The Shartak Wiki talk:Policies and guidelines

When proposing a policy or guideline, put quotation marks around its proposed title and text. Unquoted text is for comments. Proposals and comments should be signed.

Proposed policies

"No vandalism"

"No edit may be made in a deliberate attempt to violate policy or reduce the quality of the wiki; such edits are considered vandalism. Forms of vandalism include but are not limited to blanking (removing significant and relevant parts of an article), insulting, and spamming (adding irrelevant content for self-promotion or profit). See Wikipedia's policy page on vandalism for a more detailed explanation of wiki vandalism." — Elembis (talk) 03:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I think users and clans should have some slack under this policy for edits to their own pages, but I'm not sure that that needs an explanation. — Elembis (talk) 03:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

By piggybacking on Wikipedia's vandalism policy, you inherit parts like "Always assume good faith" and "Users own their own talk pages" which should provide coverage of your concerns. --Tycho44 07:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree we should use Wikipedia's guidelines. They have already done a lot of work developing them. Let's save time and copy off the smart kid's paper.--Nosimplehiway 07:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

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Cleaning up suggestions pages

The current suggestions pages have gotten pretty cluttered with old suggestions. Those folks with slow connections or older computers may be having difficulty accessing them.

I propose that: "as of March 1st, we'll move all suggestions which were originally posted in 2006, along with their discussion, to a set of archived pages. A link to the archived pages will be posted on the main suggestions page and on individual suggestions pages. This action will then be repeated in following years on the same date. (ie: All suggestions originating in 2007 will then be archived on March 1, 2008.) If the original author of a suggestion wishes to continue a discussion of a topic from the previous year, they may post a copy of the suggestion and its' disussion, in its' entirety, during the new year."

If there are other ideas for how to deal with the problem of overly large suggestions pages, please post here. Thanks!--Nosimplehiway 07:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

As there has been no discussion of this idea, I did not feel right in implementing the change. I have posted a notice of this policy suggestion in each of the suggestion categories to elicit discussion of this idea here. When the decision is made, I will delete those listings, if that's the decision we reach. Since March 1 has already passed, the archiving will be implemeted April 1, if there is no objection here, but March 1 in following years. --Nosimplehiway 13:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion:

Rather than doing it on all 2006 suggestions, why not instead archive all suggestions which have seen no changes in the last 9 or 12 months? Or some other period, which you can point at as inactivity?--Johan Crichton 20:38, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Having a "rolling" period of time would require someone to monitor the threads throughout the year for topics ready to expire. I suggest archiving it by year of original posting largely to reduce the workload. This would be an action taken only once per year, in March, then ignored until maintenance is due again next March. Plus, giving each thread a shelf life of, say, 9 months or 12 months would mean that if one person went through the suggestions pages and commented on everything twice a year, everything would be posted on the main page indefinitely. If no progress has been made in a discussion in three months time (the minimum length of time a thread would be posted under my system, some would be up for as long as fifteen months), then it seems unlikely that anything useful will come of the discussion. If there is a thread from the previous year still actively being discussed (as opposed to the stray comment here and there) as of March 1, we can repost the contents in the new year. Certainly any topic which has been archived can be resurrected as a new topic in the new year, hopefully amended to incorporate ideas from the discussion, if the original author likes.--Nosimplehiway 05:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The only problem I can see with archiving them is that some of them might be ones that I'm looking to implement and if you move them, I might never find them again! --Simon 18:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

This policy would not remove the suggestions entirely from the wiki, just move the older ones to their own page, where comments could continue to be made. The result would be, for example, pages titled "2006 Suggestions: Items" and "2007 Suggestions: Items". There has been little overflow from one year to the next, even in implementation (see below). Now, that said, Shartak is your baby and if you are firmly against this new policy, I will withdraw the suggestion.--Nosimplehiway 19:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I personally don't see that a periodical tidy up (say every three months) would be that much extra work. Can we have some figures on the age of the suggestions on the suggestions pages? --Johan Crichton 20:01, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Tidying up every few months would be fine (see below), I thought you meant we should archive suggestions after 9 months had passed with no new comments, thereby requiring a high level of monitoring. (eg if the final comment on a suggestion was posted on Feb 12, the suggestion would be archived on November 12) Sorry I misunderstood you.--Nosimplehiway 19:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I took a look at some numbers from the "Game Mechanics" suggestion page. I chose that one because it has the largest number of posted suggestions (37) and so, I hope, will give the best sample. Out of 37 posted suggestions 32 were originally posted in 2006. Two pages were not included in this data, leaving a total of 30 suggestions in the sample. (For both suggestions and comments on the suggestions, I am not including data from posts which did not have a proper timestamp. It would take a lot of digging through the history files to find the original dates. This removed 2 suggestions and quite a few comments, most of which came from only a handful of users. eg Rozen and Firstamongdaves )

• During Jan, Feb or Mar of 2006, 8 suggestions were posted...with 23 comments made after April 1... 3 were made after July 1.

