Wowpedia talk:Personal article policy

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Alternative policy

I was the one that initially proposed this policy, and in the wording I was trying to highlight a particular philosophical distinction between personal articles (which fan fiction or other creative works inherently are) and standard wiki articles. Revisiting it now, though, I think I just made it needlessly confusing. What would people think, in principle, of the following? The effect is much the same, but I think it's a clearer approach.

Policy

Personal articles are welcome in WoWWiki, but must be located as subpages of the author's user page. Personal articles include:

1. creative works such as fan fiction, observations, and player character biographies,
2. player biographies, and
3. guides where the author wishes to receive credit for the work, such as Aletto's Guide To Azeroth.

Objective articles on notable subjects in the Warcraft community are excepted from points 1 and 2. For example, Sword of a Thousand Truths (South Park), Leeroy Jenkins (video), and Thott all properly belong in the main namespace. Fame or infamy within a single realm or battlegroup does not qualify as notability.

Enforcement

Creative works in the main namespace will be moved to a subpage of the initial creator's user page. Guides credited to one author will have the credit removed; if the initial author wishes to maintain the guide as a personal article, he or she may move it out of the main namespace and restore the credit.

Reasoning

Q: Why can't my fan fiction or player character biography be located in the main namespace with the other articles?

A: WoWWiki is primarily an encyclopedia of information on Warcraft, and most visitors will be looking for information from official Blizzard sources. While fan works are welcomed here (unlike at many wikis), it is extremely important that we keep fan-created content separate from official content.

Q: What if I want others to edit my fan fiction?

A: You have control over your own subpages, but others can still edit them, and so you are free to invite collaboration or comment. While others are allowed to edit your work, they are doing so on the terms you have set, so you retain control over the article.

Q: Why can't I have control over a page in the main namespace?

A: In the main namespace, readers are invited to be bold in editing anything they see. If an article is not satisfactory to a reader, he or she is encouraged to completely rewrite the entire thing to make it better. It is very important for the ongoing growth and improvement of WoWWiki to maintain this atmosphere. Obviously it does not make much sense to have anyone who comes along replacing your player character's backstory with something completely new.

Q: Why can't I receive credit for the guide I worked so hard on?

A: You can, but such an article should be located as a subpage of your user page, to make it clear that you are the author and wish to receive acknowledgment for it. Giving credit to a specific individual within an article puts a proprietary stamp on it that discourages collaboration, and particularly discourages large-scale rewrites. This is contrary to the spirit and strength of a wiki, in which everything is always changing and being improved upon by many different people. It is the nature of collaboration that one's work, as good as it may be, is subject to change.

--Aeleas 23:53, 1 January 2007 (EST)

Player Characters

I think that player characters should be sub articles for the server they are related to. There are a ton of PC articles that are created by users who do not own them and then it causes problems when they reject having that PC article under their username. I propose that PC articles be separated from fan fiction designation, fan fiction will almost always have a WoWWiki user associated with them. --GRYPHON^tc 22:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposal proposal vote

Votes

Yes

1. Yes Mikk (T) 13:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC) - (Seems sane to me)
2. Yes Pzychotix 21:09, 20 May 2007 (UTC) - (Sure, but I assume that the Player Character's part of it will be implemented too. That is currently a growing problem here, and I think that the solution in the second section would work well.)
3. Yes GRYPHON^tc 23:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC) - (no comment)
4. Yes User:Adys/Sig 12:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC) - ()
5. Yes Doc Lithius 03:55, 22 May 2007 (UTC) - (Well, I already said what I wanted to say before the vote became a vote, so...)
6. Support User:Sky2042/Sig 03:55, 22 May 2007 (UTC) - (not much to say. >.>)
7. Yes User:Cynra/Sig2 17:14, 1 June 2007 (UTC) - (Wholeheartedly agree.)

