User:Ricken/SandboxPG

AmtWiki policies and guidelines
Policies List · Guidelines List Edit

AmtWiki policies are developed by the community to describe the principles and practices of the wiki, in order to resolve conflicts and pursue our goal of improving Amtgard's own encyclopedia and cultural record. While the rules are deliberately not clear cut, these pages outline the best policies and practices, which should be applied using reason and common sense.

Derivation

AmtWiki is owned and operated by Amtgard International, which reserves certain legal rights. Nevertheless, normally AmtWiki is a self-governing project run by its community. Its policies and guidelines are intended to reflect the consensus of the community.

Roles

Policies have wide acceptance among editors and describe standards that all users should normally follow. All policy pages are in AmtWiki:List of policies and Category:Amtwiki policies.

Guidelines are sets of best practices that are supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Guideline pages can be found in AmtWiki:List of guidelines and Category:Amtwiki guidelines.

Adherance

When applying policies or guidelines, use common sense. There will be occasional exceptions to rules. Those who violate the spirit of the rules may be reprimanded, even if no official rules have been broken.

Whether a policy or guideline is an accurate description of best practice is determined by the community through consensus.

Enforcement

If an editor violates the standards described in these pages, other editors should discuss the actions with original editor and persuade the person to adhere to acceptable norms of conduct. Over time it may be prudent to resort to more forceful means, such as administrator actions. In the case of gross violations of community norms, admins are likely to resort to more forceful means fairly quickly. Going against the principles set out on these pages is unlikely to prove acceptable, although it may be possible to convince fellow editors that an exception ought to be made. This means that individual editors (including you) enforce and apply policies and guidelines.

In cases where it is clear that a user is acting against policy (or against a guideline in a way that conflicts with policy), especially if they are doing so intentionally and persistently, that user may be temporarily or indefinitely blocked from editing by an administrator.

Life cycle

Many of the most well-established policies and guidelines have developed from principles which have been accepted as fundamental since AmtWiki's inception. Others developed as solutions to common problems. Policy and guideline pages are seldom established without precedent, and always require strong community support. Policies and guidelines may be established through new proposals, promotion of existing guidelines, and reorganization of existing policies and guidelines through splitting and merging.

Proposals

Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion to guideline or policy. Most commonly, a new policy or guideline documents existing practices, rather than proposing a change to what experienced editors already choose to do.

Creating a proposal

The first step is to write the best initial proposal that you can. Amendments to a proposal can be discussed on its talk page. It is crucial to improve a proposal in response to feedback received from outside editors. Consensus is built through a process of listening to and discussing the proposal with many other editors.

Once you think that the initial proposal is well-written, and the issues involved have been sufficiently discussed among early participants to create a proposal that has a solid chance of success with the broader community, start an RfC for your policy or guideline proposal in a new section on the talk page, and include the {{rfc}} tag along with a brief, time-stamped explanation of the proposal. After that, you can provide, if you want, a detailed explanation of what the page does and why you think it should be a policy or guideline.

Editors should respond to proposals in a way that helps identify and build consensus. Explain your thoughts, ask questions, and raise concerns; all views are welcome. Many editors begin their response with bold-font 'vote' of support or opposition to make evaluation easier. Editors should sign their responses.

Ending a discussion requires careful evaluation of the responses to determine the consensus. This does not require the intervention of an administrator, but may be done by any sufficiently experienced independent editor (an impartial editor not involved in the discussion) who is familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal.

Discussion may be closed as one of: Promote, No consensus, or Failed. Please leave a short note about the conclusion that you came to. Update the proposal to reflect the consensus.

Demotion

An accepted policy or guideline may become obsolete because of changes in editorial practice or community standards, or may become redundant because of improvements to other pages. In such situations editors may propose that a policy be demoted to a guideline, or that a policy or guideline be demoted to a informational page or historical page.

The process for demotion is similar to promotion. A talk page discussion is typically started, the {{rfc}} template is added to the top of the project page, and community input is solicited. After a reasonable amount of time for comments, an independent editor should close the discussion and evaluate the consensus.

Content changes

Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other page. It is not strictly necessary to discuss changes or to obtain written documentation of a consensus in advance. However, because policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure they are faithfully reflecting the community's view and to be sure that they are not accidentally introducing new sources of error or confusion.

Because AmtWiki practice exists in the community through consensus, editing a policy/guideline/essay page does not in itself imply an immediate change to accepted practice. It is, naturally, bad practice to recommend a rejected practice on a policy or guideline page. To update best practices, you may change the practice directly (you are permitted to deviate from practice for the purposes of such change) and/or set about building widespread consensus for your change or implementation through discussion. When such a change is accepted, you can then edit the page to reflect the new situation.

Talk page discussion typically precedes substantive changes to policy. Changes may be made if there are no objections, or if discussion shows that there is consensus for the change. Minor edits to improve formatting, grammar, and clarity may be made at any time. If the result of discussions is unclear, then it should be evaluated by an administrator or other independent editor, as in the proposal process. Major changes should also be publicized to the community in general; announcements similar to the proposal process may be appropriate.

The older but still valid method is to boldly edit the page. Although most editors find advance discussion, especially at well-developed pages, very helpful, directly editing these pages is permitted by AmtWiki's policies. Consequently, you should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there was no formal discussion indicating consensus for the change before it was made. Instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it and, if one hasn't already been started, open a discussion to identify the community's current views.

Editing a policy to support your own argument in an active discussion may be seen as gaming the system, especially if you do not disclose your involvement in the argument when making the edits.

Conflicting advice

If policy and/or guideline pages directly conflict, one or more pages need to be revised to resolve the conflict so that all of the conflicting pages accurately reflect the community's actual practices and best advice. As a temporary measure during that resolution process, if a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, editors may assume that the policy takes precedence.

More commonly, advice pages do not directly conflict, but provide multiple options. Editors must use their best judgment to decide which advice is most appropriate and relevant to the specific situation at hand.