This page is a draft proposal integrating the content of Wiki Community/Acceptable Use Policy, Wiki Community/Acceptable Use Policy/Talk, Wiki Community/Etiquette, Wiki Community/Etiquette/Talk, Wiki Community/Not Offenses and Wiki Community/Offenses. Editing is encouraged and comments should be reserved for Wiki Community/Etiquette/Proposal/Talk. If accepted, remove this preamble and move the page content to Wiki Community/Etiquette.
Introduction
Whenever you have a lot of different people working on a project together, there need to be some basic rules or guidelines to keep everyone on the same page. This page covers the basics of RocWiki Etiquette, but should not be considered exclusive or exhaustive. In making editing decisions, be influenced by these guidelines, but the "spirit" of these guidelines is more important than the "letter" of them; RocWiki's focus is on providing useful real-world information to residents and visitors of Rochester, NY and the surrounding area.
RocWiki is a collaborative effort that welcomes everyone's contributions. In effect, everyone is an editor. As such, these guidelines may be applied inconsistently; ![[WWW]](http://rocwiki.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
Wiki-Lawyering is inadvisable. Enforcement is by the community at large, particularly the more active contributors. Members of the AdminGroup usually review the Recent Changes throughout the day.
Disclaimer
RocWiki is a community forum, open to all. It cannot accept responsibility for the opinions of its members, or for their errors or omissions, or for any consequences arising from the use of information contained herein.
Basic principles
RocWiki is a wiki, which means that [almost] ANYONE can edit [almost] ANYTHING. Awesome powers such as these come with awesome responsibilities, including, but not limited to, being helpful, civil, fair and open-minded. We encourage new contributors to start out small, adding comments. Then move up to making outright edits, then new pages. All authority on RocWiki comes from social capital, which you earn by making contributions that benefit the site's quality and utility to everyone, including non-contributing visitors.
This is not an encyclopedia
A human touch, which includes humor, is encouraged. That being said, we also want to be the 'People's guide to Rochester". Some complaints have been filed with the [previous] complaints ept. about humor being distracting or problematic. There is a balance somewhere in there, god only knows if we'll ever find it. When in doubt, make the joke anyway, and someone will let you know if it's out of line. Remember that we live in an age where potential employers/schools search for applicants on the Internet. Even if they don't violate the standards of etiquette on RocWiki, your comments and edits may reflect back upon you in the future.
Hint 1: Be mindful of the fact that text-based communications can't relay tone of voice or body language. Your humor may be misinterpreted if you are not careful and it is important that you be respectful of that reality.
Hint 2: If you're that someone mentioned in the first paragraph of this heading, please let them know on their user page, not the content page. This is especially true when dealing with sensational or suspicious comments. This way people won't have to sort through meta-conversations to find relevant information. When conversations get wildly out of hand on a content page, you may find the [[stop]] tag helpful.
Hint 3: There is a wide variety of what passes as 'humor' in the world. At least try not to be outright offensive, and know that discriminatory stuff is going to get nuked pretty quick. If contributors think you crossed a line, they will let you know. If you catch someone crossing 'the line', please don't be holier-than-thou. Comment on it and explain why, and what was offensive, and let the person explain themselves if it's not too bad. If it's pretty offensive go ahead and remove it, but explain why and what-for.
Hint 4: Deleting bad humor is a serious matter and you should expect to take a great deal of heat for it. Don't do it lightly. You can always post concerns to the Google group or the user page of an active member of the AdminGroup.
Don't be a jerk
Differences of opinion will arise from time to time. This is a Good thing. However, just because contributors have strongly opposing beliefs on a topic does not permit them to engage in personal insults, either explicit or implicit. What is implicit? Well that is in the mind of the beholder and is best left to the contributor's own judgment. Conversely, the person being insulted should do everything in their power to resist succumbing to the urge to respond. What is an insult? Some insults are blatantly obvious. Other comments are insulting to no one, except those cannot abide humor or criticism. If a person seems like a jerk, just stay away from them, no matter how they might provoke you.
In other words, make every effort to be sensitive to other people's feelings, but also wear a thick skin.
Preview changes
STOP! Click Preview before saving your changes. You can see what your edits will look like and correct any mistakes. Simply scroll up to make further changes. This is also a golden opportunity to correct spelling and grammar mistakes.
Explain changes
Always supply an explanation (in the box right below Please comment about this change:) to describe what change you made to a page, even if the comment length is longer than the change itself. The comments summarize the changes and can be examined in the change-log for a page. It is much easier to find a specific change (a fictional example might be the deletion of the website for a business) if the change log included a comment that indicated that specific change. Include minor changes in comments so the search for a specific alteration can skip those entries.
Separate fact and opinion
Separate fact and opinion. This seems to be more of an issue on pages about businesses where an author will praise or disparage an establishment based on their own opinions. Facts include things like location, decor, and prices — try to keep the factual part of a description bias-free, somewhat positive, or at least friendly. Opinions include the quality of services, details of an individual visit, or basically anything where another individual might have an entirely different experience. Opinions are best expressed in a Comment. Feel free to add a Comment block to the page if it's lacking one.
Talk, talk talk
Feel free to edit anything at will, but you have to realize that the 'revert' option is easy to use, so you should comment on edits if you feel they need to be justified.
If you see something of opinion you disagree with, comment on it in the Talk section before you just edit or edit it then leave a comment. There is nothing worse than seeing something you saw as OK changed, and not understanding why someone had a problem with the sentence or paragraph.
