Project:Policies and guidelines

'This policy is a draft. The current guidelines for editing this wiki are elsewhere'.

Guidelines are developed by the community of this wiki to describe best practice: they are used to resolve conflicts when there is a disagreement about what should be done about a content issue or about another matter. Policies, on the other hand, are not just recommendations: they are principles that members of the community must follow.

As an example, let's take a situation where an article is created about a player on this wiki, and let's suppose there is a guideline saying that all articles about players should have an infobox (there is no such guideline, this is an example). The creator of the article has not put an infobox in the article, but a user adds one to the article as he thinks it should have one. The creator then starts a discussion on the talk page where he indicates that he disagrees and that he thinks the infobox should be removed. Because there is a guideline specifying that all articles about players must have an infobox, the user may reply on the talk page and refer to the guideline, which the creator may not have known about, and explain that the infobox must remain.

It is not required to read any policy or guideline before starting to edit this wiki. No sanction may be applied to a user for not following a guideline, as these are only present to resolve conflicts where many users disagree. Sanctions may be applied to users who do not follow a policy, but only after being warned and notified of the policy (such as by a message placed on his talk page or wall). There is an exception to this rule: if a user is acting in bad faith and it is likely that he would not follow the policy even if notified of it, then a sanction may be applied on him immediately, although a warning should still be provided.

All policies and guidelines applying on this wiki are described in this page, each section describing a separate policy or guideline. Everything that is not explicitly marked as a guideline should be considered as a policy.

Wikia policies
Some policies apply to all of Wikia, and therefore, to this wiki. These include the Wikia terms of use, the privacy policy, the licensing conditions for content on wikis and some other policies. These policies are out of the control of the community of this wiki, and are dealt with by the Wikia staff.

Decisions
The term decision refers here to the process of decision-making. Decisions, on this wiki, include content decisions, sanctions to apply to a user, changes to guidelines and policies, changes to wiki functionality or configuration and any process consisting of the selection of a course of action among several alternatives. Trivial or uncontroversial decisions may be taken by anyone with the ability to apply them. An administrator, for example, may block for a reasonable period of time a user who has vandalized articles if doing so is not likely to produce controversy. Similarly, a user may change the name of a page if that name contains an unintentional spelling mistake immediately without having to go through any process.

The preferred way to take decisions that are neither trivial nor controversial is through consensus, as the power on this wiki is and should ultimately be in the hands of its community. Consensus about a problem is said to be reached when the people involved in that problem consent on a particular decision to take to solve the problem. Consensus in this instance does not refer to majority or unanimity, and it is not reached through a vote. Editors must take into account the legitimate concerns of other editors about a decision, and only such concerns are taken into account when it is needed to determine whether consensus has been reached.

Consensus must typically be reached in a specific area, usually on a talk page or on the forums. There are two types of consensus: local consensus and global consensus. Global consensus is necessary to perform major site-changing changes and is usually necessary to modify a policy or a guideline; it is generally reached on the wiki's forums, and require participation from a reasonable number of users. Local consensus is used when it is necessary to take a decision about an article's content, about a user or about an isolated area of the wiki. Local consensus may be used to override a guideline for a particular article and guidelines that are frequently overridden should be considered for revision, but global consensus is necessary to modify a policy (although local consensus on the talk page of the policy is acceptable for trivial changes). Local consensus is generally reached on the talk page of the page or user concerned, but is acceptable anywhere as long as it has reasonable visibility to people who would be interested in participating.

A discussion of which the purpose is to choose a solution to a problem may be closed when consensus is reached: whether consensus was reached and what it was is determined by the user who closes the discussion, who will almost always be an administrator, as administrators are considered to be trusted by the community; non-administrators may also close discussion if this seems necessary, although this is rare. The person closing a discussion does not have to consider it as a vote, as it is not one: he should reflect on applicable guidelines and policies and consider the concerns raised during the discussion to determine whether consensus was reached and what it was if it was reached. Discussions which contained controversy should only be closed by an uninvolved user, and the user who closes a discussion should always consider the outcome of the discussion and not his personal opinion. Consensus as it is described in this policy is explained in more detail in the corresponding Wikipedia policy, which, although it is not considered as a policy on this wiki, may be used to interpret this particular one and to figure out technical details.

Administrators and bureaucrats may take any reasonably major decision that they have the ability to apply even if it has some possibility of being controversial if they sincerely believe it would be beneficial to the wiki. Decisions taken in this manner may be overridden by local or global community consensus, as the community always has the last word in any decision that concerns this project (excluding the Wikia policies and decisions by the Wikia staff). This is an exception to the rule described above believed necessary because of the inexperience and small size of the community on this wiki; it bases itself on the assumption that administrators and bureaucrats are sufficiently trusted by the community to be assumed good faith and judgment from when having to take major decisions.

Notability
The objective of this project is to build an encyclopedia about ROBLOX, a base of knowledge which will contain information of the greatest quality possible about ROBLOX. Normal encyclopedias cannot include articles about everything, and this is true for this wiki as well. Because of this, a notability policy is necessary. Articles should usually only be about one subject (but that subject can be divided into smaller subjects which can themselves be divided into smaller and smaller subjects). As a general rule, subjects may be covered in this wiki if the one of the following criteria is met: Additionally, there may not be an article about a subject if there is global or local consensus that the subject is not notable. This means that there may not be an article about a subject if the community decides that the subject is not notable, even if the subject mets one of the criteria described above.
 * There is consensus (local or global) that the subject should be covered in the wiki
 * The subject is a functionality, an aspect or an important element of ROBLOX; specifically, there can be an article about a subject if it is one of the following:
 * an element of the scripting API (in which case it should have a page in the Class namespace), such as a class or a function (properties, methods, events and callbacks are described on the page of the class they belong to)
 * a feature or a functionality of the game engine, of the studio or of the website
 * an important event related to ROBLOX (such events do not necessarily need to be organised by ROBLOX)
 * The subject is a group that mets at least one of these criteria:
 * has more than 15,000 members
 * has been the subject of an entire post on the official ROBLOX blog
 * The subject is a user who mets at least one of these criteria:
 * has more than 500,000 place visits
 * is a ROBLOX employee about who a reasonable amount of information is known
 * has been the subject of an entire post on the official ROBLOX blog
 * The subject is a place which mets at least one of these criteria:
 * has been visited more than 500,000 times
 * has been used for an official ROBLOX event
 * has been the subject of an entire post on the official ROBLOX blog

The entirety of this policy applies only to content pages, which are referred to as articles (though sometimes the terms page and article are interchanged, including in policies such as this one and others). Pages in the project namespace must be about the project, user pages must be about users and file pages must be about files. Issues related to other namespaces are not covered by this policy and are left to community consensus.

Verifiability
Information on this wiki must be verifiable. This does not mean that every statement must be supported by a reference (although addition of references to articles is recommended); rather, it means that when a statement in an article is challenged (when someone asks for a reference or explanation of the source of a statement, either on the talk page of the article, on the talk page of the user who added it or directly inline in the article with the citation needed template), it may be removed after some time if no verification of it is provided. In articles about players, places or groups, dubious statements may and should be removed immediately unless explanation of them was provided; this is because incorrect information in such articles can cause harm to the subjects of these articles or promote them. Content of promotional nature should also be removed immediately until verification of it can be provided.

It should be noted that this wiki does not have very high verification standards, like Wikipedia. The verification standards are rather low as it is difficult to find reliable independent information about ROBLOX and original research is permitted as long as documentation and explanation of it is provided.