IFWiki:Policy
This page will attempt to summarize IFWiki's policies on various topics, and redirect users to pages with more detail when it's available. (As with many IFWiki pages, this page is also a 'work in progress', so the info here may be a bit skimpy at first.)
Ask IFWiki about Content
IFWiki is all about interactive fiction (IF), also commonly called text adventures. We want to know pretty much everything that can be said objectively about the topic: what IF is, how to create it, what tools are used, how do you play the games, what games are there, where are the games, who wrote them and when, what techniques did they use, what are the games about, etc.
Note that we want to try to be objective in our pages. We are not as strict as Wikipedia on this point, but we do prefer a neutral tone. (Probably more needs to be said about this.)
What we don't cover:
- Most articles about IF. By default, the bulk of IFWiki's content -- except for the FAQ and all the cover art -- is in the public domain. So most essays and articles about IF will be linked to from IFWiki and will not be hosted on IFWiki directly unless the author explicitly permits it (e.g. by adding their articles to IFWiki themselves).
- The actual games for download. There is the IF Archive and other archives that are more suitable for that than IFWiki. Again, we prefer to link to where the games actually are.
- Reviews of games. There are better places for reviews than IFWiki, for example: IFDB, IF-Review, IF Reviews.org, the rec.games.int-fiction newsgroup, and your own blogs. We will gladly link to your reviews, but we don't really want to host them.
- Collaborative writing of CYOAs, stories, or code for a game-to-be. IFWiki is not the place to drop off the beginnings of a "fun" story that you hope other people will add to later. We want to be more of a reference work, not a playground. There are other wikia that do encourage that sort of play; go seek them out elsewhere if that's what you're looking for.
Some topics, like particular computers, operating systems, and general purpose programming languages, may get very brief pages on IFWiki, but only to explain how they relate to IF, and a link or two where more info on them can be found. Such topics are mostly unrelated to IF, so we will not go into much depth about Java, for example, just because a few IF games have been written in it.
We also won't cover every choose your own adventure (CYOA) game in existence. See Category:CYOA for where we draw the line there.
Ask IFWiki about Deleting
Ask IFWiki about Protected Pages
See IFWiki:Protected page guidelines.
Ask IFWiki about Redirects
IFWiki probably has more redirects than is strictly wise or required compared to other wikis, but here's what we seem to be doing with them:
Acceptable uses of redirects:
- Names of human languages redirect to the appropriate language categories. For example, French redirects to Category:French.
- Nicknames of people redirect to the appropriate pages in Category:People. For example, revgiblet redirects to James Webb. When a nickname isn't unique, such as DavidW or Bob, disambiguation pages are needed instead; see Category:Disambiguation. Sometimes, when a person is mainly known by the nickname instead of their real name, the real name redirects to the nickname instead.
- Commonly used abbreviations (and some that aren't so common) may redirect to whatever it's short for. For example, NPC redirects to non-player character.
- Alternate names for a game's title. For example, Shattered Memory redirects to Olvido Mortal.
- IFID:ifid, where ifid is an IFID, which redirects to the appropriate game page. See Category:Works by IFID.
Unacceptable uses of redirects:
- Misspellings of the correct spelling of an article title.
- Plural forms that link to their singular form or vice-versa.
- Redirects which differ from their target only by case usage. For example, do not redirect "The thorn" to "The Thorn"; just edit the originating page it so it links directly to The Thorn.
- Redirects that use curly quotes, curly apostrophes, em-dashes, etc. that redirect to the same title with straight quote, straight apostophes, and hyphens. Again, edit the originating page so a redirect isn't necessary.
- Redirects that simply drop a leading "The" or add a leading "The" before redirecting to the target article, unless you have a darned good reason for doing so.
- Double redirects, which redirect to another redirect instead of a real article.
Ask IFWiki about Style
Ask IFWiki about User Pages
See Category:User pages.
User pages are not the same as the formal pages in Category:People. For more about People pages, see People (style guide).
User pages are about the users of IFWiki, who either want to help edit IFWiki or say a little something about themselves to the general public, or both. Normally, a user page should only be written by that actual user themselves, about themselves, and other users should hesitate a little before editing them like any other page on the wiki.
User pages are freeform. There is no style guide for user pages; users may format their own user page pretty much however they like. We ask only to add all user pages to Category:User pages so other users can find them.
Common sense, civility, and vandalism concerns still apply to user pages. It's usually okay for users to fix typos, add a user page to an appropriate category, remove a user page from an inappropriate category, and make other such minor changes on someone else's user page. Some user pages might invite others' changes; that's fine. Flames and hate-based attacks on other people are not fine; luckily this has yet to be an issue. Spam on a user page is still considered vandalism, of course; administrators will delete spam from IFWiki regardless of what type of page it's on.
Some users have decided to have their user pages be just a redirect to their pages in Category:People; this is acceptable.
Ask IFWiki about Vandalism (or Spam)
See IFWiki:Vandalism.