WP:VALUABLE AfD argument.
On Wikipedia, an essay is a page written in Wikipedia project namespace describing the processes on Wikipedia at the point-of-view of one or more users. Essays can be written by anyone and can give instructions or advice, can be long or short, serious or funny.
There are currently thousands of essays, and this number is expected to grow. Essays vary in popularity and how much they are followed and referred to. As with WikiProject pages, information pages and template documentation pages, essays have not been formally approved by the community, thus generally have limited status during deliberations (see WP:Local consensus for details).
Questions about essays
Are essays policy?
Essays, WikiProject pages, information pages and template documentation pages, do not automatically become policy or guidelines just because they are written. All it takes is one person to write an essay or information page or create a template and its documentation page and there it is. Unlike a policy or guideline, which requires a clear consensus before it can take effect, and will be in a proposed state until then, an essay does not need consensus to exist; it just is. Rather, following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional, assuming that this choice be made wisely.
Some essays at one time were proposed policies or guidelines, but they could not gain consensus so they were converted into essays. Other pages that began as essays later became policies or guidelines or were tagged as a supplemental essay.
Can essays override policy?
No. Essays and information pages do not override existing policies and guidelines. They usually serve as addendum to existing ones. Essays do not serve the function of creating new policies or guidelines or rendering existing ones meaningless. As policies and guidelines can have multiple interpretations, essays normally serve to show various interpretations of policies and guidelines that are already being somehow followed.