Wikipedia:Patent nonsense

This page documents an English Wikipedia content guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts WP:PN WP:NON WP:NONSENSE WP:PATENT

This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia writers and editors improve articles in the site, but sometimes, they contribute patent nonsense. There are various ways to combat patent nonsense, but you should always notify the editor who made the edit about their mistakes.

Wikipedia writers and editors contribute a lot of featured and good articles, but occasionally, they contribute some patent nonsense. This falls into two categories:

1. Total nonsense, e.g. text that purposefully has no relevant meaning at all (e.g. lorem ipsum) and random text (banging on the keyboard).
2. Content that, while apparently intended to mean something, is so confusing that no reasonable person can be expected to make any sense of it, such as "The land attests that agriculture shafts the uncontrollably mild delicacy and wistfully inanimates the fresh spruce tango jumpsuit impressively in one month" (see word salad). If the meaning cannot be identified, it is impossible to accurately copy-edit the text.