NSwiki:Policy

NSwiki is a collaborative effort of the NationStates community. Its goal is to provide a historical reference and an otherwise valuable, encyclopedic resource to NationStatesers. To work toward this goal, the wiki has certain policies and guidelines that help to keep the wiki a civil, organized, and useful resource. Note, however, that while some policies are relatively fixed, others are controversial and need to be evaluated based on the context of the situation.

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Contents 1 Key policies 2 Policy enforcement 3 Other guidelines 4 What NSwiki is not

Key policies

It is by no means necessary or required to read and understand every policy before you contribute. By all means, start contributing as soon as possible! However, by following these policies, you will find a more productive experience here.

• Avoid bias. Articles should be written from a neutral point of view, meaning that you fairly cover all issues invovled and don't endorse a particular opinion.
• Don't infringe copyrights. NSwiki is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, and infringing copyright defeats the wiki's goal of open content. See Copyrights for more information.
• Respect other contributors. NSwikians come from all walks of life and all sides of NationStates. See Etiquette for more information directly related to the wiki and the Internet.
• NSwiki:Deletion policy

Policy enforcement

There is no central department responsible for the content on the wiki. You are a NSwiki editor. Policies aren't enforced in the strictest sense of the word. Instead, contributors to the site make edits to various pages to make them conform to our guidelines and policies. For controversial issues, we have an arbitration page. So, if you make a mistake -- don't worry that someone is going to kick in your door, or otherwise assault you online. Someone will simply stroll along and fix your mistake, and might even inform you of what you did that was wrong (nicely, of course, and so that you will know better next time).

Other guidelines

• Follow the style guide.
• Follow How to move a page guidelines.
• In general, do not link to disambiguation pages, or to redirect pages -- instead, link directly to the page of interest.
• In cases where there are multiple claimants for a page title, official NationStates names have priority. Regions generally have first claim, followed by Nations. See disambiguation policy for details.
• To save NSwiki server space, please do not copy-paste complete texts unless they are either in the context of a more in-depth article or are hidden behind a forum registration requirement. However, copy-pasting your nation description in preparation for a longer article on your nation is acceptable.
• Nation pages should be created using the exact nation name on NationStates, but should not include the nation's pretitle. Use only what comes after the "of". See NSwiki:Naming conventions for expansions and additions to this.
• Category names should be plural if the articles listed in that category are instances of it, and singular if the articles listed are about the category or related to it.
• Signatures (automatically added by appending ~~~~) should only be placed on talk and other 'discussion' pages.
• Mark edits as minor if they fix links, grammar, spelling, or categories -- unless content was changed.
• Fill out the edit summary box, briefly describing your change.

What NSwiki is not

1. NSwiki is not a personal homepage and/or file storage area. NSwikians have their own personal User pages, but they are used for working on the encyclopedia. If you're looking to make a personal webpage, there are many free homepage providers on the Internet.
2. NSwiki is not a free wiki host. You may not host your own website or blog at NSwiki. If you are interested in using the wiki technology for a collaborative effort on anything other than writing the NationStates encyclopedia, even if it is just a single page, there are many sites (such as Wikia.com or SeedWiki.com) that provide wiki hosting (free or for money). You can even install wiki software on your server.
3. NSwiki is not a roleplay site. Historical accounts of roleplay activity belong here. Active roleplaying should be done on the forums.
4. NSwiki is not a link repository. If you want to track your forum posts, use the Forum Search feature on the NationStates forum.
5. NSwiki is not a Discussion forum. If you want a regional forum, visit ProBoards.com or InvisionFree, where they do that sort of thing. Please try to stay on task (the task here is to create NationStates encyclopedia articles). NSwiki is not a discussion forum or chat room.
6. A vehicle for advertising and self-promotion. We don't need articles on items just because a contributor is associated with them. Links to your roleplay storefront are fine, links to your Ebay storefront are not.