His Dark Materials:Policy

Policies
General policy Assume good faith Blocking policy Blog policy Canon policy Deletion policy Editing policy Fanon policy Image policy Layout guide Multiple accounts Neutral point of view No personal attacks Plagiarism Protection policy References Signatures Talk page policy User policy Vandalism Voting policy

Policies and guidelines have been developed on His Dark Materials to further the goal of creating a freely editable encyclopedia on His Dark Materials.

Policies apply to all editors. His Dark Materials strives to create a welcoming and fun environment for those who are civil to and assume good faith in others, seek consensus in discussions, and work towards the goal of creating an increasingly comprehensive encyclopedia about everything in the His Dark Materials multiverse.

Policies need to be approached with common sense; adhere to the spirit rather than the letter of the rules, and be prepared to ignore the rules on the rare occasions when they conflict with the goal of improving the wiki.

The number one, most important commandment of this wiki is:

Philip Pullman's word is law.

Content

First and foremost, His Dark Materials Wiki is exactly that - an online encyclopedic wiki centred around His Dark Materials series. We host information, facts, images, and official theories related to the HDM multiverse on this site, as well as discussions about the material presented here. We do not entertain any fan fiction, images, or ramblings (collectively "fanon"), advertisements, spam, or articles not directly associated with the HDM multiverse. You may talk about anything you like on your message wall, or add the same in your namespace, as long as it is legal and is in accordance with our user policy. Just remember that this wiki is not a social networking site.

All the content in this wiki (i.e. text, images, music) must be in the public domain; unless you have obtained permission to use them publicly, copyrighted files will be removed, no matter how nicely written or beautifully shot. Quotes, facts, and figures may be taken from anywhere, as long as they are sourced. All text must be original - no copying from Wikipedia or from other websites.

Any users or editors who repeatedly refuse to follow these rules may be banned at the discretion of any administrator, and their contributions deleted.

Editing

• Do not edit articles with external WYSIWYG HTML editors (especially not Microsoft Word, which is notoriously unsuitable as an HTML editor because it inserts all manner of pointless fluff in the markup, vastly inflating the page size, typically to 5x or more what the page needs to be) unless you are willing to yourself run the article through a plain-text editor, and strip out all the fluff, before you post it. You might get lucky and have another editor do this for you (assuming they have the time and patience), but in the normal course of events, it is vastly more likely that your edit will just get reverted.
• Avoid using the visual editor, as it's quite glitchy and can even make your edits look like vandalism. Use the source editor if you can.

Links

All links must where possible be in short form:

Do not use	Instead, use
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman]	[[wikipedia:Philip Pullman|]] (note that there is a | before the two closing brackets)
[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1099514/ Philip Pullman]	[[imdb:nm1099514|Philip Pullman]]
[http://hdm.fandom.com/wiki/Philip_Pullman]	[[Philip Pullman]] (the | is not needed in this example)
[http://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Cacodemon]	[[doom:Cacodemon|]] (the | is needed)
[http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Sauron]	[[[w:c:lotr:Sauron|Sauron]]

See His_Dark_Materials:Interwiki_Markup for more details.

Vandalism

Main article: Vandalism policy

If you see an act of vandalism, please revert the page to its original state and report the vandal.

Any users committing acts of vandalism will be blocked for a period of 24-72 hours. Repeat offenders will receive punishment for high treason and be blocked indefinitely (with the exception of anonymous IP addresses). Administrators may also choose to use their best discretion and block for a longer or shorter period of time. Difficult to block or otherwise exceptional vandals will be reported to a staffer at FANDOM.

No Copy Policy

All articles must be written so that they have complete and comprehensive information, at the same time being distinct from their Wikipedian counterparts. Some users and/or anons cut and paste Wikiarticles, leaving a whole tangled mess of redlinks and loops in HDM articles.

If you see an article which seems to be a copy of a Wikipedian article, you can either be bold and rewrite the article yourself, or you can paste {{dwfy}} at the top of the article and wait for someone else to dewikipediafy (abbr. "deWPfy") the article.

Writing style

"In-universe" point of view

For the sake of consistency, all articles written about people, places, or things within the His Dark Materials multiverse have to be written from an "in-universe" perspective rather than from a "real world" perspective: for example, "Lyra Silvertongue was the main character in the His Dark Materials series" should be changed to "Lyra Silvertongue was a young girl from Jordan College". This rule naturally does not apply for subjects outside the His Dark Materials multiverse, like Philip Pullman, publishers, and the books. Subjects that exist both in the real world and in the HDM multiverse should be written about from an in-universe perspective and include the {{Real world subject}} template at the top.

References

Main article: Reference policy

Should a reference be necessary, one may use the <ref> tag. For example <ref name="NL">''[[Northern Lights]]''</ref> would create a reference to Northern Lights. Please check out our reference guide for more information.

Tense

Articles should be written in the past tense, as if the editor is writing from a point in the future after the events in the series have taken place. This is to maintain a consistent and uniform feel to the articles, and to eliminate ambiguity caused by switching tenses in the middle of an article.

Spelling

Since the His Dark Materials series is originally a British series, the British editions are the final source on spelling and phrases. Small examples are such things as the usage of alternate spellings like "colour" instead of "color", or "Spectre" instead of "Specter." We should strive to remain consistent with the British versions wherever applicable. Where there exist multiple spellings, redirects should be made to the page with the British variant.

Naming of articles

Article naming of a character or person will, wherever possible, abide by the following conditions:

• An article's title should contain the full first and last names
• An article's title should contain the last name used most commonly throughout the His Dark Materials series, regardless of marriage.
  • For example: Use Lyra Silvertongue instead of Lyra Belacqua.
• Titles are not to be used in an article's title. A listing of such titles may be found here.
  • Titles include: Mr., Mrs., Lord (and derivatives)
  • The exception for this is a character who is only known by a single name, first or last, aside from their title.
  • For example: We only know Lord Asriel's first name, so "Lord" is included in the article's title. However, Carlo Boreal's first and last name is known, so "Lord" is not used in his article's title.

