Policy is a term referring to the processes and rules observed involving the creation, editing, and management of articles on WoWWiki as well as treatment of other users. This is to be distinguished from a guideline which suggests etiquette and practice to make management and presentation of WoWWiki more consistent and streamlined.
Violating a WoWWiki policy will at the very least lead to a page being edited to conform to policy. Edits or new pages that are created that do not conform to a specific policy are subject to change by another user (assuming that change conforms with policy) without expectation of appeal to an admin, as is all content within the site. However, it may also lead to the page being deleted or — for the worst offenses — it may lead to the poster being declared a vandal and become banned or blocked. Treatment of users who engage in destruction of content, harassment, or misuse of content (spam) is also governed by policy.
The following policies have been developed over time; mostly as consensus works between WoWWiki administrators and users. A few are decreed by administrators.
Shortcut to this page: WW:P
WoWWiki policies
For quicker referencing, the policies also have shorthand links, e.g. "WW:DNP". They are denoted in the list below.
- Policy status and phases
- The policy governing policies – how to create new ones, how to change existing ones, and how to recall bad ones.
Article policies
- WW:CAT · The category policy
- How to categorize pages, and how to name and categorize new categories.
- WW:COPY · The copyright policy
- Copyright enforcement and fair use restrictions.
- WW:DEL · The deletion policy
- Sub-policy: Speedy deletion
- How to nominate pages for deletion and when they are eligible for actual termination.
- WW:DNP · The do-not-post policy
- Sub-policy: Non-disclosure agreement enforcement
- Specific items and topics we do not allow on WoWWiki.
- WW:EDIT · The editing policy
- Sub-policy: Disruptive editing
- How to make changes to existing pages – what you actually dare doing without asking everyone first and what you really should ask about first.
- WW:EL · The external links policy
- What sort of external links are allowed and where to put them.
- WW:FANFIC · Fan fiction articles policy
- Where to put fan fiction and how to handle it.
- WW:GUILD · Guild pages policy
- Where to put guild pages and what to put on them.
- WW:IMP · The images policy
- What sort of images are allowed and how to use them.
- WW:ITEMS · WoWWiki:Item articles policy
- How to format item pages.
- WW:LORE · WoWWiki:Lore policy
- Appropriate sources of lore on the wiki and how to cite them.
- WW:NAME · The article naming policy
- How to name articles so that people more easily can guess what to type to get to a particular type of page.
- WW:NPOV · The neutral-point-of-view policy
- Articles on WoWWiki should approach their subject objectively.
- WW:PA/WW:PC WoWWiki:Personal article policy and WoWWiki:Player character page policy
- Naming and formatting for personal articles and player character pages.
- WW:STUB · The stub policy
- How to tag pages as stubs and when pages should be tagged as stubs.
Community management policies
- WW:3RR · The three revert rule
- To avoid edit wars, WoWWiki contributors are not allowed to revert someone else's changes too often.
- WW:UN · The user naming policy
- Types of user names which are disallowed on WoWWiki.
- WW:VANDAL · The vandalism policy
- What WoWWiki considers vandalism and what we do to vandals. (Not what we would like to do to vandals, though.)
- WW:VOTE · The voting policy
- Votes completed according to this policy are considered enforceable on WoWWiki.
See also
- WoWWiki:Guidelines for a listing of all WoWWiki guidelines or information on an individual guideline.
- WoWWiki talk:Policies to suggest new policies or discuss existing ones. You may also do so on the specific policy's talk page.