Template:Draft proposal/doc

Usage

{{Proposal}} or {{Draft proposal}}

This adds pages to Category:Proposals or Category:Draft proposals if {{Draft proposal}} is used. Categorization of drafts can be suppressed with the |categories=no parameter.

Purpose

The BTW community roughly follows a set of official policies and guidelines (collectively often referred to simply as "policy"). Pages reflecting policy are written by ordinary editors in the "BattleTechWiki:" namespace. Other editors review these proposals and edit to improve them and move toward greater consensus. Over time, many things may happen to a proposal – it may be changed substantially, be moved to a new location, become adopted as a policy or guideline, be rejected by the community, be recast as simply a essay, or fail to sufficiently develop into a viable proposal.

When a proposal is being advanced it is usual to tag the page with {{Proposed}}. Although a proposal is generally written in advisory tone, it is not policy until adopted by the community through the consensus-building process, and should not yet be tagged with {{Policy}} or {{Guideline}}.

If a proposal is still in the early formative stages and it is desired to gather creative suggestions from others on what purpose and direction such a proposal should have, one may wish to temporarily use the {{Brainstorming}} header template, and later use {{Draft proposal}} when these matters are clearer. Once proponents of a proposal are satisfied with the form it has taken and it is desired to move forward to the more intense debate that precedes policy acceptance by the community, {{Draft proposal}} should be replaced with {{Proposed}}. This change in status should be advertised so that interested parties have a fair chance to participate before anyone designates the proposal as rejected or adopted as policy. If there is a lack of discussion from the community, the proposal may be tagged with {{Dormant}}. Usual places to advertise a proposal are the talk pages of relevant other policies and guidelines and of topically connected wikiprojects, and/or our community discord.

Usage

{{Draft proposal
 | 1          = 
 | 2          = 
 | 3          = 
 | 4          = 
 | 5          = 
 | type       = 
 | discussion = 
 | section    = 
 | categories = 
 | category   = 
 | nocat      = 
}}

The parameters are as follows:

• 1 : First parameter, specifies a shortcut.
• 2 : Same as 1 (for multiple shortcuts)
• 3 : Same as 1 (for multiple shortcuts)
• 4 : Same as 1 (for multiple shortcuts)
• 5 : Same as 1 (for multiple shortcuts)
• type : The dealio of what kind of thing it's being proposed for. The default is "policy, guideline, or process".
• discussion : Link to specific discussion. Default is to link to the page's talk page (i.e. if your proposal is at BattleTechWiki:Meowing guidelines, it will link to BattleTechWiki talk:Meowing guidelines), but it can be set up to link elsewhere, like Module talk:Meowing.
• section : Section link. For example, if the discussion is at Module talk:Meowing#We need guidelines for when to meow in articles.
• category : Replace Category:Draft proposals with something else, like Category:Draft proposals on redirecting.
• categories : Categorization of drafts can be suppressed with the |categories=no parameter
• nocat : If you include anything here, it excludes the page from being default categorized in Category:Draft proposals.

See also

• BattleTechWiki:Policy writing is hard
• Category:Draft proposals
• Category:Header templates
• {{proposed}}
• {{essay}}
• {{guideline}}
• {{policy}}
• {{brainstorming}}
• {{Dormant}}