Project:Inclusion criteria

The scope of Online Communipedia is to document the existence, governance, history, events, and policies of online gaming organizations. The lifespan of online communities tend to be short, and many fail to launch. To maximize the avoidance of wasting editor or reader time, an online community must meet all of the criterion defined below in order to be eligible for an article.

Not meet the private community criteria.

A private community is defined as an organization with an explicit statement of intent to remain privately access wherein all and/or a majority of their material/communications are inaccessible to the public. Online Communipedia finds the dissemination of private information unethical, and so to respect the wishes of such communities, articles may not be created about them in whole.

Have existed for at least 12 months.

Many online communities fail to maintain sufficient interaction at the beginning for the owner and/or staff team to hold their interest, and thus they tend to "pass away". Most times this occurs without fanfare, and relevant material regarding the community may still exist but lack upkeep or use. This increase the chances of a community having worthwhile history to warrant an article.

Have at least 100 registered members.

Wikipedia defines a community as a "social unit with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity". This is a very broad range, and a "social unit" can encompass tens of people or thousands. Organizations which tend to meet or exceed 100 registered members are typically in line with the other eligibility criterion while also having worthwhile material to place into an article.

A "registered member" is defined as an individual registered to a website or communications platform (e.g TeamSpeak 3, Discord). Followers or subscribers to social media platforms (e.g Reddit, Twitter, Facebook) do not count towards inclusion.

Have a staffing structure dedicated to setting standards and enforcing policy.

There are plenty of organizations that meet the typical standards for a community but what really happened is the member count, intended to remain modest, later ballooned. This project is focused on communities that have structures, no matter how small, dedicated to helping the public and maintaining it's own vision. These tend to be communities that decided to be public at the outset, which is what the project is aiming for.

Have a permanent presence on the internet.

It would be unacceptable for an article to be written about a community when others cannot independently verify the community existed at all. Thus, there must be some permanent record of its existence that can be referenced by others. While this criterion uses the image of the Internet Archive, any suitable alternative would suffice. Another way to meet this criterion is if 3 or more files used as sources are uploaded and successfully authenticated prior to the article being created.

Be an organization dedicated to playing video games.

There are a plentiful number of communities that exist which meet all other criterion but have nothing to do with gaming. Thus, it must be unequivocally clear that the community is primarily focused on being an amalgamation of persons desiring to play a video game. This can be demonstrated through the dedicated hosting of servers, the theme of the community's platform, and/or the publicly stated intent of the community's existence.

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