118Wiki:Policies and Guidelines

			118Wiki

118Wiki About Wiki Administrators Wiki Operations Guild Policies and Guidelines General disclaimer The wiki is public & permanent Privacy policy Frequently Asked Questions Build the Web Naming pages properly Define and describe Disambiguation Establishing context Explain Jargon Inform and entertain Intelligent Lifeform Index edit guide Make articles useful for readers Edit Summaries Orphan pages To Do List Using Categories Wiki Templates Wiki Ops Google Groups 118Wiki Forum Edit this nav One of the most unique and detailed pieces of lore for our community is our shared wiki. The 118Wiki is filled with detailed information on our ships histories, characters, worlds, and cultures, going back more than 20 years in our 30-year history. To ensure that this resource can continue to grow, we’d like to address everyone in the fleet and make sure that guidelines and boundaries are clear and easy to understand. Assume Good Faith First and foremost, everyone should remember this basic principle of working with others online: assume good faith. We’re all working together as editors to make the best wiki for our community, and when someone makes a mistake and edits something wrongly, or in a way they shouldn’t, it’s most likely an innocent or unintentional mistake. Remember to treat others as you would want to be treated, and never assume malice unless there is clear and specific evidence of malice. Group Canon Policy & Approved Sources for Information The Captains Council has final authority on what is considered officially part of our group's lore and may vote on approving/denying any items to our group's canon. On the 118Wiki, information may come from four sources, two of which are considered primary sources of equal importance, one of which is considered a secondary source, and one of which is considered a tertiary source. Primary Sources Sims posted on a StarBase 118 PBEM RPG ship or installation. Star Trek canon from the Star Trek television shows and movies (as documented by Memory Alpha). Onscreen Star Trek canon takes equal precedence with information that has been simmed in StarBase 118 PBEM RPG Secondary Source Articles and features published on our spin-off site, the Federation News Service. The FNS is a creative platform allowing our members and others to explore an extended Trek universe beyond that depicted in the primary sources of StarBase 118 PBEM RPG sims and Star Trek canon. If an FNS article should contradict information from a sim, the sim takes precedence. Contact the FNS so that they may update the article with a correction based on the simmed information. Tertiary Source “Soft-canon” sources (authorized Star Trek novels, comic books, games, and any other content that appears on Memory Beta) may be acceptably incorporated into our wiki when it does not contradict information from any of the primary or secondary sources listed above. The Captains Council has final approval of what is considered canon in our shared continuity and may veto an addition from Memory Beta if deemed in the best interest of our game. Open to All In the spirit of wikis like Wikipedia, every member of our community is welcome and encouraged to create, edit, and modify pages on the wiki that need improvement. There are, however, a few important points we wish to note: Character Pages We recognize that personal character pages should be given special care. To that end, while minor changes like spelling, syntax, grammar, broken links, and category edits are welcome to character pages – by anyone, even someone who doesn’t own that character – any other changes to content should be left to the owner of the character. Asking for permission to help make an edit, with the understanding that the page owner might say no, is also an option if you think something more than the minor edits above are in order. Ship Pages We also want to clarify that ship pages are open for all members to edit. Ship pages are not owned by anyone in particular, and you do not have to be a member of a ship or require permission from a ship’s command staff to edit, help clean, update, and add more information to a ship’s page. However, we do want to make note that anything beyond simple fixes should only be attempted if you are absolutely and totally sure that what you’re adding is correct and appropriate. Communicating before a major edit can help develop better and stronger relationships between editors, especially those who contribute frequently to the page in question, and pave the way to brainstorming quicker and more desirable wiki edits through collaboration. Respecting Content Licenses When uploading a file to the wiki, be aware of how the work is licensed. If the file you are uploading is not a free work but you believe its use constitutes “Fair Use,” you should list the source of the original file and credit its original creator and/or copyright holder in the file summary. Likewise, if you are including text from a source such as Memory Alpha or Wikipedia, we have created templates (links to templates here) that you should add to the page that will automatically add links back to those sites to fulfill their license agreements. The Wiki is not a Social Networking Site While we encourage everyone to personalize their user pages, have open discussion on talk pages, and bring a sense of humor to the wiki, it’s important to remember that the wiki is not a social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, or even our forums. It’s important that we not use the wiki as a place to rant, be snarky or sarcastic. Edit comment summaries should be on point and written without judgement of previous contributors. For instance, if correcting a typo, simply note that “a typo was fixed” rather than chide fellow editors. The Bold-Revert-Discuss Cycle No editor is more welcome to make a positive contribution than you are. When in doubt, edit! Similarly, if you advance a potential edit on the article's talk page, and no response is received after a reasonable amount of time, go ahead and make your edit. Sometimes other editors are busy, or nobody is watching the article. An edit will either get the attention of interested editors, or you will simply improve the article—either is a good outcome. Revert an edit if it is not an improvement, and it cannot be immediately fixed by refinement. Consider reverting only when necessary. BRD does not encourage reverting, but recognizes that reverts will happen. When reverting, be specific about your reasons in the edit summary and use links if needed. Look at the article's edit history and its talk page to see if a discussion has begun. If not, you may begin one. Discuss the edit, and the reasons for the edit, on the article's talk page. Don't engage in back-and-forth reverts because that will probably be viewed as edit-warring. “ ” Wikipedia’s page on the BRD cycle Like Wikipedia, any edits you make on the 118Wiki are open to being changed, discussed, or undone by other editors. Our wiki saves each and every edit to every single page, and any edit can be undone quickly and easily. So if you find that someone has edited a page inappropriately, you can review the edits and decide if an edit needs to be reverted using the page’s “History” tab. Reverting an edit without comment can be taken as aggressively dismissing another person’s contribution. Again, assume good faith. If someone made an edit, it was most likely made with well-meaning intentions, so you should consider leaving a reason for the revert in the edit summary and possibly a message on the previous editor’s talk page if you feel you would like to discuss it further. Remember that a talk page comment is an open door to continued conversation. Final Considerations It’s better for all of us to work together to edit the wiki, and revert an edit in the unlikely event that it wasn’t helpful, rather than all of us tiptoeing around the wiki or being overly cautious to the point of not contributing as much as we could. The 118Wiki is a collaborative project that relies on all of us to help build and maintain it. Thanks to everyone’s hard work and the multitude of contributions, our wiki has grown to some 15,000 pages and serves as a resource to document our history and our stories, and ultimately to keep the Trek universe that we all love alive.

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