Project:Policies and guidelines

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.

It is not required to read any policy or guideline before starting to edit this wiki. No sanction can be given to an editor for not following a guideline, and informing a user of a policy is generally necessary before a sanction can be given.

All policies and guidelines applying on this wiki are described in this page, each section describing a separate policy or guideline. Guidelines in this page are in the corresponding section; everything else is policy.

Wikia policies
Some policies apply to all of Wikia and to this wiki as a result. 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 on this wiki, and are created and enforced by the Wikia staff and by volunteers.

All editors on the ROBLOX Wikia are expected to conduct themselves in accordance with the Wikia Community Guidelines and the user conduct section of Wikia's terms of use.

Decision-making and consensus
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 with the purpose to solve 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, since 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. Controversial discussions 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 may be used to interpret this policy although it is not considered a policy on this wiki.

This wiki generally uses reactive consensus (or passive consensus) rather than active consensus because of the small size and the inexperience of its community. Larger wikis like Wikipedia use active consensus for important decisions and passive consensus for less important ones. The difference is that in a wiki using active consensus, decisions can only be taken once consensus has been reached and indicates they should be taken: the action comes from the consensus. In a wiki using reactive consensus, consensus is not necessary to take a decision and apply it, but if a user expresses a concern about an action and consensus forms that the action should be reverted, that action must be reverted: consensus is then a reaction to the action.

Because this wiki uses reactive consensus, any user may decide to apply a decision if he has the technical ability to do so. Any user disagreeing with a such decision can express his concerns and invite other users to give their opinion as well. If consensus is reached against the decision, then it must be reverted.

Notability
Shortcuts [ RW:NCU] The objective of this project is to build an encyclopedia about ROBLOX, a base of knowledge which will contain information of the greatest possible quality about topics related to 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 one of the following criteria is met:


 * 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 organized by ROBLOX).
 * The subject is a group that meets at least one of these criteria:
 * has at least 15,000 members.
 * has been the subject of an entire post on the official ROBLOX blog.
 * The subject is a user who meets at least one of these criteria:
 * has at least 750,000 place visits.
 * is a ROBLOX employee whom a reasonable amount of information is known about.
 * has been the subject of an entire post on the official ROBLOX blog.
 * The subject is a place which meets at least one of these criteria:
 * has been visited at least 750,000 times.
 * has been used for an official ROBLOX event.
 * has been the subject of an entire post on the official ROBLOX blog.
 * The subject is a hat, a gear, a package, a head, a face or a group of such items that are related.

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 meets one of the criteria described above.

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 and neutrality
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.

This wiki does not have very high verification standards, unlike Wikipedia and other wikis. The verification standards are low because it is difficult to find reliable independent information about ROBLOX. For this same reason, original research is permitted as long as it is documented and explained.

All content on this wiki must be neutral. As in an encyclopedia, articles must only contain verifiable facts, and promotional material must be removed. Points of view about an issue or a subject may be presented by quoting significant proponents of them if appropriate, but it is rare that this will be necessary or useful on this wiki. Giving undue weight to a subject or a particular aspect of it is to be avoided.

Accounts, user pages and user rights
Anyone may create an account on this wiki and use it to contribute. Only one account should be used for general editing by any user, and the use of multiple accounts to evade blocks or create a false impression of support for an idea, which is also referred to as sockpuppetry, is forbidden. There are some legitimate reasons to own more than one accounts, such as running a bot, but users who are discovered to be using many accounts may have all their accounts blocked if they are using them to evade the rules.

User pages are pages located in the user namespaces. Each user has a user space which consists of his user page and all subpages of that page. Just as all other pages on this wiki, user pages are not owned by any user and anyone may edit them. A user may put pages about non-notable subjects in his user space as long as they are related to ROBLOX. Since user pages are not meant to provide general hosting, there are restrictions on what can be done with them: they are meant to be used to collaborate on the wiki.

