Codex Gamicus:Policy

These are the policies that the community has agreed to make standard. If you would like to challenge them, or add some for discussion, please feel free to bring it up in the talk page.

On Copying from Wikipedia

Copying & pasting articles from Wikipedia is generally discouraged. The information on Wikipedia is, like this site, offered under CC-BY-SA (and, unless imported from a CC-only licensed page, the GNU Free Documentation License), and as such can be moved to Wiki Gaming so long as a reference is made pointing back to the original article on Wikipedia. Most articles should already have a pointer to their corresponding Wikipedia article, regardless of their sourcing.

Whenever possible, information originating from Wikipedia should be expounded and elaborated upon, as Wiki Gaming exists primarily for broadening the amount of information that can be included in wiki article about games and gaming. Use the information available at Wikipedia to assist in the base information for your article, or more importantly, use the sources listed in the Wikipedia article to source the article here at Wiki Gaming.

In some cases, certain articles on Wikipedia will be tagged for removal and relocation to a dedicated games wiki. In that case, the article should be moved completely to Wiki Gaming and/or an appropriate gaming Wiki (if one exists and the content is wanted there), and a note left on its respective Wikipedia Talk page.

On Article Writing

On Point of View

Acceptable on rare occasions: As advertised, Wiki Gaming is not as dry, stringent, or strict as Wikipedia. It's okay to have a little bit of personality in your writing. Point of View is generally accepted by the community when it's something that most people can agree on. For example: Superman 64 is not a very good game. Or: People laugh at Derek Smart.

However, don't just say "so-and-so blows", be less blunt. Also, avoid making value judgements on popular games where you know most people are going to disagree with you. This means, DON'T put "Halo 2 sucks" just because you and your friends think so. If it's a really popular game, then you can safely assume that you shouldn't put your point of view without CLEARLY labelling it as a minority opinion, and giving a few reasons why some might feel that way.

If you want to check if a game sucks see the ratings on Gamespot, IGN, and 1UP.com. If these sites claim they suck, then mention and explain why they suck.

Also, if anyone happens to edit out your point of view to make it neutral, just let it go. Don't furiously throw it back in because you think it has to lean one way. That will just start an edit-fest, and it doesn't really matter if an article is neutral or leaning towards popular consensus.

On Vandalism

Don't vandalise or spam: Putting hidden links on our page will not raise your site's Google pagerank or anything. Seriously, it won't. They don't work here. For more on the warning policy, see our Vandalism page.

On Jokes Pages

Lay off of them for now: Yeah, some of them are funny. Some of them are not. Right now, we would like there to be no Joke articles for a very very long time, unless you are sure that it is the greatest joke in the world that will make people come to the site in droves to witness its humor. Otherwise, let's focus on making real content.

We can't just open up the flood gates on non-serious articles, because then that's all anyone would ever do, and it wouldn't be a gaming wiki anymore.

On Templates

Just make sure they don't exist already: Feel free to make templates, but make sure they don't exist already. See Useful Templates for a list of them.

New Policies

Accepted changes will be applied to the wiki:

• The current list of admins and bureaucrats will be trimmed down to reflect those that have been active for at least three or more months.
• A new request for admin process has been implemented.
• Efforts will be made to seek out wikis who would like to be linked to and how they might like to be represented here. A banner at the top of major pages would link to specific wikis.
• Import gaming-related articles from various wiki-owned gaming sites (such as pc.gamepedia.com).
• Have game-savvy users create original editorial content for existing and upcoming games.
• Clean up and revamp articles that are direct imports from wikipedia. Preferably articles would be recreated from scratch; in the future, wikipedia articles would not be copied directly.
• Go through User Pages and delete those that are obvious spam, such as advertisements for other sites. (Completed)
• Existing content will not be removed.
• Should content be created that is later part of an entire wiki about a game, that content will not be deleted either.
• For existing wikis that are represented here, only summary information would be present from here on out (excepting case-by-case). IE - keep the current content, but if there's already summary info, refrain from making any more.
• Regarding overlapping content with other wikis - if there's a fear that the minutia of a game won't be fully detailed here because it goes beyond summarizing, interwiki links are easy to use that point to full information.
• Anytime info is presented on the wiki it should be done with home templates.