Principles

The [|Wikimedia] projects as a community have certain **founding principles**. These principles may evolve or be refined over time, but they are considered ideals essential to the founding of the Wikimedia projects – not to be confused with the [|Wikimedia Foundation] (which also arose from the Wikimedia projects). People who strongly disagree with them sometimes end up leaving the project. These principles include:
 * 1) [|Neutral point of view] (NPOV) as a guiding editorial principle.
 * 2) The ability of anyone to edit (most) articles without registration.
 * 3) The "wiki process" and discussion with other editors as the final decision-making mechanism by [|consensus] for all content.
 * 4) [|Free licensing] of content; in practice defined by each project as public domain, [|GFDL], [|CC-BY-SA or CC-BY].
 * 5) Maintaining room for fiat to help resolve particularly difficult problems. By convention, [|Jimbo Wales] and later [|Arbitration Committees] retain certain authority on the English Wikipedia (and other wikis have set up similar frameworks) -- to make binding, final decisions such as [|banning] an editor.