YPPedia talk:Vanity guidelines

Shanty Raid-io Jockeys

In terms of whether or not something is vanity or not, what is thought about pages for the Shanty Raid-io Jockeys?

I'd support it being added to notable activities. --Guppymomma 19:24, 30 September 2005 (PDT)

As would I, so long as the articles give a mention as to when the jockey started and stopped spinning shanties for the station.--Fiddler 16:13, 3 October 2005 (PDT)

Provisions on temporary notability

Assuming that island designers, familiar winners, and Shanty Raid-io DJs are permanently notable and that captains, monarchs, and governors are only temporarily notable (though not erased after that period has passed) I propose that temporary notability articles should only be allowed if they are well-written. Though it's open to more interpretation, it does give the leeway to strike out an article altogether until it can be written to some degree of quality. This might stem the tides of "Blah blah playin for to months, I like carps, and oh I wus a captin for two hours."--Fiddler 16:13, 3 October 2005 (PDT)

Well, I'm about to start a binge of cleaning up badly written articles. If that leaves the article with no content, then I'll be proposing it for deletion. I encourage others to do the same. --Barrister 21:59, 12 October 2005 (PDT)

Moved from Talk:Main Page

Pirate names in the Wanted Pages

What should we do with these? Should they be redirected to appropriate user pages(where usernames are known?) or should we drop a note to those known users(PM/Talk page if they're here) that they might want to redirect them themselves or should they be made into articles? ---Ming 22 July 2005 01:23 (PDT)

Yeah, these just popped up a few days ago when we added inscriptions to all the island pages. I think we have a few options.

• PM the users (they're not hard to find on the forums; they all won forum contests and are fairly active)
• Redirect the pages to user pages.
• Remove the links from the island pages.
• Add a short blurb like "<username> is well-known as an excellent island designer. He/she designed <list islands>."

I'm more inclined to go with the last one...as the wiki expands, player pages are useful and necessary; they become like biography pages on Wikipedia, which are clearly different than user pages.— Yaten ^talk 22 July 2005 01:26 (PDT)

Right, Given that eventually ocean pirate namespaces are going to collide(especially for more common names) should we establish an article naming policy now? ---Ming 22 July 2005 01:39 (PDT)

The general policy has been to use "<name>" by default, and if conflicts arise, add a disambiguation page and "<name> (<ocean>)" pages. An example is Scuppering Seven Seas (disambiguation) or the Cobalt/Viridian island pages. With that, I'm sleeping. – Yaten ^talk 22 July 2005 01:42 (PDT)

This page might help. AySz88^-^ 31 July 2005 09:22 (PDT)

Speaking of Pirate pages... I'm thinking of creating new categories of the form Category:Pirate:<Ocean>. Any objections? (I think 1 or 2 pages may already be labelled this way.) --Barrister 22:58, 1 August 2005 (PDT)

We really should put seperate puzzles in the Tutorials Index. As in, the guides to carpentry and such.

Moved from Talk:Style guide

Individual pirate pages

I think it's time to craft a good policy on inclusion of individual pirate pages. My thinking skews this way: governors, monarchs, captains, familiar owners, & island designers should all get pages. In addition, anyone with a noteworthy accomplishment can have a page. If the pirate doesn't fall under one of the hard categories above, then the article should reference why that pirate is noteworthy. Administrators and the community can enforce that much easier.

Thoughts, comments, categories for automatic inclusion I've missed?--Fiddler 16:02, 17 August 2005 (PDT)

I agree. We can post the policy, and then point people to it. If we've missed a category of noteworthy pirates, then we can amend the policy. --Barrister 23:07, 17 August 2005 (PDT)

Familar owners? That's going to be a whole lot of pages, since we're going to be giving more out than we used to. Just fair warning. --Eurydice 16:57, 18 August 2005 (PDT)

I imagine it won't be too bad. Familiar owners is still a smaller group than captains and monarchs. And probably it should be called familiar winners, as some familiars have shifted hands quite a bit already and that's what we already put up on the policy page. We could handle it one of two ways. Either we link the names but don't create any article, leaving it up to someone else to do, or we create filler articles saying "So and so won a <color> <species> in the <event> of <month> <year> on <ocean>." and mark them as stubs. Of course, we'd want to categorize the pirates to the correct oceans.--Fiddler 07:19, 19 August 2005 (PDT)