Edit to add more information
Edit pages to add more information rather than remove information. If you find a factual error, you may wish to note it as a misconception and explain why it's wrong rather than just deleting it. Avoid removing facts just to parallel the structure of other pages — start updating the other pages instead. In cases where a page needs to be cleaned up, try to move whole sentences and paragraphs instead of rephrasing: you may miss a piece of information that was important to someone else and it will seem like you arbitrarily deleted it.
Maintain a neutral point of view
Neutral Point of View is often abbreviated to NPOV. The body of a page, with the exception of user pages, should be fact oriented. See NPOV/Definition for more information.
Hint: This seems to be particularly challenging when writing about your own business, so business owners should be especially careful.
On editing or deleting comments
One of the formerly "unspoken rules" of RocWiki is that each user's comments are their own. Nobody else should edit those comments. If you disagree with an opinion expressed in a comment, just add a comment with your own opinion. This of course implies that it is also inappropriate to edit other users' comments for grammar, spelling, etc. The only acceptable edit to someone else's comment is to "wikify" page names if another page was mentioned in the comment. This enhances the interconnectedness of the wiki. Malicious editing of other users' comments is potentially a bannable offense.
Note that deleting or editing comments isn't even effective! Changes are never lost on RocWiki (well, almost never). Simply clicking the Info button allows anyone logged in to see who made which additions and deletions and when they did it and their ![[wikipedia]](http://rocwiki.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/inter.png){kind=small}
IP address at the time. It also allows your fellow editors to easily revert your changes.
That said, comments should be reasonably civil and should be relevant to the rest of the page content, including comments. Personal grudges and in jokes, for example, don't belong on business pages. Likewise, meta-commentary should be considered eligible for deletion once the issue at hand has been resolved. If you think a comment is completely irrelevant to the page content, move the comment to a talk page and discuss it there. This allows other interested community members to weigh in without cluttering up the main page.
Editing your own page
RocWiki has 'user pages' (currently just the username) for users to have a page about themselves where the put information. For users that are a 'public figure' or public figures that are NOT users, it's generally good form to not edit your own page. In the near future, there will be a Users section for wiki users, separate from the please-don't-edit-about-yourself 'person' page. If you are a user, and a moderately public person, please put your "user" page as "User/WikiUserName", and leave the Your Name (With Spaces) page alone.
We don't have an official policy, but we will do allow contributors remove/close pages for people if they are not reasonably a 'public' figure (ie, not in the news, no newspaper article on them, not the head of a community group, company, etc) if they are asked. For public figures, the page usually end up staying after a discussion.
Please use your user page as a place to post information about yourself (as much or as little as you want to share with us). Your user page is not the place for school projects or random non-Rochester related info.
Be civil
No personal attacks, explicit or otherwise (again, be sensitive). Conversely, operate on the assumption that you yourself are not under attack (again, be open-minded). Make every effort to help people resolve problems, rather than criticizing their mistakes. Suggesting fixes is almost always better than pointing out problems. This is particularly emphasized when dealing with new contributors, who may make innocent mistakes that violate these guidelines.
Posting personal information for other people is a very bad idea. In general, encourage them to do it themselves. Likewise, impersonating another person, publishing criminal speech (including, but not limited to, hate speech, slander, threats and copyright infringing materials) is a very serious matter. Do not publish content that engages in personal attacks, or is excessively violent, incites others to violence, threatens to do violence to another person(s), or contains content which is disreputable or contains harassing, or hateful language.
Take ownership
RocWiki prefers an open discourse over side conversations and secrecy. Along those same veins, contributions from un-established users with handles that don't reflect their real name are generally subject to heavier review from their fellow contributors.
Business owners
Business owners are strongly encouraged to contribute. We ask that you do so as yourself and not as your business. Make your relationship to the business clear on its page. Our visitors, who may also be your customers, greatly appreciate such transparency. Think of RocWiki as a great tool for getting feedback.
Let sleeping dogs lie
It's tempting to revisit controversial decisions you disagree with, but it's rarely productive to do so, since it almost always results in the same heated, lengthy, and time/energy draining discussions leading to the same conclusion that was reached in the last round.
Therefore, for issues already raised, discussed, and decided upon, reopen the discussion only if you have significant new information that would reasonably prompt reconsideration of the original decision.
Keep it relevant
Pages should be about Rochester and of general interest. If something is very general, and there is probably a Wikipedia page on it, we will probably close/remove it. Please don't make pages about your pet fish. But if you have a compulsion and you absolutely have to, no one is going to kick you out over it.
Keep conversations about businesses on their pages and conversations about people on their pages. When comments start to overwhelm the page content, it is worth migrating the comment box to a /Talk page, replacing the former comments area with a message at the bottom directing visitors to the /Talk page to view/add comments. Meta-comments, which may discuss the relevancy of other comments should be posted to a /Talk page - even if that means that you end up with a double-talk (/Talk/Talk page).
Tolerate mistakes
Misinformation sometimes appears. So do spelling and grammar errors, errors of judgment, and even the occasional swear word. New contributors will mangle formatting and violate templates. None of these are offenses. Just go in and fix them (with the exception of modifying comments).
Vandalism, spamming, trolling
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Multiple posts from multiple users from the same IP address
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Knowingly adding misinformation is very bad
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Assuming false identities to over-emphasize positive or negative comments
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Willfully adding inflammatory content, including comments
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Posting criminal or copyright infringing material
We have a low tolerance for these behaviors. Note that the majority of them are a matter of intent, rather than action. Be forewarned that we act quickly when we think that these activities are happening and may delete or edit material or even ban users and IP addresses as the need is perceived. Discussion usually follows.
All very bad:
Dispute resolution
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Post a comment on the appropriate /Talk page
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Post a topic to the Google group
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Contact an active member of the AdminGroup
There are several venues for resolving disputes. They are:
