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)

The length of the moratorium is certainly up for grabs. The problem with "out of print" is determining when something is out of print. I thought two months to be a reasonable time for people who want the info to purchase the book, since most people still don't purchase .PDFs.

I'm not aware of being able to erase edits, but if that is a possibility, then I suppose we also need to decide if it's appropriate to nuke those edits. As you pointed out, there are going to be circumstances when it is acceptable to add some info, lest BTW simply end up looking incomplete (maybe we could note in articles that more current info is available in Book X... but that could be a lot of work, depending), which could lead to a lot of judgment calls, so I think the guideline needs to be very clear on what is and isn't acceptable, especially if we start erasing. --Scaletail 21:53, 25 August 2008 (CDT)

Yeah, you're absolutely right that we need to be clear on that. In that vein, I'd suggest the criteria being anything that allows for playing the game itself. Frabby expressed a concern with any rules posted that assisted in game play (though I'm starting to change my POV about that, in light of some statements by the PTB about CBT being a product of stories and games), and I guess if we decide to never provide game stats for vehicles (et al), then if anyone did we'd delete that edit. However, I'm also of the mind that editing the article addresses the issue of making the information easy to access. A lot of people would have to know that specific gaming information was available in the histories for it to be a threat to CGL. Summary: I'm not too concerned with having to resort to edit deletions.

As for Out-of-print, CGL makes that easy here. You can select the 'In Print' filter. If a source is in a moratorium period here, then constant review of that filter will let us know when CGL is no longer ordering print runs. Not suggesting that is the way we have to go, but I think legally, that would be the easiest one to defend. (<-- completely speculative opinion).

Personally, I'm the type of guy who wants to delve completely in a new title and start absorbing it by using it here as soon as possible. Two months would allow me to get that fix in an appropriate time (and I suspect for you, as well). But, I'd like to hear from others as to what they might think is appropriate. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:22, 25 August 2008 (CDT)

I like the idea of putting a new sourcebook page up and fit a banner/tag to it. Regarding the timeframe I think 2 months should be minimum and I wouldn't mind to use up 6 months.--BigDuke66 17:24, 29 August 2008 (CDT)

I know that we can find out when books go OOP, but, like you said, it means having to check the website pretty often. Frankly, that's more work than I want to put into this. I understand where you're coming from with it, but I think that would be sort of a last resort if somebody over at Wizkids' non-existent legal department decided to come after us for some reason. I agree with BigDuke that somewhere in between the two-six month period makes sense. --Scaletail 11:46, 30 August 2008 (CDT)

Its just a tool, and I think you've got a good argument as to it being used to a fallback position (and BTW is no where as game-oriented as a lot of fan sites out there are, with a lot more gaming material available). You two have both quoted 2 months, I'm for that as well. If we don't hear any arguments for another length soon, then it sounds like a consensus. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:59, 30 August 2008 (CDT)

Created

I have created the policy. As always, comments are still welcome. Specifically, if anybody can think of any other good exceptions, please suggest them here. --Scaletail 13:43, 13 September 2008 (CDT)

If the moratorium is applied to a rulebook in print, should it be modified to allow for information to be posted on what the book is about? I don't think this is competition with CGL - quite the opposite, as it feeds into potential purchases. For example, the strategic operations page only has the moratorium tag on it. Some information on contents of the book (not the actual contents - but what sort of information you might find) could be useful for a person seeing if they would like to purchase the book. --Sean

New Material Mention

Okay, because of a question posted on CBT forums, I've been driven to update the article on the Liberator. However, a niggling little part of my subconscious starting poking me, reminding me that I couldn't use any information from Strategic Operations just yet, because of the moratorium. However, the likely-hood of me remembering just what that item was that needed to be updated when StratOps falls out of the moratorium gave me further pause.

So, what do you think about this idea: a tag that operates very similarly to the function of the moratorium one that reads something along the lines of, "This article has new information to be found in the recently released product {{product name}}, which currently falls under BTW's Moratorium policy. When this moratorium is lifted, please update this article."

My idea is that, when one of us then erases the moratorium, we can then seek out these tags (based on a category that addresses articles needing update from a specific source). The information to be found should be easy enough. (BTW, the "Please Update" tags would not be removed, until the article was actually updated.)--Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:17, 7 June 2009 (PDT)

Moratorium Lifted news

I realize that the admins are using the Sarna HPG appropriately to update readers as to semi-important updates to the site, and I know nothing is stopping me from doing the following, but I'd really like to stress that announcing the end of a moratorium there would be beneficial not only to the development of articles, but would also allow first-time and casual readers to see constant evidence of BTW growth. There is something to be said for the value of front page real estate for a site and the news section needs to be updated constantly with fresh, but relevant, information. Thanks. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:28, 7 June 2009 (PDT)

Makes sense. Coming to think of it, the temporary nature of the moratorium sort of demands something like this really. Also agree about the other point, demonstrating ongoing activity. Frabby 11:19, 7 June 2009 (PDT)