• During Apr, May or June of 2006, 5 suggestions were posted... with 1 comment on them made after July 1 and none made after Oct 1.

• During July, Aug, or Sep of 2006, 10 suggestions were posted... with 6 comments on them made after October 1 and none made after Jan 1, 2007.

• During Oct, Nov or Dec of 2006, 7 suggestions were posted... with 1 comment made on them after January 1, 2007 and none made after Mar 1, 2007.

While the majority of comments on suggestions was made within a few weeks of the initial posting, there were occasional outliers. Some of these were months later. There was, however, only one comment made in 2007 regarding a 2006 suggestion. That was a message from Simon that he had implemented the suggestion ("More Clan/Crew Powers"), and it was dated January 9, 2007. Had a March 1 archiving been performed, this suggestion would still have been available on the main page when the comment was made.

If in 2006 we had archived the pages three months after the close date (eg archived Jan-Feb-Mar on July 1), only 3 comments would have had to be made on the archive page rather than the main page.

My conclusion: neither an annual nor a tri-monthly archiving would have a significant impact on the flow of conversation regarding suggestions. I would be happy to either implement an annual policy or accept your friendly amendment to make it a tri-monthly (or other time period) archiving. --Nosimplehiway 19:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that sounds like it should be ok, provided that implemented suggestions are moved from whichever page they're on over to the implemented page. I tend to just make a note on the relevant suggestion and leave it to someone else to move the whole thing. Perhaps while you're archiving suggestions you could check there aren't any implemented ones left in the archive. Thanks. --Simon 21:52, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed guidelines

None.

Implemented policies

"Don't edit the user and clan pages of others"

"A user page belongs to the user it pertains to, and should not be edited by other users. Likewise, a clan page belongs to the clan it pertains to and should not be edited by any users who are not members of the clan. The only exceptions are edits that consist solely of corrections to grammar, spelling, punctuation, link targets, capitalization, and markup." — Elembis (talk) 03:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, I agree with this policy as it would most likely pre-empt useless revert wars. It should perhaps be noted that the talk pages for user and clan pages are fair game (within reason). The "good faith" exceptions appear to cover everything that I can think of at the moment. --Lint 05:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I disagree with this policy (clan-owned clan pages). Suppose that a new player wants to join a clan, and is seeking information about available clans. They can look at Shartak Clan List Pages, Private Clan Forums, and Wiki Clan Pages. Obviously, Clan Listing and the Privately Maintained Forums are owned by the clan leader and the clan, and there is an expectation that they represent the "face" of that clan. Basically, those sites are giant promotional infomercials, where clans praise themselves and defame their foes. But is the wiki to become another venue for unrestrained preening, braggadocio, and factless garbage? What role does the Shartak Wiki play? Everywhere else on the Shartak Wiki, there is an expectation of valid content. There is an expectation of factual accuracy. There is perhaps even an expectation of NPOV (neutral point-of-view). Somehow the clan pages get overlooked. What can I put on my clan page for my own clan? Can I say that The South Shartak Trading Company is a bunch of cheating zergers who PK their own camp? Can I say that my clan feeds starving orphans and gives heavy swords to all its members? Can I post my favorite screenshots embarrassing my enemies? ... I guess in my perfect utopian fantasy, the clans are all described using six-sentence neutral-point-of-view factual journalistic descriptions (maybe with a quotation or two quoted from their clan listing page) and a clanbox. Meanwhile, the clan-owned clan history, propaganda, blow-by-blow accounts, journals, and the rest of it, are placed in a separate Clan-Owned ClanSpace - perhaps Clan:The South Shartak Trading Company, as opposed to The South Shartak Trading Company. (That's just my own personal opinion, rather than a desire to rewrite policy.) --Tycho44 06:54, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

"No copyrighted content"

"No content (text, images, etc.) may be submitted if it is copyrighted." — Elembis (talk) 03:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• I tend to agree. The last thing we need is to run into copyright issues. --Lint 05:16, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The copyright "policy stick" should not become a tool for rival clans to provoke and pick at each other. It is perhaps effective for a policy guideline to say "copyright material is subject to deletion at any time without argument or appeal" and then leave it unenforced until such time as Paramount or Clear Channel sends a nice e-mail, or the owner(s) of the wiki (e.g. Simon) deign to care. Notice that greyness is inevitable: Surely we don't own copyrights to Viveca Lindfors, JB Aristide, Hans Moleman, Dr. Livingstone, Foo Fighter, and so on. Is my character "Indiana Jones" banned from appearing on the wiki any place for any reason? How much can I say about my "Lost Ark Raiders" clan on the clan page? Can I wear a bullwhip on my talk page, and quote myself from in-game: "Snakes, why does it always have to be snakes?" I'd say keep images and long quoted passages off the wiki, but let the small stuff remain under parody fair use unless the rights-holder seems to care. But I don't know anything about U.K. copyright law. --Tycho44 07:18, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Implemented guidelines

None.