Policies | |
---|---|
General | |
Article Ownership · Article Quality · Banning · Canon · Images | |
Other | |
HTML Policy · Humor Articles · Multiple Accounts · Talk pages · User pages |
These guidelines must be followed for an article to be retained upon the site.
Articles under this category are all subject to at least one (1) of the critical items of this list. When issues are noted, then a user will be granted a period of one month to bring their article up to these standards.
Important: Removal of Quality Issue templates without Administrator permission counts as a minor offence in the Banning policy. Don't remove them until an Admin gives you the heads up!
CRITICAL: Absolute minimum
Categories
- All articles must be suitably categorised and put in the correct categories.
- Categories must be well-established categories that are used for multiple articles[1]
- "Humor" articles must only be in the "Humor" category.
Content
- All articles must adhere to not contradicting the established canon.
- All articles must be more than three paragraphs in length. [2]
- All articles must make use of acceptable punctuation, spelling and grammar. This includes the article title[3]
Headings
- Appropriate heading sizes must be used. The largest heading to use should be header 2 (==example==)[4]
- Headings should not be capitalised.
HTML
Image usage
- No usage of images copyrighted to Games Workshop.
- No uncredited and/or poorly licensed images. Images not officially owned by Games Workshop, but still depict copyrighted Warhammer 40,000 figures and aspects officially class as "derivative works", and thus must be classed under a "Fair Use" license when uploaded, and furthermore must be accredited to their respective author.
- Images should be displayed at 200-300px wide (max. 300px).
Infoboxes
- Use of appropriate infoboxes. Images should not be over 300px wide.[7]
- One infobox per article.[8]
- Infobox images must strictly be suitable examples of the article's content, e.g. a planet's orbital photo, a character's face, a chapter's symbol and colour scheme, etc. Captions must describe the image in a clear and concise manner.
- No infoboxes within infoboxes.
Naming
- Article titles must be concise.[9]
- Article titles must not begin with grammatical articles, i.e. "the/a"(src), or end with full stops. A page named "The Iron Warriors" or "Iron Warriors." can only be titled "Iron Warriors"[10]. This policy can only be waived in exceptional naming circumstances, e.g. pages named "The Nine" or etc. where a lack of a "the" would appear exceptionally odd. Articles used elsewhere, such as "Kabal of the Bloody Hand", are permitted.
Proofreading
- Diction (word choice) must be at an acceptable standard. Examples include sentences that need to be re-written into a more realistic and/or formal format.
Templates
- All articles must make use of a property[11], free use[12] or community[13] template.
- All header templates (Property, Free Use, Community, Construction, Tabletop Friendly, Existing Canon Expansion, Old Work, Old, etc) must be placed at the very top of the page, and preferably in the order listed above.
- All articles must be published without image placeholders.[14]
- Any and all youtube music players added to user pages must be clearly visible. This includes placing them at the top of the page beneath header templates like property, construction, tabletopfriendly, etc. Any attempts to hide the player through coding tricks will be reverted.
- Quotes must use a Quote Box
NON-CRITICAL: Canon Hardness Test
This section details further advised aspects of quality. Articles bearing these flaws will never be subject to possible deletion, however they are strongly encouraged to meet these guidelines to ensure some standardised sense of quality.
Critera 1: Look and formatting
- All images are aligned to the right to allow ease of reading. Image galleries are used to organise multiple photos in the one place.
- Images use captions describing the photo.
- A usage/preference for high quality images if images are used.
- No Youtube Music players are used on the article.
Critera 2: Lore integrity
- A concise and well-organised timeline with respect paid to the lifespans of characters (i.e. most Eldar without prominent psychic potential won't live past 1000, few Space Marines live beyond 500 years, few Imperial Guardsmen would life past 20-30, or ~80 if they were an illustrious commander spared from most conflict).
- A usage of realistic scenarios involving battle statistics, strengths of enemies, logistics, terrain (and so fourth) and the following tactics and strategy employed in regards to such by all belligerents.
- Written events are set during actual years, (e.g. 931.M41, c. early M39), giving them a solid, conceivable place alongside both canon and other fanon works.
- Characters are written realistically enough to be believable .
- Interesting story direction with emphasis on originality.
- Strict adherence to lore demonstrated in written behaviours, expressions and customs of characters.
Critera 3: Writing Style
- Writing style is concise, descriptive and appropriate at expressing necessary meaning(s).
- Writing style with articles is formal in a manner similar to that of the Canon wiki or Lexicanum.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions regarding the policies.
Why are there so many policies? Why are some of them so particular?
The wiki's leadership has never really had a "definition" of quality set in stone from the start. Our policies have very much been the cumulation of cause and effect. In fact, around ninety percent of our policies were implemented in response to something a user has done, with the Administrators - and often sections of the community - subsequently deciding how to address the formatting and writing decisions made by the user(s) involved in a way that will make the wiki as effective and efficient at what it does as possible, i.e. facilitate the creation and presentation of Warhammer 40,000 fan fiction. This of course, has resulted in our Rules and Quality Contol Policy existing as they do, with rules regarding canon, look and feel, coding, and so fourth.
I only have a month until my article is deleted?
Remember, articles that violate the article quality policy have a full month before they are deleted. This should be plenty of time to fix errors, and policy violating articles are routinely checked for updates so that they can be un-flagged for deletion when they're patched up. For people who really do struggle to amend their errors within the average 4.3 weeks of their typical month, and longer time is needed, users are then encouraged find other means to write, proofread, and polish up their article before publishing.
Why do some articles have a construction template at the top of those pages?
As of 1st of November 2019 a community decision was made that pages under construction do not need to have a construction template located at the top of those pages. Pages may still have construction templates if the article's author so wishes.
Notes
- ↑ Please contact an administrator if you require a new category to be created.
- ↑ See category:Article stubs
- ↑ "Ork Speak" counts as acceptable spelling, so long as it's only used for Ork names (i.e. "Warboss Deff Toof"), Ork titles of things (i.e. "Da big zappy kannon"), and quotes from Orks (i.e. "Orks is best"). If writing a story, it is completely fine to use anywhere, since there is no absolute English used on this Wiki.1. However, it is recommended that you use a warning template, or similar, to tell a reader that this is the case. Articles should, in general, be from neutral/formal perspective.
- ↑ MediaWiki actually discourages usage of this heading type (see "headings": https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting)
- ↑ See HTML Policy
- ↑ Recommendation: learn how to use wikia html tags & edit in source mode
- ↑ Infoboxes are intended to fill the right column of your article. They are not supposed to take up the space of the entire page.
- ↑ Infoboxes are, according to mediawiki/wikipedia intended to summarize key features of the page's subject. For usage of secondary infoboxes, i.e. for a character, planet, special faction within a faction, etc, create a new article for them. Infoboxes are not compulsory.
- ↑ Nothing Like "Chaos Lord Bloodchaosborne 2: Return of Bloodchaosborne's Revenge: The Reckoning"
- ↑ Usage of articles in titles makes searching for the article with the search function difficult; users will have to type "the" before any title to actually find it, which then results in all other articles starting with "the" - regardless of relevance - to be suggested by the search.
- ↑ {{Property|Username}} or {{Property0|Username}}
- ↑ {{Free Use|Username}}
- ↑ {{Community}}
- ↑ These mess with templates and affect article readability and Wiki layout standards