BattleTechWiki:List of policies
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 | This page includes a summary of official policies on BattleTechWiki which are set out in detail elsewhere. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered standards that all editors should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision is consistent with the underlying policies. When in doubt, discuss it on the talk page.
Where a discrepancy exists, the policy page itself overrides. Changing this page does not change policy. Likewise, adding a page to this summary does not elevate it to policy status. Policies are promoted through consensus. See BattleTechWiki:Policies and guidelines for more. |
For an explanatory supplement of this page, see BattleTechWiki:Simplified ruleset. This page is broken into the following headings or categories:
- Conduct, which describes how editors can successfully collaborate and what behavior is acceptable
- Content, which defines the scope of the encyclopedia and the material that is suitable for it
- Enforcement, which accounts for various means by which standards may be enforced
- Legal, which includes rules influenced by legal considerations, and remedies for their misuse
- Procedural, which documents various processes by which BattleTechWiki operates
Policies can also be navigated via the other directory, categories, or the navigation template.
Conduct[edit]
- Civility
- Rudeness or insensitivity, whether intentional or not, can distract from and interfere with our work. Dispute resolution forums are available when civil, reasoned discussion breaks down.
- Consensus
- Consensus among equals is our only tool for resolving content disputes, and our main tool for resolving all other disputes.
- Dispute resolution
- The first step to resolving any dispute is to talk to those who disagree with you. If that fails, there are more structured forms of discussion available.
- Edit warring
- If someone challenges your edits, discuss it with them and seek a compromise, or seek dispute resolution. Do not start fights over competing views and versions. Reverting any part of any single page more than three times in twenty-four hours, or even once if long-term edit-warring is apparent, can result in a block on your account.
- Editing policy
- Improve pages wherever you can, and don't worry about leaving them imperfect. It is advisable to explain major changes.
- Harassment
- Do not stop other editors from enjoying BattleTechWiki by making threats, nitpicking good-faith edits to different articles, repeated annoying and unwanted contacts, repeated personal attacks or posting personal information.
- No personal attacks
- Do not make personal attacks anywhere in BattleTechWiki. Comment on the content, not on the editor. Personal attacks damage the community and deter editors.
- Ownership of content
- Although you retain some rights under BattleTechWiki's copyright provisions, pages that you create and edit belong to the community. Others can and often do mercilessly edit "your" material.
- Username policy
- Choose a neutral username with which you will be happy. You can usually change your name if you need to by asking, but you cannot delete it.
- Vandalism
- Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia. It is inappropriate behavior for an online encyclopedia.
Content[edit]
- Article titles
- The ideal title for a BattleTechWiki article is recognizable to English speakers, easy to find, precise, concise, and consistent with other titles.
- Canon
- BattleTechWiki allows all things BattleTech onto its pages, irrespective of canonicity status, as long as they are deemed sufficiently notable.
- Fanon policy
- BattleTechWiki does not publish nor host fan fiction.
- Images
- Generally avoid uploading non-free images; fully describe images' sources and copyright details on their description pages, and try to make images as useful and reusable as possible.
- Neutral point of view
- Everything that our readers can see, including articles, templates, categories and portals, must be written neutrally and without bias.
- Original research
- Articles may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas; or any new interpretation, analysis, or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas.
- Real People
- Articles about real persons, which require a degree of sensitivity, must adhere strictly to BattleTechWiki's content policies. Be very firm about high-quality references, particularly about details of personal lives. Contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately.
- Verifiability
- Articles should cite sources whenever possible. While we cannot check the accuracy of cited sources, we can check whether they have been published by a reputable publication and whether independent sources have supported them on review. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
- What BattleTechWiki is not
- BattleTechWiki is an online encyclopedia about all things BattleTech, but there are limits. Please avoid using BattleTechWiki for other purposes that don't make sense.
Enforcement[edit]
- Administrators
- Administrators, like all editors, are not perfect beings. However, in general, they are expected to act as role models within the community, and a good general standard of civility, fairness, and general conduct both to editors and in content matters, is expected. When acting as administrators, they are also expected to be fair, exercise good judgment, and give explanations and be communicative as necessary.
- Banning policy
- Extremely disruptive editors may be banned from BattleTechWiki. Please respect these bans, do not bait banned users, and do not help them out.
- Blocking policy
- Disruptive editors can be blocked from editing for short, long, or indefinite periods of time.
- Deletion policy
- While deleting articles are in some cases are clear-cut, there are a lot of grey areas. When in doubt, administrators are encouraged to solicit input from the community before making a deletion decision.
- Page protection policy
- Pages can be protected against vandals or during fierce content disputes. Protected pages can, but in general should not, be edited by administrators. In addition, pages undergoing frequent vandalism can be semi-protected to block edits by very new or unregistered editors.
Legal[edit]
- Copyright violations
- Relates to material copied from sources that are either not public domain, or are not compatibly licensed without the permission of the copyright holder. BattleTechWiki has no tolerance for copyright violations in our encyclopedia, and we actively strive to find and remove any violations.
- Copyrights
- Relates to the copyrighted BattleTechWiki text being licensed to the public under one or several liberal licenses.
- Libel
- It is BattleTechWiki policy to delete libelous revisions from the page history. If you believe you have been defamed, please contact us. It is the responsibility of all editors to ensure that material posted on BattleTechWiki is not defamatory.
- No legal threats
- Use dispute resolution rather than making legal threats, for everyone's sake, as we respond quickly to complaints of defamation or copyright infringement. If you make legal threats, or take legal action over a BattleTechWiki dispute, you will be blocked from editing, so that the matter is not exacerbated through other channels. If you do take legal action, please refrain from editing until it is resolved.
- Non-free content criteria
- The Exemption Doctrine Policy for the English BattleTechWiki. The cases in which you can declare usage of a non-free media as "fair use" are quite narrow. You must specify the exact use, and only use the image or clip in that one context. Only use non-free content as a last resort.
- Privacy policy
- What you write is being posted publicly. Therefore, post appropriately.
Procedural[edit]
- Ignore all rules
- "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining BattleTechWiki, ignore it."
- Policies and guidelines
- Understanding and changing policies and guidelines
Recent changes[edit]
- All recent changes to policy pages.
See also[edit]
- List of guidelines – a comprehensive descriptive directory of guidelines.
- Manual of Style – a comprehensive descriptive directory of the pages which make up the Manual of Style.