Project:Content policy

In accordance with the project's scope, the following policy lays out what types of content should be included and how such content should be presented.

Language

For the purposes of upholding project policies all content written or displayed on this project, anywhere on this project, must be in English.

Neutrality

All content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing information included on the wiki fairly and without bias.

This project aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. The aim is to inform, not influence. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean the exclusion of certain points of view. It means including all points of view. Observe the following principles to achieve the level of neutrality that is appropriate.

• Avoid stating opinions as facts. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action" but may state that "genocide has been described by John So-and-so as the epitome of human evil."
• Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements.
• Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by sources should normally be directly stated in the project's voice.
• Prefer nonjudgmental language. A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject (or what reliable sources say about the subject), although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone. Do not editorialize.
• Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. When writing material, ensure that when discussing events or behaviors that the relevant support for each position is properly attributed. For example, a statement such as "Multiple members commented that the behavior from Admin JDoe57 were inappropriate, with BillyB43 commenting that their behavior was a good change of pace" would be inappropriate. It insinuates that BillyB43's view on the matter was within an equivalent scope to that of a large portion of members, which is not accurate.

Preserving community informational security

Access to information varies based on both the community's genre and on the position a person has in it. For example, a competitive community may restrict access to tactics and training to only those in relevant teams.

Online Communipedia aims to respect the fact that certain information is intended to remain private. To this end, no information from a community may be added to an article unless it is accessible to a general member in the relevant community, or the public at large, prior to it's inclusion. Such information may be removed both from the article and the public archives.

The above said, community leaders may not petition Online Communipedia to remove information simply because they do not wish the information to be displayed. This project aims to write about communities neutrally. This includes information and events which may cast a negative light. Furthermore, while Online Communipedia works to respect a community's privacy, it is not in the business of championing it. Information released to the general membership or public at large anywhere on the internet, even if leaked or released accidentally, may be written about.

General membership

"General membership" is defined based on how one participates in the community.

1. If participation lacks a barrier (e.g a public Minecraft server), then general membership would be whatever a member of a forum (or any other communications platform) that is newly registered could see.
2. If participation requires a manual review of some kind (e.g an application process), then general membership would be what a member newly accepted into the community could see.

Any information that requires being appointed to a named position (e.g "moderator", "manager", "police officer") can safely be assumed to be protected by this policy.

This will not always be a simple determination. Administrators are encouraged to be liberal in the enforcement of this policy if it is borderline.

Private communities

Some communities prefer to remain wholly private and selectively decide who may interact with them. To enforce this, they may decide to restrict who can access any of their member-on-member communications. Such communities are called "private communities" by Online Communipedia. Note that this does not apply to communities wherein access to material is granted automatically by an automated system upon some kind of registration or upon acceptance of an invitation (e.g Discord).

Communities that fall under this classification may not have articles created about them. This is both to respect their privacy and avoid unnecessary conflict. Editors may reserve the name of such a community by creating the page and invoking Template:Private community declaration, though it is not required.

At the discretion of administrators, details discussed in other venues (such as talk pages or articles of peripherally related communities) regarding such a community may be subject to removal both from the page and the public archives, per the preservation of community informational security policy, if deemed harmful to particular members of the community or the community's operations.

Verifiability

Facts must have a source that sufficiently proves its accuracy given that it isn't exceedingly obvious. For example, it is unnecessary to provide sourcing to support a community's name - that tends to be predominantly displayed anywhere the community is discussed.

Any statement of fact made within an article (aside from necessary synthesis, see below) that is unsourced may be removed and not be reintroduced until a source is provided for it.

Sourcing

A source is material where information comes from, and with few exceptions anything can be a source. Sources should be used that are reliable for the information they are supporting.

For example, a fact such as "John Doe was forcefully removed due to being arrested in real life" would necessitate a statement from a real-world news article speaking of the arrest. A random person making mention of it off hand is insufficient, though if that is the only source, this project should present it in the voice of said person (e.g "BlueIcicle stated that John Doe was arrested" rather than "John Doe was arrested").

All sources should be capable of being independently checked by another editor. If a source is exclusively available to only a select group of people within a community (and was not in the past more widely available), the source may not be used, and any information derived from it may be in violation of our policy on maintaining community informational security. An exception would be sourcing uploaded to Online Communipedia, such as a screenshot of a communications platform, that is later deleted or deprecated. So long as the media was authenticated in the past, it may remain.