Article naming of other subjects will, wherever possible, abide by the following conditions:

• Article titles should be in their singular form. To make a link plural, all you need to do is add the necessary suffix after the closing brackets of a link. (e.g. to make "witches" link to the page "witch", use [[witch]]es) As you can see, making singular forms plural will be easier than making the plural form singular.
  • The sole exception is the "mulefa" article, as the singular, "zalif", is both unlike the plural and very rarely used.
• The use of an article (a, an, the) in an article's title is only acceptable when it is a part of the name.
  • For example: The Subtle Knife is acceptable because that is the full title of a book. The General Oblation Board is not acceptable, as the correct name is merely General Oblation Board.)

WikiText Style

• Headers should be in the form ==Header==, not the form == Header ==. This only applies to articles, image pages use == Summary == automatically and talkpages are free form and no changes should ever be made to header style.
• Things like [[alethiometer|alethiometer]] and [[Alethiometer|alethiometer]] are pointless, so only [[alethiometer]] should be used.

Other

• Do not go adding last names to links unless you have a valid reason to do so (e.g. if full character name hasn't been used earlier in the article). Full names should not be abused to bypass redirects.
• Do not change page numbers in ref tags to have a leading zero. Going around the wiki and changing 3 to 03 despite most pages sticking to 3 doesn't improve the wiki at all and just adds pointless edits, just stick with 3.

Stubs

If you don't know enough information on a topic, an article is way too small, or you know there's more, then mark it as a stub. To do so, just add this to the bottom of the content (A clear line above the [[Category:...]] tags):

{{stub|article}}

And people will know that it's a stub by looking at the stub category.

You can also mark an incomplete section of an otherwise-complete article by using similar markup at the end of the section:

{{stub|section}}

Clean up

If an article or section is in bad shape, then you can add to the top of it the following tag: {{cleanup|article}} or {{cleanup|section}}, as appropriate.

The full syntax is {{cleanup|article or section|date|reason}}. The date is most easily added as five tildes, ~~~~~; and you should state your reason(s) why clean-up needs to be done, as these may not be obvious to others.

Page moves and rewrites

As with any Wiki article, please do not make drastic changes and rewrites without the consent of other editors. Exceptions can be made if the article is in obviously bad shape. Otherwise, use the talk page to discuss changes to articles.

General editing

Reference edits

Do not make edits involving adding information without also adding references using the reference tags (e.g. <ref></ref>). Edits that have not been referenced can and will be reverted without fail, no matter how hard you have worked on the information you gathered.

Use the edit summary

When editing pages, try to fill in the "Summary" box above the Save/Preview buttons before saving, and make sure that you fill it in with something useful describing the edit you made and, if it's not obvious, why. For example, "fixed spelling error" or "added fun fact" or "reverted edits by 127.0.0.1" are all acceptable. Saying "made some changes" or just filling in the name of the page is not helpful, because it's information that we already have. Making your Summaries accurate and useful makes it vastly easier for the rest of us to keep track of Recent Changes and keeps everybody happy.

Use the minor edit button

If you're making a minor edit (e.g. fixing a spelling error or tweaking formatting), try to remember to check the "This is a minor edit" button below the Summary box before saving the page. Again, this will make things easier for the rest of us.

Don't use conversational style

This is an online cyclopedia. It should read like an encyclopedia, not like your diary.

• Check your spelling and grammar. Don't use internet slang (ex. "How r u?" or "c u 2nite"). If you're not 100% sure about the way a word is spelled, type it into Google or Dictionary.com. If you know that you're not the strongest speller, compose your edits in a word processor or web browser which has spell-checking (Firefox 2 and derivatives such as Lolifox, and Opera when ASpell is installed all work).
• Don't use "smileys" or "emoticons" in articles.
• Don't "reply" to content others have posted. If you think a particular point warrants discussion, post on the article's talk page. If you're 100% sure that something should be changed and don't think a discussion is necessary, just change it. Dialogue goes only on articles' talk pages.

Don't sign your edits

All contributions are appreciated, but if every user left their mark on every contribution they made, the wiki would be nothing but signatures. If you've made an edit that you're particularly proud of, the correct place to take credit is on your own user page. If you do not have a user account, we respect your anonymity, but your edits will remain anonymous, too.

Sign talk page posts

If you make a post on a discussion page or in the forum, please sign it. This is as easy as typing ~~~~ at the end of your post. If you don't have a user account, you could also sign it with your name or nickname so everybody can tell who's who when reading long conversations. Even better, create an account anyway and use the signature method described. There really is no reason not to if you're going to stick around. And getting an account gives you benefits such as being able to upload images to contribute, move pages that need moving, and the community will let you make use of your own userspace. (Anon users generally don't get that because their userspace may be shared among a number of people)

Use templates

Templates are provided for a reason (actually, several reasons); they ensure pages are consistent in appearance, properly categorised etc. For instance, don't make the mistake one editor made, of attempting to mark pages for deletion by adding ordinary text saying "this page needs to be deleted"; the page won't be added to the "Candidates for deletion" category, and thus nobody but you will know that it needs to be deleted unless they happen upon it. Use the {{delete}} template (see below) instead.

Date pages to be deleted

Don't just add {{delete}} to a page which you think needs to be deleted; instead, add {{delete|~~~~~}} (note that that's five tildes, not four) to automatically sign the time at which the template was added. Do use the actual template, not a plain-text "equivalent."