Seperate thought, maybe we'd want to start categorizing pirate pages with why these pirates have articles. So we'd have Category:Monarchs, Category:Captains, Category:Familiar Winners and so on. We already have the Island Designers category, so the precedent is there.--Fiddler 07:19, 19 August 2005 (PDT)

I don't think so for all of those. The only permanent status one in your list is Familiar Winners. That's the only reason why Island Designers works. Captains & Monarchs can change rapidly. --Guppymomma 07:37, 19 August 2005 (PDT)

I think these are good standards, but I think the guidelines have to be lenient. Ultimately, an article needs to be about a pirate who has enough notoriety for his/her article to be edited by more than one person, I think. – Yaten ^talk 07:39, 19 August 2005 (PDT)

Just to clarify, would royals along with the monarch catergory, or would that be considered vanity? Airwoman ros 11:59, 13 February 2006 (PST)

At the moment, being royalty (by itself) is insufficient to merit a page for a pirate. --Barrister 12:03, 13 February 2006 (PST)

I'm seeing a whole lot more vanity pages cropping up, usually by people who just don't know the policy. Is there any way we could make the policy more visible to new users? --Eurydice 13:27, 27 August 2005 (PDT)

Added to the sidebar nav (might take a refresh or something for it to start showing up properly for some of us who were on during the change) instead of the Site Support. --Guppymomma 13:56, 27 August 2005 (PDT)

Pirate Page Content

How do we, or do we, separate the accomplishments of a the pirate from the accomplishments of the user? It seems strange to have positions held in the game right next to things done outside (but for) the game. Good examples are the island designers (incl. Belgarion, with the Shoppe Tool). What sort of things should be put there?

Moved from YPPedia talk:Policies and guidelines

Vanity Pages

Needs to be addressed, and explicitly stated in the Policy page. Pirate articles which are little more than "I lubs to do stuff!" are showing up, which belong on User: space pages if they are needed at all. I would like to see the first point about being an "encyclopedia" expanded to addresss Wikipedia:Vanity pages. My opinion is that non-notable pirates needn't even have names linked in other articles. Is 'vote for deletion' mechanism acceptable for vanity pages that pop up? — Callistan ^{(talk/contrib)} 11:11, 5 August 2005 (PDT)

Sounds good to me. – Yaten ^talk 11:30, 5 August 2005 (PDT)

I'd like to see something a bit more concrete for definition of what a notable pirate/crew/flag is. Right now, we're going off of decisions of individual editors/administrators, which is somewhat nondeterministic and prone to inconsistency. Perhaps the model of Wikipedia's guidelines for what constitutes a notable band might be helpful. As for where to draw the line in the sand, I'm not sure. I'd guess it's a fairly safe bet that the monarch of any flag which has put up a sizable force in any blockade would be considered notable. Definitely not an all-inclusive list of what might make someone notable, I'm thinking that winning contests could be another. :P. If someone wants to flesh this out, or shoot it down, feel free. --Lizthegrey 23:40, 7 August 2005 (PDT)

Well, other than the extremely imperfect "none of us have ever heard of you" stance, I can think of a few guidelines (qualifying under any of them means the page stays, and I'm just throwing some out). Monarchs or royalty of blockading flags probably deserve a spot, aye. Again, this is a debatable issue, because some players (take Whitefire or Buri, for instance) are not well-known for their official flag positions but for their skill in blockades. Players who have designed islands certainly deserve a spot, I think, but these pages have already been written. Other players who aren't well-known for their game contributions, but their forum contributions (like Ramirojr) might deserve a spot, too. I think the ultimate decision has to lie in the answer to the question: Can the regular editors edit the page to the wiki's standards and be accurate in doing so? I can edit Tedv's page to say his monkey's name is Giggles, but I can't be for certain if <random player> likes to eat oranges or not. – Yaten ^talk 23:57, 7 August 2005 (PDT)

My gut feeling is that any flag or crew that wants a page can have one. Our audience is fairly narrow (Puzzle Pirates players), and I think we should be generally accepting of these pages. On the other hand, I'm firmly against vanity pages for individual pirates. But this is all just my opinion, and I'm content to go with the wiki's consensus. --Barrister 01:05, 8 August 2005 (PDT)

Would it be a good thing to redirect/move a pirate's page to that pirate's User page if the pirate would normally fall under vanity? I'd mention User pages in the policy to see if we can curb some of the vanity articles and see them created in the person's own User page instead.

