WoWWiki

This wiki contains inaccurate and out-of-date information. Please head over to https://wowpedia.fandom.com for more accurate and up-to-date game information.

READ MORE

WoWWiki
WoWWiki
Advertisement

Icon-policy WoWWiki:Policies

Policy status and phases

Category policy
Copyright policy
Deletion policy
Speedy deletion
DNP policy
NDA policy
Editing policy
Disruptive editing policy
External links
Fan fiction
Guild pages policy
Images policy

Items policy
Lore policy
Naming policy
Neutrality policy
Personal articles
Player character pages
Stub policy
Three revert rule
User naming
Vandalism policy
Voting policy

See also: guidelines, administrators
policy sign

This page is an official policy on WoWWiki.

This policy has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow.

  • Feel free to propose any changes to this policy, but please make sure that changes you make follow the official process and reflect consensus on the discussion page before you put them into practice. Any big changes need to be Adopted or Decreed to be enforced as policy.
  • See WoWWiki:Policies for an overview of WoWWiki policies.
  • See Category:Policies for a list of proposed and adopted policy articles.
  • Shortcut: WW:VOTE

When to vote[]

There are two main uses of votes on WoWWiki:

In very rare cases votes may be used for other purposes, and this page details this process.

Terminology[]

  • The issue being voted on and action to take are considered a proposal.
  • If the Yes votes win (see constraints below), the proposal is considered accepted.
  • If the No votes win (see constraints below), the proposal is considered declined.

Voter eligibility[]

Voters must be registered users with ten previous edits on WoWWiki. Sockpuppetry is forbidden by the user naming policy and if it is determined that a user is a sockpuppet then their vote(s) will be nullified.

The Voting Process[]

  • The issue being voted on should be clearly identified in the discussion page of the article, and a voting booth created. See "How to start a vote", below.
  • People now have an opportunity to vote. The {{Vote/Talk}} template explains things for the most part.
  • For the decision to be made, the count for the winning side must exceed the losing side by five (5), i.e. 5:0, 6:1, 10:5, etc., and then a waiting period, or vote closing time, of three days must be observed before finally closing the vote and taking the proposed action.
  • Votes must last a minimum of a week (seven calendar days) before they can be closed, in conjunction with the above three day waiting period after the last vote. Essentially, if a vote gains enough votes to close in the first day it should still last a week; and if a vote lasts longer than a week the closing duration of three days should still exist between the winning vote being cast and the vote closing.

Results[]

  • Yes wins: Once the vote is closed and the Yes votes have won, the proposer should feel free to take the proposed action as accepted with the trust of most WoWWiki users and backing of the admins.
  • No wins: Once the vote is closed and the No votes have won, the proposal is effectively declined.
  • With multiple-choice votes the comparison is made to the closest competitor.


How to start a vote[]

Creating the voting booth[]

Edit the discussion page of the article:

== Oneliner intro text ==

{{Proposal}}
I would like to .....

{{subst:Vote/Talk}}

This will create a voting booth, and automatically add the talk page to Category:Votes_in_progress.

Using {{Proposal}} is entirely optional. It has no effect other than drawing people's attention to your proposal.

Drawing attention to your vote[]

First of all, the {{Vote/Vote}} template will automatically place your vote in Category: Votes in progress. However, if you want people visiting the article to immediately take note of the ongoing vote, you can put {{Vote/Note|<oneliner intro>}} in the article itself:

{{Vote/Note|
* Should we......(short text)?
}}

If you do not want to explain the vote in the article, you can of course just use {{Vote/Note|<leave blank>}}.

To draw even more attention to your vote, you can show it in the community portal by adding it to WoWWiki:Community portal.


Voting FAQ[]

Questionmark How do we know what to vote on?

See the Votes in progress (category) list.


Questionmark What really shouldn't be voted on?

Here are some cases:
  • Administrative issues: The admins who run WoWWiki can make certain changes in order to keep the site running smoothly. Admins should avoid unilateral decisions, but sometimes they must take matters into their own hands - for example with legal issues.
  • Factual accuracy: Although we can dispute what the truth is, you can't really vote on whether it is true. If someone posts something that appears factually accurate, but someone has a reliable or official source that shows that it is not, you can't really vote to keep something untrue in an article. This especailly applies to lore. If Blizzard says this is the lore of World of Warcraft, WoWWiki users shouldn't really vote to keep some lore that disagress with it on the site. That's just silly.
  • Terminology: This is sort of a gray area, but usually its best just to put the all the meanings of a commonly used term and indicate which meanings are widely accepted vs. narrowly understood. You can vote on narrowly vs. widely, but unless the meaning attributed to a term is vandalism, totally nonsensical ("frog means an arrow with a rocket on it that speaks many languages") or that only apparently one person has ever heard, its okay to be in the wiki.
  • Policy violations: If a page violates policy, the matter really isn't up for vote. If however you do not agree with a policy, you are of course welcome to vote to change the policy!


Questionmark Why have a vote closed time?

Think of it as a cooling off period and a time for the losing side to campaign for more votes. If the losing side can't drum up enough votes in the time period, it usually indicates they don't care enough or they can't get enough support. We tend to keep the time shorter than we would for policy issues, but the wait time is generally short just because you don't want to be sitting around waiting for no good reason.


Questionmark What do I do if my side loses, but I still strongly disagree with the outcome?

Propose another vote! We may at some point decide that the result of a vote should "stick" for some time period before allowing another vote, but for now if you want to thrash it out again, you can always do it.


Questionmark What if the loser just undoes the change of the winning vote?

Well, assuming you followed the proper voting process, you can revert the change back, appeal to an admin to revert the change, or even appeal to an admin to block the user for a time period. Hopefully there will be a policy for violating WoWWiki policy that you can get enforced.
Advertisement