User Agreement
By editing the Speculative Fiction Wiki, you agree to abide by Wikia’s Terms of Use.
- This means that by editing or participating here, you agree that:
- You are over 13 years of age.
- You will not abuse, harass, threaten or intimidate other users.
- You will not post explicit, homophobic, racist, or otherwise deliberately offensive material.
- You will not use the Wiki as a platform to advertise your goods or services.
- You will not post or solicit information which invades others' right to privacy (such as personal information).
- The above applies to all parts of our Wiki, including message walls, forums, talk pages, userpages, usernames, avatars and profile information, and breaking any of the above rules will lead to a ban, potentially a permanent ban depending on the offense.
General Guidelines
- Assume all edits are made in Good Faith. Everyone makes mistakes. If you need to correct an error someone has made, politely explain your reasoning in the Edit Summary, or contact them on their message wall. Do not engage in edit wars.
- Speculation or ambiguous information is not permitted. As a rule, if a sentence contains words such as "could", "might", "possibly" or "likely" you should question the fact's veracity. What might seem obvious to you might seem like speculation to others. Add sources where possible to backup your claim. If you are unsure, contact an Admin.
- Comments or Commentary about a book or series is allowed on the appropriate pages or as a blog review as long as you keep it polite. When adding comments to a page or you disagree with another's comments do not remove or edit over those comments. Add your own on a separate line and sign it with "~~~" (3 tildes)
- ALL content which is based on fan translations must be sourced to the original translator. Any translated work added to the wiki with no source will be removed. If you do not know the source, contact an Admin.
- You can report vandalism to staff by leaving a message on an Admin's message wall.
- Header/"Top-Hat" templates (for example, Template:Stub) should not be removed by editors without first contacting an Admin.
Critique Guidelines
- Don't criticize the author. Critiques need to be on a single book or a series.
- Don't let your personal opinions and biases overshadow the critique. A critique is a logical analysis of an argument, writing, or action. Look at why you think it works, why you think there were problems, why it might have fallen short of what you hoped for, or perhaps some of the holes in the plotline.
- Personal opinions on a book, such as this is my favorite book of all times, I was so disappointed in this book etc., without a follow up critical analysis explaining the whys, can and should go into the comments at the bottom of an article or write a review (see below).
- Critiques should be created as a blog entry with the title of "book Title (Critique)". A link will be added to the article page by one of the admins, the blog article will be added to the category Category:Critiques.
- Your Critique doesn't have to be long a paragraph or two is fine, very long critiques should be reserved for series.
Review Guidelines
- Reviews are personal opinion and should include some details of the book or series. Just like what you would write and post on any other site.
- what did you like about the book / series or what did you not like about it? Where did the author fail or what did they do well in your opinion.
- Reviews should be created as a blog entry with the title of "book Title (Review)". A link will be added to the article page by one of the admins, the blog article will be added to the category Category:Reviews.
Message Walls
- Speculative Fiction Wiki isn't Facebook, please do not engage in lengthy off-topic conversations on your message wall, as it makes our Recent Wiki Activity more difficult to moderate. Please take lengthy conversations to a free instant messaging service such as Discord, which can be used without installing the application.
- If a user asks a question on an Admin's wall, do not answer on the Admin's behalf or insert yourself into the conversation, as it blurs the line between moderators and editors.
User Pages
- Do not add personal identifying information, such as your real full name, full family names, or contact information, anywhere on your profile. It will be removed for security purposes.
- Deliberately offensive material is not permitted on user pages or user profiles, as per our User Agreement. This includes - but is not limited to - slurs of any kind.
- Do not edit other users' sandboxes or user profiles, even if you mean well. If you find an error in someone's work in progress, or have a suggestion, please bring it up on their message wall rather than editing directly.
- The only exception to this rule is collaborations between users (please contact an Admin first to let us know), or in the case of Admins patrolling redlinks, broken images, or replacing templates.
Standards
Formatting and Editing
For consistency sake, article templates have been created. They can be found at the the beginning of each category that you will likely create an article for, such as:
We have created specific templates for various functions. They should also all be listed in the Help Category
All new articles must use the appropriate format or they will be deleted. Initially an incorrectly formatted article will be assigned to the "To be Deleted" category for at least a week to give the original editor a chance to correct the article. If it isn't corrected it will be deleted. Any editor that continuous to create incorrectly formatted articles will be banned, which may be either temporary or permeant.
- All older articles are in the process of being reformatted but this is a time consuming project so will probably take a very long time, please feel free to help.
A Guideline for Editors can be found here, For Editors. If the idea of attempting any edits seem a bit intimidating at first please ask for help either on the Discuss forms or leave a message on an Admin's Wall.
Fan Work
While this is a Wiki for Speculative Fiction fan work, not all fan works will be permitted on this Wiki.