I was just about to ask the same question. I'm guessing it'd be okay, but don't take my word for it unless you trust me that much :-) --Ihope127 17:25, 1 September 2005 (PDT)

I just had a radical idea: allow redirecting from a pirate's encyclopedia "title" to the pirate's User page if the pirate is not notable. However, since the opposite could happen (people of note redirecting former articles to their own User pages to put their own POV into the article) enforce that notable pirates should have their own entry. AySz88^-^ 19:08, 27 August 2005 (PDT)

So I have a question. Has a consensus been reached regarding the criteria for pirates to have their own page? For instance Julephene has her own page, yet by the current criteria she is not eligible for one and should be using her user page instead. Yet I note that other wiki contributors have not indicated this. I don't mean to pick on Jules, it was the example that I noticed is all.--Jezabella 04:23, 23 February 2006 (PST)

There has been no new consensus on vanity pages. The discussion on the forums got derailed which isn't really a surprise. I think we should try again at YPPedia talk:Vanity guidelines. In the meantime, I've tagged Julephene as a vanity article. It escaped notice because it predated the vanity policy. --Barrister 14:21, 23 February 2006 (PST)

Ah ok thanks for the info :) I just wanted to be sure I understood the criteria before I go around adding tags and such. --Jezabella 04:04, 24 February 2006 (PST)

Captains?

I'm thinking allowing a page for every captain is a bit excessive. I'm wondering if the minimum requirement for a captain to have a page should include being at the helm of an "Eminent" or above crew. Thoughts? – Yaten ^talk 20:44, 29 August 2005 (PDT)

With bouncing fame ratings, this may be hard to police. --Guppymomma 21:01, 29 August 2005 (PDT)

The general policy should be that it's not enough to be a captain to get a page. --Barrister 21:05, 29 August 2005 (PDT)

Considering Wikipedia is not paper, why not just go case-by-case? As long as VAIN is loosely enforced (ex. articles with obvious POV) I don't see the harm in having lots of little articles on individual pirates. AySz88^-^ 11:28, 5 September 2005 (PDT)

While I'm certainly willing to be flexible, the harm in lots of little articles can be found at YPPedia:Vanity_guidelines. I'm especially concerned about the section marked "Problems with vanity articles." --Barrister 22:22, 5 September 2005 (PDT)

Perhaps the criteria should be on the basis of the availability of unbiased editors and verifiability, instead of an in-game status like 'captainship'? (I also stick to my suggestion about allowing redirects of non-verifiable articles to User pages, though there might need to be a warning about the fact that the 'article' is not verifiable if that's done.) AySz88^-^ 23:21, 5 September 2005 (PDT)

We're starting to get into the land of unverifiable "I was captain for a day or two until I gave it up pages." Of course, I can't exactly think of a way it can be verifiable even for folks who were captains for months on end..... More thoughts on this? --Guppymomma 18:25, 29 September 2005 (PDT)

Question re Pirate Pages

I'm aware that there is current debate around the policy of pirate pages and would like to seek an opinion. I currently have a pirate page due to being an island designer. I also have more information about my character and other concerns (ie my shoppes) on my user page. Would it be reasonable to provide a brief link from my pirate page to my user page? Especially since the names are different - ie user page is Queanie but my pirate name is Jezabella. I can't register as Jezabella as the name is already taken :(. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask. I'm new to Wiki. Feel free to delete/move at will :)

Links from the main wiki pages to User: pages are against policy. Sorry. The good news is that you can add more information to the Jezabella page. (I recommend this option.) Alternately, you can simply mention on that page that "Jezabella's forum name is Queanie". I hope one of those works for you. --Barrister 22:23, 8 February 2006 (PST)

I would say go the other direction: put the information that's currently on your user page in the article. Just because you've qualified as an island designer doesn't mean that your article need only be about your island design. IN fact, it's better when the articles have some real depth and substance to them. Take a look at Attesmythe or Belgarion for good examples on fleshing out pirate articles while staying in a neutral tone.--Fiddler 22:26, 8 February 2006 (PST) Jinx!

