Doom Wiki talk:Policies and guidelines

Licensing
What license is the material in this Wiki covered by? -- Schnee 06:18, 6 Jan 2005 (PST)

All content must be GFDL (except fair use screenshots). I wouldn't mind dual-licensing under a Creative Commons license, though. The only problem with that is that we can't import articles from Wikipedia unless the people who wrote them explicitly allow it (not that there are many articles which are relevant). Fredrik 13:36, 6 Jan 2005 (PST)


 * See Wikia copyrights. All content must be GFDL, but this doesn't prevent individual users dual licensing if they want to do that. Angela 14:00, 6 Jan 2005 (PST)


 * That's cool. Then there won't be a problem with swapping data to/from Wikipedia. ^^ -- Schnee 14:32, 6 Jan 2005 (PST)


 * Angela, could you clarify the status of screenshots? I also asked this on Forums/Copyright.


 * I fully agree that non-free content should be excluded. You can however quote limited portions of copyrighted text under fair use in a GFDL document, so it would seem strange to me if images were not treated similarly. A strict ban on fair use content in images would mean that a photo of a building would be disallowed because the building's design is the copyright of the architect.


 * This kind of fair use is very different from, say, borrowing an image from a publication and claiming fair use because the the use is educational. Fredrik 14:50, 6 Jan 2005 (PST)


 * The latest copyrights page just says "GFDL or public domain images are strongly preferred on Wikia. Copyright-violating images are subject to deletion. Copyright information must be added to the image description page of every uploaded image", which leaves decisions of fair use up to the communities involved in each wiki. Angela 18:12, 10 Jan 2005 (PST)

Capitalization
I think deciding on consistent capitalization needs to be done about now :) - Fredrik 14:59, 6 Jan 2005 (PST)


 * I agree. We need a policy on capitalizing level names, for example. As far as I can tell, "of", "the" and "and" are all lowercase, as in Halls of the Damned. However, if the word is the beginning of the level name, it should be uppercase, as in And Hell Followed. Illdo 06:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought that was a very standard style point &mdash; does someone here take issue with it? The problem arises when someone uses studlycaps or l33t in their readme file, for example.  Currently the policy says to do the same in our article title.  (And, to be fair, nobody really knows whether id wanted prepositions capitalized in their titles in 1994, just to be that much more overwrought and obnoxious.  :>    Ryan W 09:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the proper capitalization of "Doom" is apparently... Ryan W 19:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * See note 1 here. There's no need for a publication to follow that form, although maybe we should reformat other commonly capitalized terms. It's fine that we don't use DOOM all-caps so it looks better when mentioned many times, but if the articles are going to be rigged with upper-case executable names, lump names, and other such terminology, we might as well have kept the more specific DOOM. Lumps and executables could both be spelled in ways that are less intrusive, such as using italics, bold, or true-type, or (at least for executables) normal text. By the way, I think using MassMouth is fine (just like DeathMatch is). Who is like God? 21:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC).

Cheat codes
(A subset of capititalization) I would like to propose that cheat codes be standardized as lower-case, within &lt;tt&gt; brackets, and linking to cheat codes. For example, "the iddqd cheat", rather than IDDQD or whatever. radius 06:02, 17 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * I like this idea. Fraggle 11:14, 18 Jul 2005 (UTC)


 * Should probably be coded as:
 * &lt;tt&gt;iddqd&lt;/tt&gt; cheat
 * because cheat is kind of a disambiguation page. radius 16:09, 19 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Screen shot formatting
"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)": Naming no names, we have been accumulating quite a large number of screen shots which don't even attempt to follow this guideline. Ryan W 06:15, 10 Oct 2005 (UTC)