If the Fan work does not meet the standards listed in this section yet an editor still wishes for it to be on this wiki, please contact an Admin so they can judge the material accordingly or else they may be removed without warning.
Prohibited
Speculative Fiction fan work that contains this material is not under any circumstances permitted on this Wiki. If an editor believes a fan work should be added despite the rules listed below, contact an Admin. However, the answer will likely be no.
- Speculative Fiction Wiki is run on a Good Faith model for both fan work and the creators and teams behind said fan works. If we feel this Good Faith is being broken by words, actions, or attitudes, we reserve the right to Blacklist and/or permanently ban anyone acting in this manner, even if said reasons aren't listed in our Rules and Guidelines.
Image Guidelines
General Rules
- Images should be uploaded in the best quality available, and high resolution where possible.
- Pornographic or otherwise nude/sexual images are not permitted - even if they are canonical to any fan-content such as a Book Covers, CG or a sprite - as they are against Wikia’s Terms of Use. If you are unsure whether an image breaks this rule, contact an Admin before uploading.
- In image galleries, make an effort to describe what the image is in the caption as well as the source and / or artist.
Filenames
In order to ensure our image database is easy to search, filenames should, at minimum, include the name of the image and not meanless string of letters and / or numbers.
Userpages
- While uploading images for your userpage is allowed, it is strongly suggested that they are uploaded to a service such an external hosting service such as IMGUR and embedded, in order to make our image uploads easier to moderate.
- Any fanart images MUST include "Fan work" in the caption when used and in the file annotations when up loaded.
- Any images uploaded to your user page including nudity, gore, jumpscares, deliberately offensive content, or which otherwise break our User Agreement guidelines will be removed.
Vandalism
The following behavior is considered vandalism:
- Adding irrelevant or nonsensical information to any article.
- Deliberately removing correct information with no clarification in the edit summary or contacting an admin.
- Using offensive language or breaking the Wikia Terms of Use outlined in our User Agreement.
- Writing in a language other than English, because Admins cannot moderate it.
- Exceptions are given to non-English fan-content on article pages such as names or titles, however discussion on the wiki and main bodies of article should remain fully in English.
- Edit-warring with another editor (continuously editing/undoing edits on a page to change or remove another editor's contribution). Conflicts or debates between editors should be taken to the article's talk page or the individuals' message walls. If necessary, contact an Admin to mediate the dispute.
- Raiding the Wiki as part of a group of vandals making similar edits in a short period of time will result in an instant permanent ban.
There are very few policies which apply across all Wikia. These can be found on the Central Wikia at Wikia:Category:Policy.
Other policies for this Wikia should be decided by the wiki community. It's generally best to keep policies as simple as possible, and not to introduce too many rules. A growing wiki can usually do well with a few simple policies and a lot of goodwill and cooperation.
- BE BOLD! in updating pages. Go ahead, it's a wiki!
Encourage others, including those who disagree with you, likewise to BE BOLD! - Be civil to other users at all times.
- When in doubt, take it to the Discussion Board. We have all the time in the world. Mutual respect is the guiding behavioral principle of Wikia and, although everyone knows that their writing may be edited mercilessly, it is easier to accept changes if the reasons for them are understood. If you discuss changes on the article's talk (or discussion) page before you make them, you should reach consensus faster and happier.
- Respect copyright. Wikia uses the GNU Free Documentation License. Everything you contribute must be compatible with that license.
- Decent edit summaries and clear and transparent explanations are universally appreciated. Other editors need to understand your process, and it also helps you yourself to understand what you did after a long leave of absence from an article. Please state what you changed and why. If the explanation is too long, add more on the discussion page.
- Assume good faith; in other words, try to consider that the person on the other end of the discussion is a thinking, rational being who is trying to positively contribute to the project — unless, and only unless, you have firm, solid, and objective proof to the contrary. Merely disagreeing with you is no such proof.
- Don't revert good faith edits. Reverting is too powerful sometimes. Don't succumb to the temptation, unless you're reverting very obvious vandalism (like "LALALALAL*&*@#@THIS_SUX0RZ", or someone changing "1+2=3" to "1+2=17"). If you really can't stand something, revert once, with an edit summary something like "(rv) I disagree strongly, I'll explain why in Discuss." and immediately take it to the Discuss area.
- No personal attacks. Don't write that user such and so is an idiot, or insult him/her (even if (s)he is an idiot). Instead, explain what they did wrong, why it is wrong, and how to fix it. If possible, fix it yourself (but see above).
- Be graceful: Be liberal in what you accept, be conservative in what you do. Try to accommodate other people's quirks the best you can, but try to be as polite, solid, and straightforward as possible yourself.
- Use the preview button; it helps prevents edit conflicts and mistakes.