Thanks for the quick response both of you. I thought that my pirate article does look very bare and would like to flesh it out by adding the information I placed on my user page - but I also didn't want to make the mistake of a 'vanity' addition. Would one or either of you mind looking at what is currently on my user page and advising whether that would be suitable content for the article? I'll definitely have a look at Attesmythe and Belgarion's pages too. Thanks again! --Queanie

Just took a look at User:Queanie. I recommend moving the whole thing. It's well-written. Some of the links could use cleaning up, but other's can fix that, too. --Barrister 00:55, 9 February 2006 (PST)

Thanks! Will do Queanie 01:57, 9 February 2006 (PST)

Reconciling Vanity guidelines & Policies and guidelines

Vanity guidelines#How can an article not be vanity? states:
The YPPedia policy limits player pages to those who hold (or have previously held) positions of monarch, governor, captain; players who have won familiar contests; and players who have designed one or multiple islands.

while YPPedia:Policies and guidelines#Individual Pirate Articles states:
Monarchs, governors, captains, island designers, and winners of familiar contests all fall into this category. Other pirate entries can be included, but an explanation of why that pirate is notable must be included as part of the article.

Given some recent discussions, these statements need to be reconciled. Also, all user need to keep in mind Yaten's statement above, which I fully support as the ideal guideline: "...these are good standards, but I think the guidelines have to be lenient. Ultimately, an article needs to be about a pirate who has enough notoriety for his/her article to be edited by more than one person, I think."

Of course, my leaning is towards allowing more "We've heard of you" articles if they're well-justified. I just don'tknow how tenable such a position can be.--Fiddler 17:13, 10 March 2006 (PST)

This is something which has been bothering me as well: There are definately pirate pages which do not meet those guidelines as suggested above, but nobody has suggested that they be deleted, in contrast to the River flap. Take Phade, for instance, who even happens to be in River's crew, but doesn't appear to have ever been an actual Captain, or take a lot of the Shanty Raid-io people, many of whom, just from a quick look-through, don't appear to necessarily meet the guidelines stated here. So does Shanty Raid-io membership make one automatically eligable for a pirate page? It quite nearly seems to do so; should we be arguing that some of those pages should be user pages instead? I'm not trying to pick on the Raid-io people in particular here: I'm just trying to make the point that the guidelines seem to have been followed pretty stringently in some places, but less so in others. --Emufarmers 19:37, 10 March 2006 (PST)

In regards to Shanty Jockeys, see the first comment section at the top of the page. Before all those pages were made the question was asked and the opinion at the time was that it was notable enough of an activity. Again, this falls under the "Policies and guidelines" statement of "If you've done something notable, you deserve a page." I honestly think that part of the policy needs to be paid attention to a bit more.--Fiddler 20:04, 10 March 2006 (PST)

Oop, I missed the bit at the top (maybe it should be added to the page itself?). Still, what determines notability needs to be fleshed out more (in the actual page, and not simply on the talk page), or it at least needs to be made clear that those guidelines are not necessarily hard-and-fast rules. --Emufarmers 20:36, 10 March 2006 (PST)

Can't believe I didn't think of this before.

"If your name is linked by any page within the Y!PPedia, you qualify for a page about yourself."

Simple, but it should work. --Ponytailguy 11:13, 18 March 2006 (PST)

Given that some of us occasionally have to delink names without articles (in places where they wouldn't qualify as notable), I don't see this one as being a good idea. --Thunderbird 11:28, 18 March 2006 (PST)

I would disagree that this alone invalidates it as an idea. Maybe set it up so linking your own name doesn't count? --Ponytailguy 11:33, 18 March 2006 (PST)

From a practical perspectice, this would expand the eligible list to all senior officers. Example: Captain creates crew page and then links all his SOs in his infobox. I'm still quite open to revising the guidelines, but I think that one's too broad. --Barrister 11:35, 18 March 2006 (PST)

Why shouldn't SOs get their own pages, though? A lot of the most notable blockade navvers, shoppe mavens, and prolific people in general have never work the taco hat, and let's face it; a lot of the people who qualify for pages just for being captains don't deserve them. Why not introduce flexibility? --Ponytailguy 11:37, 18 March 2006 (PST)

Perhaps rather than allow all SOs have their own page, it should only be those who have done something like navigate in blockades, own shops etc. We don't want to be swamped with too many pirate pages to keep tabs on. --Sagacious 11:45, 18 March 2006 (PST)