"Google AdSense" policy
I really dislike bringing this up, since it really seems like the Wikia people should have thought of it themselves, but I must. Doom, Doom II, Final Doom, Doom 64, Doom 3 (both parts), Heretic, Hexen, and Wolfenstein 3D are all rated M by the ESRB, so isn't it conceivable that our little site here could run afoul of this content policy? Ryan W 08:03, 12 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that's Wikia' problem, not ours. But as it says there, "If you feel your wiki needs to include any of this content, please discuss the matter with User:Angela so an alternative source of funding can be found for hosting that wiki." Bloodshedder 15:12, 12 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * Considering the lurid ads that showed up after I revised Wolfenstein SS, I personally would have trouble taking Google seriously if they complained. But that sounded too logical to be relevant to a legal issue, so I figured I'd at least mention it on this page.   Ryan W 22:01, 12 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * Addendum: wikis about MMORPGs have had to ask Wikia to block ads relating to ebaying, so that the wiki itself doesn't get sued. I will be reminded of this every time I see ads offering free Doom 3 downloads.    Ryan W 04:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

namespaces
We may need to return to the subject of namespaces and hammer out a better policy. The Editing: namespace is a bit sparse for example. -- Jdowland 23:06, 11 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Link formatting
Here's a policy question &mdash; should we really apply this kind of formatting to all 1200+ articles? Everything2.com does their cross-references in such a manner, and I personally find it very distracting in long articles (not to mention ugly in browsers where links are underlined). I guess I could understand doing it in walkthroughs, because they're so long and because people probably use them as reference works more often than just reading them end to end. Does anyone else have an opinion? Ryan W 15:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Exceptions to NPOV
AFAICT, our standards for original analysis have been (or have become) far more stringent than:


 * 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 for others to challenge your assumptions, provide opposing viewpoints and counter-arguments, or rewrite your text.

Non-technical attempts seem to get removed at least 18 times in 20 &mdash; or is it simply that most new editors are incredibly heavy-handed? I left the paragraph in, but without the term "subjective opinions", since that just invites trolling. (We do have a "reviews" section for PWADs, but I think it's only been used once or twice.)   Ryan W 06:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow
I must have missed all the work that got done on this. Good work, Ryan! Fraggle 00:35, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You don't think it's too argumentative? Some people at central apparently become quite concerned when wikis don't AGF themselves into a Huxleyesque state of entropy.


 * Really, it was just a matter of waiting for certain debates (mostly started by me and Jdowland) to die down on talk pages. :>   I wasn't able to discern a detailed consensus about the "people articles" policy, though.    Ryan W 02:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Spelling
This section might be controversial, but that isn't my intent; I am simply trying to document our existing practice (do a search for "armour" if you like). I admit that I have never seen a non-U.S. edition of Doom or Doom II &mdash; did they actually bother to change all the text strings? Ryan W 09:09, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Nope. Not certain about other languages, but I'm sure there isn't an official version with altered strings like "armour".  It's not the kind of thing software companies bother with.  Even Windows uses "color" rather than the British equivalent. - DooMAD 19:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Heh, imagine a British Doomguy. "I say, you are bloody huge. Therefore, I must deduce that you have a large amount of intestines. Rip and tear!" 58.178.88.196 22:35, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Get David Thewlis's agent on the phone!   Ryan W 15:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Mm, good to know, thanks. Nowadays, major game releases are indeed translated/dubbed into other languages (but perhaps in 1994 they were not).    Ryan W 15:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Not an official release, but... Bloodshedder 20:56, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Images
To myk: A normal browser will display them in their original ratio, with scrollbars (if required) to see the whole image. Some browsers will shrink the image so it can fit on screen, however, even then it keeps the ratio of the original image. Even wiki's thumbnails keep the original ratios (see the new box art I added to the Sony PlayStation article, for example). Perhaps there is something wrong with your browser.Nuxius 09:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You miss the point. It's DOOM that "changes" the screen shots, not my browser. They look wrong in a browser because, unlike in an old-school 320x200 VGA screen, the pixels are square in "desktop" mode. 320x200 VGA mode stretches all pixel heights by 20% so that it'll fill the 4:3 ratio screen, whereas on the other hand a resolution like 640xx480 will fill the screen with square pixels. See this Doomworld thread for more information. For examples of bad screen shots see E1M3: Toxin Refinery (Doom). Those shots would look good in-game, but on a webpage they look flat (which is very evident on the sprites). Who is like God? 10:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)