Wikipedia:Make omissions explicit

Please make omissions explicit when creating or editing an article. When writing an article, always aim for completeness. But if for some reason you can't cover a point that should be covered, make that omission explicit. This has two purposes: it entices others to contribute, and it alerts non-experts that the article they're reading doesn't yet give the full story.

Don't feel bad if you can't rigorously cover every aspect of some subject. That's why Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia -- we work together to achieve what we could not achieve individually.

Always leave something undone The following rule was historically used to help challenge people's preconceptions of what an encyclopedia should be. While in practice it's not something we recommend, it makes for an interesting debating point.

Whenever you write a page, never finish it. Always leave something obvious to do: an uncompleted sentence, a question in the text (with a not-too-obscure answer someone can supply), wikied links that are of interest, requests for help from specific other Wikipedians, the beginning of a provocative argument that someone simply must fill in, etc. The purpose of this rule is to encourage others to keep working on the wiki.