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Beside the guidelines of the Five pillars of Wikipedia there is another principle of the Wikimedia movement, the stated purpose of the Wikimedia Foundation: to collect and develop educational content and more. So there might be a sixth of zeroth pillar if you like, that we could acknowledge in addition to the well-known quintet, together 'Wikipedia:Five pillars plus one'.[1]
Just like Indonesia with its Pancasila and islam with its Five Pillars Wikipedia (WP) also has five axiom-like basic principles. What they entail we can express tentatively and somewhat pedantically with quantifier operators, logical-mathematical symbols (this could be improved on):[2]
Pillars 3 and 5 are revolutionary. That is why Pillar 5 is hard to stomach for some, and Pillar 3 can cause conflicts with commercial and other interests.
But apparently there is still another fundamental principle on educational content, expounded in the Bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation, the managing agency of Wikimedia websites and more. (An important advantage for WMF: because of this principle gifts to WMF are taxfree in the US (i think "501(c)(3) tax-exempt"). This helps in keeping adverts out of Wikipedia, so that the neutrality of Wikipedia, Pillar 2, can be guaranteed more easily. It is an overarching principle for the whole of Wikimedia, so it certainly holds for Wikipedia, the main project of the Wikimedia Foundation:
| “ | ARTICLE II - STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. In coordination with a network of individual volunteers and our independent movement organizations, including recognized Chapters, Thematic Organizations, User Groups, and Partners, the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity. |
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So we might propose a sextet of pillars for Wikipedia, just like the Six articles of faith in islam. (But of course the Wikimedia movement is not a religion like islam, however Wikimedia might have some religious aspects.) As seems natural, this idea of six pillars of Wikipedia has cropped up previously.[4]
We could give the extra Pillar for Educational Content the Number 0, as it is a fundamental starting point that precedes the standard Five Pillars, or Number 6, as we only now come up with this consideration as an afterthought.
The Five or Six Pillars, including the Purpose above, answer questions about Wikipedia, such as:
| Question about Wikipedia | Answer | Pillar number |
|---|---|---|
| Why Wikipedia? | To collect and develop educational content | 0 or 6 |
| What is Wikipedia? | An encyclopedia | 1 |
| What approach does Wikipedia take? | Neutral point of view | 2 |
| What is the legal status of its content? | Free content | 3 |
| How do Wikipedians behave? | Code of conduct | 4 |
| Is it dogmatic? | No firm rules | 5 |
(This table was not meant to serve as a sort of lay catechism, however... :-)