No

Comments

Agreed with that. Nothing to really add, tbh. --User:Adys/Sig 22:56, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I approve this idea! I'd go ahead and move my articles to Sisters of Elune, but I wanna wait and see if the motion carries or not. ~ Doc Lithius (U)(T)(C) 00:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

What about categorization? Should they just float, like user sub-pages? Does the namespace automatically categorize them? And, by virtue of not being in the user namespace, wouldn't they be listed with the orphans?
Other than that, I didn't really know there was a problem. Could you link an example or two, for me? (Something so that I can get an idea of how bad the problem is) --DuTempete talk|contr 16:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Wattw and Kalielar are a couple of recent examples where PC articles were moved to be sub-articles of their creators userspace where they turned around moved them back to the main namespace because they weren't their characters. --GRYPHON^tc 23:30, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess I'm a bit late here, but as I posted on the recall page, I feel that providing users their own personal web space (essentially) on the wiki is against the spirit of the wiki in general, and serves no real purpose. Fan fiction, while it does have artistic merit, does not necessarily contribute anything to any user's understanding of the Warcraft universe, and may in fact hamper it depending on the exact nature of the content. Also, and in particular, I feel that Wowwiki providing hosting space for "owned" content like the guide mentioned above is a gross misuse of the wiki, and strongly against the spirit of it in general. In short, if someone wants to make their own private work, they need to do it on their own private webspace. If they want to post it here, they need to follow all of the rules and be interested in the collaborative effort that makes this wiki what it is, not to expect any sort of supervisory control or special priveleges by posting on a user page. --Maldian 16:37, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm of two minds regarding your concerns, Maldian. Concerning fanficion and player character acticles, on some (many?) servers these stories are regarded as server lore. While the events that are depicted in the fanfiction or player character articles might not be a part of the official Warcraft universe, each individual story combines to create a server environment or history that is entirely unique of other servers. Most of my insight comes from Feathermoon US which embraces this ideal, but there we've tried to cultivate a community that embraces this sort of thing.

In regards to whether or not these articles embrace the philosophy behind Wiki, I'm not sure if I am knowledgeable enough to provide good feedback on that. I'm a relative wiki neophyte, having only until recently used this site to research lore and incorporate it into my characters, who very well may have articles on this site. If we accept that these fan-made articles are important in the sense that they contribute or flesh out a server, there leaves the problem of ownership. Rather than being an article about the server and thus community property, these characters are unique creations by individuals who probably don't want to have other people flagrantly edit these articles - who else would know more about a character on a server than his creator?

I think in this WoWWiki is in a unique position. Many sites do not seem to allow personal content to be added. However, this personal content could arguably have a place on WoWWiki due to the nature of World of Warcraft itself. Despite having a linear story, many of us have used the environment to mold our characters and, with enough people interacting and involved in the community, have thereby impacted the environment in which they're based. Coming to the site and viewing articles on well-known characters from Feathermoon US, I get insight into the pixelated faces that make up our little piece of the universe and have learned and participated in events that are considered server lore due to their impact, the number of people involved (typically of both factions), and by how well-known those events are.

I like the idea of putting characters under a server. This serves to further align server-specific content to those environments in which they occurred. It helps to flesh out our little piece of Azeroth and further brings the people of that particular server together by hopefully generating a community feeling - while solving the ownership problems that have apparantly occurred! I think that the problem with doing so, however, is retaining that ownership feeling for those player character articles. I honestly feel that they should be maintained primarily by by their creators and not left to a public ownership, by virtue of being the creation of that individual. That very well may defeat the spirit of the wiki (and I'm certain it does, having read the front page again), but I'm not certain of what steps should be taken to resolve that and leave it in far more capable hands than my own.

Of course, I'm obviously a role-player here and my opinions may be biased by my perception of the game and also the community in which I participate. I'm just throwing in my 2 and hopefully providing another perception - in addition to yet another wall of text. User:Cynra/Sig 17:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

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