Policy Talk:Moratorium

Policy creation

I suggest creating a new policy that would put a moratorium on using information from new books. My suggestion would be one or two months after the book becomes available in print. Are there any objections to this? --Scaletail 19:34, 24 August 2008 (CDT)

I'm playing devil's advocate here for a moment (tho, I agree we should consider the issue): for what purpose do you suggest a moratorium?--Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:10, 24 August 2008 (CDT)

The purpose of this is to encourage people to purchase the products put out by Catalyst, or, rather, to not try to compete with them by putting up information from brand new books. Consider, if you will, a website that puts up full stats on every 'Mech as soon as they come out. All you do is plug those stats into your pirated version of HeavyMetalPro, and you don't need to purchase any record sheets. If we have the fluff on here, too, then you don't need to buy the technical readout, either. This is not the norm, but I know it's happened elsewhere, so I want to preemptively put a stop to it. This is obviously more important for some products than others. The idea is not unprecedented here, as the Project: BattleMechs team decided to leave the 'Mech articles vague enough that you cannot fill out a record sheet completely based on the information here, as that is not BTW's purpose. In short: don't put new info up so that people still have a reason to buy new books.

Of course, that time period elapsing is no guarantee that the info will spontaneously appear. I also feel that this should be a guideline, not a rule that is enforced, frankly because I don't want to have to constantly worry about whether or not such and such 'Mech is allowed to be here. In addition, it's kind of moot, because the information is stored in the article's history, so it's not possible to just erase it. In other words, I'm suggesting a guideline, not a "you will be banned for doing this" policy. --Scaletail 18:39, 25 August 2008 (CDT)

Very well put. One advantage to a moratorium is that it is more likely more people will have the book for fact checking, when those additions are made. I think, too, by making this a policy it heads off any concern from CGL that we're pirating their stuff. How attached are you to 2 months? I was wondering if we should consider 6 months, a year or even confirmation that the dead-tree version is no longer in print. In any case, I think a policy -fully hashed out via discussion- would be appropriate and source articles could come with a banner/tag indicating that its use as a source for subject articles is under the moratorium period.

I agree with you that it should not result in instant 'banination' (to quote Strong Bad). It might be appropriate to add some information (such as the return of Clan Wolverine), but not over-populate any article with too much significant information for a source in moratorium.

BTW, if I'm not mistaken, there is a way for admins (or maybe bureaucrats) to erase specific edits. But, in any case, those edits won't appear in a search. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:40, 25 August 2008 (CDT)