Doom Wiki:Policies and guidelines

Please feel free to challenge or comment on the policies of the Doom Wiki on the talk page!

Naming conventions
Article titles and subheadings should be capitalized "Foo bar baz" rather than "Foo Bar Baz" (words should only begin with a capital letter if they are proper nouns). The name of the game itself is written "Doom", not "DOOM" or "DooM" (if this turns into a huge conflict, we could try to bug the Wikia operators to implement a custom preference ;). For source ports and WADs, the capitalization should be the one used by the creator.

For something related to Doom or Doom II in general, it is unnecessary to add "In Doom, ..." at the beginning of the article or name the page "Doom ...". Such modifiers should however always be added for things related to other games (e.g. Strife), including Doom 3. "In XXX..." or something equivalent should also be used for things pertaining to one specific version of Doom (Ultimate, Doom II, Final Doom, Shareware, 1.2...).

Articles about maps which are part of a larger IWAD or PWAD should have names of the form  MAP##: Level Name (WAD Name) , as with E1M3: The Gatehouse (Heretic) and MAP31: The Descent (Hell Revealed). A redirect without the WAD name should be made, and the map template used at the top of the article for disambiguation, thus: (this will automatically put the page into the category corresponding to the map number).

Things that may have articles

 * The games
 * Obviously.


 * Levels, items, monsters, etc from the games
 * Of course


 * Terminology
 * Sure


 * Statistics and trivia
 * Things like list of vanilla maps by size are the very purpose of this wiki...


 * WADs
 * If released


 * LMPs
 * If notable (e.g. 30uv1617)


 * Editors
 * There aren't that many, so, sure


 * Source ports
 * Sure


 * People
 * Anyone with some recorded achievement in the Doom community. For example, having released at least two WADs, or holding at least two Compet-N records. Playing in a clan or having a forum account on Doomworld does not count. Except for id Software people, no biographies please. List people's directly Doom-related activities and nothing else. A link to their personal website might be OK. (See also our revised criteria for people articles.)


 * Websites
 * Except personal websites where the only content is about that person.

Neutrality, etc
The neutral point of view policy used on Wikipedia has two huge benefits. Most importantly, it is the best way to handle conflicting viewpoints. The NPOV policy states that if A thinks X and B thinks Y (where X and Y are opinions), we should not write that either of X or Y is fact, but that both X and Y exist. The second advantage is that clearly distinguishing opinions from facts simply results in more professional-looking articles. However, NPOV should be thought of as a guideline rather than a strict rule on this wiki. Since this is a resource primarily created for Doomers, by Doomers, there are some opinions and interpretations around which are nearly universally accepted. What's important is creating great articles!

An important difference from Wikipedia is that original analysis is welcome here. So if you want to add your own subjective opinions about Memento Mori II or write a comparison between Doom and Aliens, feel free to do so. Just be prepared that others might challenge your assumptions, provide opposing viewpoints and counter-arguments, or rewrite your text.

Images

 * Original images should be released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
 * Screenshots may be used on the Doom Wiki, under "fair use".
 * Although screenshots are OK, raw graphics from the IWADs are not.
 * You may only upload screenshots you have created yourself.
 * Screenshots should be taken in software rendered mode, with settings as closely as possibly resembling vanilla Doom (unless the screenshot is for showing off a port specifically)
 * You must add source and copyright information to the image description page for each image you upload. You can use the following tags to specify the copyright status:
 * for screenshots of the original Doom games
 * for GFDL images (including WADs and LMPs)
 * for automap views from the original Doom games
 * If none of the existing tags is appropriate, create a new tag (Template:name of the tag here) and list it above.

Deletion
An article can be marked by any registered user as a candidate for deletion, by placing the tag at the top of the article. This tag will be removed if it has been applied by an anonymous user. The article's life is then debated on its talk page for one week, or longer if the outcome is initially inconclusive. When a consensus is reached, the discussion is archived.

The deletion tag should be applied under the following conditions:


 * Text or an image is taken from a copyrighted source.
 * The article is obviously irrelevant to the wiki (e.g., it is about Mohandas K. Gandhi).
 * The article is about a person and fails to meet the criteria for people articles, and cannot be revised to comply with these criteria.

Deletion templates are only to be removed by administrators, and only in the following cases:


 * The article is marked by a non-registered user.
 * The article marked is kept.
 * The article marked is on a subject that is clearly important to the wiki, such as the article on the Doom engine itself.

'''If a deletion tag is removed by a user during a deletion debate, it is considered vandalism and will be treated as such. Removing links to the article from other articles is also vandalism.'''