Wikiquote : Limits on quotations
To maintain the quality of our pages and to reduce the potential for copyright violation, we must place a number of limits on quotations.
Wikiquote, consisting of the words of notable people, is prone by its very nature to exceed fair use. A great deal of vigilance by our community of editors will be needed to keep articles within advisable limits, all the more so because these limits have proven difficult to define and are subject to much interpretation.
A Wikiquote article is a collection of quotations by subject. Its structure is not as evident as that of a Wikipedia article, where information is arranged to make a clear and coherent narrative. It is an all too natural temptation for our editors to add and never subtract. Instead of working together on selecting quotations for articles, editors will tend to keep adding until the dialogue of a television show, for example, comes close to being duplicated. Some contributors, as we have seen, appear to believe that duplication is the very purpose of Wikiquote. An article then becomes a sort of clubhouse for fans; and no quote, however trite or trivial, is omitted. Without limitations on the choices of quotations, we will end up with useless and valueless pages. Decisions about quality are often subjective, but this can be no reason for claiming that decisions should therefore not be made.
The standard for good quotations is that they are memorable, significant, well-expressed, and concise. See Wikiquote:Quotability for a guideline to the selection of quotations.
