His Dark Materials:User 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

All contributors to His Dark Materials Wiki are expected to read through all policies and know what is expected of them. The wiki's user policy is meant to keep people focused on editing the Wiki as opposed to customizing their user pages.

User pages

This section of the policy is meant to encourage users to work more on articles, and not spend all of their time on customizing their userpages. Your user page is not meant to be your main contribution to the wiki. Users who edit their user pages excessively will be subject to sanction.

However, user pages do serve a useful purpose, and regular users are encouraged to create a userpage which gives some information about themselves, and helps organize their contributions to the wiki. For example, they may wish list their collection of His Dark Materials references, advertise contributions they are proud of, or list articles they intend to work on. They may also include their user name on other wikis or HDM fan sites, link to a personal page on another site, list the languages they speak, or talk about their favourite characters in the series.

User pages in violation of the following guidelines will be edited or deleted in order to comply with these policies. Users repeatedly in violation of these rules may be blocked.

Standards

1. User pages must not be put in categories which would cause them to be mistaken for "real" articles. Likewise, {{Title}} must not be used to make the userpage appear to be a "real" article.
2. Secondary accounts set up primarily in order to have a second user page are disallowed, according to the multiple accounts policy page.
   1. If a user wishes to change his or her name, their old pages must be either moved to subpages of the new user name's page, or deleted. The original user page may be kept, if content is restricted to a note redirecting the reader to the new user name.
3. User subpages not containing fan fiction are allowed, although they are still subject to the user image policy and must be of some usefulness to the project (like a personal sandbox, a to-do list, a contributions page (excluding image galleries), or a toolbox linking to maintenance tasks and useful templates.)
   1. User subpages unrelated to His Dark Materials or the wiki are not allowed.
   2. This specifically includes weblogs, guestbooks, and social networking more suited to sites such as MySpace or Facebook. Guestbooks should be put at Wikia Guestbook.
   3. Likewise, a guestbook section or a weblog should not be put on a user's main page.

Fan fiction

User page fan fiction must be restricted to either the main user page or a single subpage. This does not mean a user can put fanon on both a user page and a subpage, or on a series of subpages. Users who want to make more than one fan fiction page are encouraged to go to a fan fiction hosting site, such as this one. User page fan fiction is limited to 250 words or less.

User images

To qualify for the privileges of user images, one must have made at least seventy-five productive (non-vandalism, non-fanon) edits in our "Main" namespace articles. Users must also follow the below guidelines:

1. No more than three images intended solely for a userpage or customized signature may be uploaded by a single user.
2. User images must be tagged with the {{user-image}} template.
3. The total filesize of these images must be below 250 kB. It is strongly suggested that none of these images are larger than 100 kB.
4. Images being used on actual articles as well as a user's page are not counted towards the limit of three.
5. Images being used on officially approved, shared userboxes do not count towards these limits.
6. Images must be "safe for work": no nudity, excessive gore, or other content which is unsuitable for a family audience, or would be likely to disturb or offend other users.
7. Users with no contributions to the main namespace for more than 6 months are considered inactive and lose their privileges in regards to user images.
8. Hiding data on His Dark Materials Wiki is strictly forbidden. The wiki may not be used to transfer any data covertly. Attempts to use the wiki for this purpose, including but not limited to steganographic embedding within image files will be penalized with an immediate permanent block from editing. Detection and determination of such attempts is at the discretion of the administration, and the administrator who discovers the data trafficking attempt has final blocking authority.
9. Hotlinking images uploaded from the wiki on external sites for personal use is prohibited. Non-article images found to be hotlinked in such a way are subject to immediate deletion. This does not prohibit the hotlinking of images which are used in the content namespace for discussion or research purposes. If an image in the content namespace is found to be hotlinked for personal use, it may be moved to a new location without notice.

User talk page policy

See also: Project:Talk page policy

Archiving

Users may archive their talk pages when they grow too unwieldy to scroll through (this means at least a few screens long). If a user wishes to archive their talk page they should move it to a subpage of their talk page. A link to the archive subpages should be placed at the top of the current talk page. Alternately a user may clear their talk page. The suggested title for an archived talk page [[User talk:<Your username>/Archive #]], where # is a number.

There are two methods for archiving. Which method is used is up to the user's preference.

Method #1

1. Create a new article with the title "User talk:your username here/Archive" (or Archive 1, Archive 2, etc.)
2. Cut whatever text you want to archive from your talk page, paste it in the new article and save.
3. Add a link to the new Archive at the top of your talk page.

This method will keep the talk page's History in the "main" talk page.

Method #2

1. Move your current talk page to "User talk:your username here/Archive" (or Archive 1, Archive 2, etc.)
2. Remove the redirect from "User talk:your username here", that should appear once you've made the move.
3. Add a link to the new Archive at the top of your talk page.

This method will move the History from that time period from the "main" talk page to the new Archive.

Editing

When editing a talk page, users should respect the talk page's owner in every way possible. Abusive language, threats, etc. will not be tolerated; see no personal attacks for more information. If you feel a user has made a personal attack or in some other way violated your talk page, please contact an administrator.

Comments left on a user's talk page should not be deleted unless they are abusive and/or threatening, and then it is encouraged that the user archive the comment instead of deleting it and bring the comment to the attention of an administrator. Under no circumstances should a user delete a comment (whether they made it or not) on someone else's talk page.

A user may add a header asking users to abide by other rules or ask for a particular formatting to a message. These are to be followed except where they contradict current policy.