Presumption of staff integrity

Statements from a staff member on the community's own activities or structure are presumed to be accurate for the purposes of sourcing. Statements made from former staff members are not covered by this presumption, as it is likely their access to up-to-date information has been terminated.

This presumption is severed on a statement-by-statement basis if:

• Written material (e.g rules, internal documents) contradicts them.
  • In this case, the written material takes priority.
• Any other staff member contradicts them.
  • In this case, the staff member of the highest relevant rank takes priority.
  • If a current staff member contradicts a statement made in the past by a former staff member, the current staff member takes priority.
  • If there is no clear hierarchy among the active contradictory staff members, and there is no written material discussing the subject, Online Communipedia should document the contradiction rather than make a statement 1 way or the other.

Synthesis

It is often necessary to synthesize information - or take information from multiple sources and draw a conclusion from it in the project's voice - in order to describe a community. This is most common when writing about a community's structure, as it is rarely explained in a policy compliant venue. By extension, sourcing will probably not exist that outright proves synthesis, which is acceptable; but sourcing must still be provided for the facts being used within the synthesis.

Synthesis is staunchly prohibited when writing material regarding particular events within a community's history. Such content must remain firmly neutral, only present what sourcing states, and only present the facts in the voice of relevant sources.

Media and verifiability

It is acceptable and often necessary for media (e.g screenshots, video, PDFs) to be used as sourcing. The age of online communities having forums that are easily archived with the wayback machine has generally passed, and has been replaced with Discord servers and their equivalent. However, media is ripe for abuse with the prevelance of 3rd party editing tools.

Any media uploaded to Online Communipedia with the intent of being used as a source must be unmodified and be tagged with the template {{Media auth}}.

The only type of modification permitted is cropping, such as to only get a single message in a conversation, so as to avoid editors having to capture an entire window or screen for all of their media. Any other modification (e.g censoring text, names, images; changing text from what was there originally; cutting off a portion of a message) is prohibited.

Any media used as a source needs to be tagged with {{Media auth|auth=n}} so that readers can be warned to have healthy skepticism. All files with auth= set to n are placed in the maintenance category Category:Media needing authentication, which can be patrolled by administrators or established editors. Instructions for such editors on how to authenticate media is available on the template's documentation, but if a piece of media passes, the parameter can flip to y to indicate to readers that a human has reviewed the file and found it to be appropriate.

Copyright and trademark considerations

Media uploaded as a source is still bound by our policy on the usage of copyrighted material.

Content disputes and consensus

A time may come when 2 or more editors engage in discourse over the content of an article on this project. Editors are to be aware that outside of project policies there exists no governing body (with a single exception, described below) that arbitrates content. This includes administrators. All disagreements over content, whether it be how content is displayed or what content gets to remain, must be resolved by consensus.

A dispute is considered to begin de facto once an editor A introduces a change to an article and an editor B undoes it, either via the undo button or by editing the page manually. After that, the content should not be reintroduced without discussion (unless a project policy dictates otherwise). A dispute may also begin by an editor bringing up something on the article talk page and another editor expresses disagreement. Any editor, or administrator, may assist editors engaged in a dispute by providing their own opinion or - so long as they did not participate themselves - present their evaluation as to what the result of a discussion should be.

Due to the small nature of the project, the site operator may at their sole and complete discretion exercise executive powers to arbitrate content (i.e they may make a binding ruling on what should happen in a dispute, regardless of consensus). The enacted result and rationale for using this power will be communicated clearly. If and when the project grows to a reasonable size, the hope is for this power to be phased out.

Suitable material

Online Communipedia aims to not restrict the content it discusses (articles) or displays (files). Simply because content may be offensive to a particular group of people does not mean it cannot or should not be present. Attempting to ensure that all content meets social norms is incompatible with writing about online communities, especially when doing so from a neutral point of view.

The above said, Online Communipedia is beholden to the terms of service for it's webhosting provider - NFOservers - of which prohibits "pornographic, excessively violent, or illegal materials". To remain in compliance with this terms of service, any content written or uploaded which is deemed to meet this criteria — even should it have a good faith purpose to exist — should be removed on sight. Administrators are encouraged to remove said material from the public archives. The purposeful introduction or restoration of such material is grounds for a swift permanent editing ban.

Footnotes

At least one revision of this page incorporates text from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view which is released under CC BY-SA-4.0. (view authors)