User:Ryan W/Sandbox/Draft policy page

 ''Although this page is believed to reflect the present consensus on this wiki, it is still a work in progress. Please feel free to discuss, critique, or challenge any of these policies on the talk page.''

The Doom Wiki encourages its contributors to employ common sense while editing, and to resolve differences of opinion by discussing them on talk pages. Occasionally, however, a policy or guideline is recorded to document a longstanding precedent or other large-scale decision. The goal is to make it easier to produce a high-quality encyclopedia.

Policies are more strict than guidelines. Where a written policy exists, it should be followed in every case to prevent severe disruption to the site (such as a copyright dispute, an endemic flame war, or a flood of spam).

Neutrality
Write with a neutral point of view (NPOV) unless there is an extremely good reason to do otherwise. If you are writing about a subject for which strong contradictory opinions exist, do not use the article as an opportunity to promote your favorite; instead, give information about the differing points of view and promote none of them.

The NPOV policy has two major benefits. Most importantly, it is the best way to handle conflicting viewpoints. 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.

Original research
Since the Doom Wiki is a resource primarily created for Doomers, by Doomers, NPOV is not a completely inflexible rule. There are some opinions and interpretations within the community which are nearly universally accepted. Also, we do not require a bibliography to support technical or gameplay data which can be verified by anyone with a copy of Doom and a good editing utility.

Original analysis is also welcome, provided that you make some attempt at a reasoned argument (reviews or ranting can be done in the blog area). For example, if you want to write a comparison between Doom and Aliens or list the literary allusions in Memento Mori II, feel free to do so. Just be prepared for others to challenge your assumptions, provide opposing viewpoints and counter-arguments, or rewrite your text.

Examples of good original research:
 * Doom levels ranked by area, volume, and percentage of volume occupied by monsters.
 * Comparisons among the various console versions of Doom.
 * A technical description of the map format for a game which doesn't have widely available editors.
 * Tutorials about speedrunning or deathmatch play.

Examples of things you should not add:
 * An article about how a particular bug affects a particular map, when the bug and the map already have articles.
 * The nicknames that you and your brothers gave the monsters when you first played Doom.
 * What a hypothetical, nonexistent Dune total conversion might look like.
 * Why Quake is better than Hexen.

Images

 * You may only upload files you have created yourself.
 * Original images (e.g. LMPs and WADs) should be released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Any link to such a file, even on a talk page, must be accompanied by a link to the licensing information, thus: [[Media:Rcktmiss.lmp|Rcktmiss.lmp]] (file info).
 * Screen shots and map views may be used on the Doom Wiki, under "fair use".
 * You must add source and copyright information to the image description page for each image you upload. You can easily do the latter by choosing a licensing option from the drop-down menu on the upload page. If none of the existing tags is appropriate, create a new tag (Template:Name of the tag here), and add it manually by typing   somewhere in the description box.

See also: Image uploading guidelines

Deletion
An article or image can be marked by any registered user as a candidate for deletion, by placing the   template 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 (quality of reasoning being more important than vote count, as it is on Wikipedia), the discussion is halted by an administrator.

The deletion tag should be applied immediately 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.'''

Patent nonsense and spam may be deleted without a vote, at the discretion of the administrators.

Edits to deleted articles disappear from summary pages such as Recent changes. The deletion log lists deleted pages, and particularly substantive discussions are archived in Category:Talk pages without articles (when they result in deletions). Administrators are able to view deleted pages or edits, organized either by article or by user, and undelete articles if necessary (excepting very old images, which are eventually removed from the database).

Banning
Users who vandalize articles, distribute spam, or repeatedly troll or harass other users will sooner or later be blocked from using the site. If you are blocked, you cannot edit any pages other than your personal talk page. Additionally, if you have not created an account, no one else can edit from your IP address. The block list keeps track of who is banned and for how long.

Our administrators are especially intolerant of spam and vandalism. Large, obnoxious edits may result in permanent bans even for a first offense.

If you think you have been banned for someone else's behavior (using a public computer, for example, or in an office which assigns dynamic IP addresses), please contact an administrator.

Page move vandalism should be reported at Cross wiki user blocks.

Copyrights
Wikia:Licensing gives the copyright policies of Wikia Inc., our parent organization. That page takes precedence over any statements below with which it is incompatible.

All text on the Doom Wiki is freely licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Authors who do not agree to the terms of this license should not contribute to the wiki. Previously published text may be re-used only if written permission is obtained (e-mail is acceptable) and posted to that article's talk page. Edits which look like plagiarism will be reverted.

Image copyrights are more complex (as is well known on Wikipedia), and the Doom Wiki does not claim to be an authority on copyright law. Our current policy is that screen shots and map views (extracted from a commercially released game or a PWAD) may be used under the "fair use" provision of U.S. copyright law. Other types of images are discussed on a case-by-case basis; see the image use policy and uploading guidelines.