 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Writing an encyclopedic entry about a subject will involve generalizations. Avoid the temptation to engage in original research by finding every example of a phenomenon, or every exception to a phenomenon. |
Encyclopedia articles are a summary of accepted knowledge on a given subject. Making an appropriate summary involves describing theories and observations that come from mainstream scholarship and news. Naturally, every theory can be demonstrated using examples or counter-examples. However, this tends to make articles less readable and reliable because mentioning too many examples, or exploring an individual example in an excessive level of detail, takes the article farther away from its original point.