Any user on this wiki can create and edit any page on the wiki, but only users with specific rights are able to do things such as deleting pages or editing protected pages. Users can request additional permissions on the wiki management forum board. An administrator may accept or reject a request for the chat moderator, discussions moderator, content moderator and rollback rights (note however that only a bureaucrat is able to actually give the rollback and content moderator rights). The administrator and bureaucrat rights may only be given after consensus forms in a community discussion. Users who request permissions are expected to explain why they should be trusted and why giving them these permissions is useful. Requests for removal of user rights of other users work in the same way, but users who have not made edits to the wiki for more than a year may have user rights removed directly.

A user wishing to operate a bot must create a separate account for all operations done by that bot. A bot flag may be requested for this account on the same forum board. Since edits done by bot accounts will not be shown in the recent changes or the wiki activity pages, mistakes done by the bot might go unnoticed. Community consensus is necessary for a bot flag to be given, and the bot's operator must contact Wikia for the bot flag to be given (instructions).

Other policies

 * The forum policies can be accessed from the forum's home.
 * The chat rules have their own page.
 * The achievements system on this wiki is here to encourage contributions, reward individuals, and promote community growth. Pointsgaming (massive amounts of edits performed in order to accumulate points and badges) is not acceptable and will result in being warned and eventually blocked from the wiki, particularly if the edits are harmful to the wiki.

Guidelines

 * Because this wiki is an encyclopedia (about ROBLOX), standard English should be followed.
 * American English should be used on this wiki since ROBLOX is a company based in the United States that uses American English on the entirety of its website and since most of the user base lives in the United States.
 * Profanity should not be used on this wiki except where its use is appropriate in an encyclopedic context.
 * Talk pages should not be cleared, but discussions, when they become old, may be archived.
 * When there is doubt about which style to follow in an article, the advice given in the Wikipedia manual of style should be followed.
 * Avoid creating trivia sections with lists of miscellaneous information. This information should be integrated in the article text.
 * Users may not create an article about themselves, assets they have created or groups they own, and should generally avoid creating articles when they might be in a conflict of interest.
 * "ROBLOX" and "ROBUX" should be used instead of "Roblox" and "Robux".
 * Other wikis about ROBLOX should not be linked to in articles or otherwise advertized.

Deletion
Pages may and should be deleted from this wiki when they do not fit the inclusion criteria. For articles in content namespaces (the main namespace and the Community, Class and Catalog namespaces), the inclusion criteria is determined by the notability policy. In other namespaces, different criteria may apply.


 * Files may be deleted if they are not relevant or useful to the project or if they constitute a copyright violation.
 * User and blog pages may be deleted on the request of their author unless they contain content that is particularly useful for the project.
 * Project pages may be deleted if they are not about the project.
 * Templates may be deleted if they are unused and unlikely to be used in the future.

In addition to the criteria indicated above and those indicated in the notability policy for the other namespaces, any page may be deleted if there is community consensus to delete it. Administrators may delete pages for cleaning up or maintenance. Furthermore, instead of being deleted, pages that do not meet the inclusion criteria but have useful content should be moved (without leaving a redirect) to a subpage of the page of the user who created them or was the major contributor.

Warnings and blocks
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 they have been warned and notified of the policy (such as by a message placed on their talk page or wall).

Like ROBLOX's moderation system, the wikia's warning system will provide multiple opportunities for editors to resolve any policy violations before they are blocked. Editors who are found to be acting in malice are exempt from this warning system and may be immediately sanctioned.


 * Reminders are given for minor first-time policy violations and serve to officially notify the editor of the ROBLOX Wikia's policies. For instance, a new editor who creates a page that is not in accordance with the notability policies will typically receive a reminder.
 * Warnings are given for repeated violation of minor policies or for the first-time violation of major policies. As such, an editor personally attacking another user in a forum post will qualify for a warning instead of a reminder.
 * Final warnings are given after repeated policy violations. Final warnings will typically be in conjunction with a short-term block, and editors will be warned that any violation of the discussed policy will result in a longer block. Editors who are found to be acting in bad faith, such as in instances of vandalism, may not receive a reminder or warning for a first-time policy violation but may instead receive a final warning.

The sanction system comprises of eight different block lengths and range from a one day block to indefinite. Though the length of a block will be up to the discretion of the issuing administrator, the following are guidelines for appropriate block lengths.