Some SOs deserve pages; some don't. We need more specific criteria like we have with "familiar owner" and "governor". Ranks are never going to work out well for us. (Your captain example highlights that well.) --Barrister 12:30, 18 March 2006 (PST)

Moved from Talk:Metta

I would suggest that shoppekeepers (As in, actual shoppe. Not stall, not manager, someone who owns a shoppe) deserve pages. --Ponytailguy 07:59, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Hmm maybe. Though that brings a new wave of more Pirate pages... One idea that should be considered though. --Sagacious 08:01, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Well, at present, captains of one-man crews that only exist for five minutes are allowed to have pirate pages. IMO, we need to broadly redefine the guidelines in general. This is an area where I think we should be doing that. --Ponytailguy 08:08, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

I can see the advantages of including shoppekeepers in the list of automatic notability. It's limited (in the same way that familiar owners, governors, and island designers is) and quite honestly probably has a bit of overlap with the current monarch/captain provision. It's also infoboxable (Hey, I made a new word!) in the way that familiars and islands are.

Also, I'd like to again apologize for being the one to suggest including all captains and all monarchs. When I first suggested it, I didn't think it would be as abused as it is now. At this point in time my recommendation is to limit it to "top of the fame" list captains and island-holding or "top of the fame" list monarchs. And again, when a flag/crew drops off the list the pirate in questions can keep the article.--Fiddler 08:37, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

I like that, Fiddler. --Featherfin 08:15, 11 May 2006 (PDT)

Proposed changes to vanity guidelines

I'm proposing a small change to the existing vanity guidelines:

The YPPedia is an encyclopedic work. It is not a directory of pirates across the oceans. That said, there are some pirates noteworthy enough to be included in the YPPedia. Monarchs, governors, captains, island designers, and winners of familiar contests all fall into this category. Other pirate entries can be included, but an explanation of why that pirate is notable must be included as part of the article. Administrators and the community will watch to make sure this guideline is adhered to. If your pirate does not meet these guidelines, please use your user page instead of creating a new article. In addition, articles that are poorly written or lacking in any serious substance may be deleted.

Note: Pirates in positions of note will not lose their articles if they should lose those positions. However, articles should be amended to reflect when the pirate held those positions and when they stopped.

I'd like to hear from the community on these proposals. I recognize that these are two ideas are related but not necessarily connected so I've split them off into seperate discussions. I'd like to give each of these ideas a week to solicit feedback before changing the current policy.

Poorly written provision

• Support. Poorly written articles detract from the overall quality of the YPPedia and create additional workload for the regular editors and administrators. --Fiddler 12:59, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Ponytailguy 13:06, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support - only those who can write a half decent article deserve their own page =P --Sagacious ^(talk) 13:10, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. And I agree with Sagacious (below) that this should be applied to currently extant articles. --Barrister 13:20, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Supported. Articles that are poorly written annoy the heck out of me. --Thunderbird 13:25, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support! --Zava 13:30, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Yaten ^talk 13:50, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. —Sivius^(T/C) 15:11, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support, yes please. --Featherfin 15:17, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose. While I'd like to support this, especially after seeing ever so many crap articles...The whole point of a wiki is that one editor's shortcomings, particularly in regards to grammar, can be compensated for by other editors' own proficiencies. I know we're not supposed to be spilling dronz, but...Well, I suspect that, say, Wikipedia has far, far, far more problems with this sort of thing: Their overarching idea seems to be that content should be revised and refined whenever possible, over destruction, and even after seeing some badly-written articles...I'm still inclined to agree. --Emufarmers 20:15, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. Though I think it should be contingent on someone trying to fix things, first. Since wiki content is never lost even when it's no longer searchable in the main namespace, it's not like the content is gone forever, it's just gone from the public eye. I should start bringing my mad copy writing skillz over here more often. --Thespian 13:07, 25 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Guppymomma 13:19, 29 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Nicksterv ^(t/c) 13:44, 29 May 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose. Should be tagged cleanup. --AtteSmythe 15:56, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose. I was always told that even if it's not the greatest, but we try, it'll get taken care of. This will only undermine those people who don't know a lot about the wiki, or don't know proper syntax. Yes, I'm pulling the 'other language' card. IF they try, and IF it's worthy, just clean the thing up. --Gloraelin 02:23, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

Lacking substance provision

• Support. Recent discussions have swayed me to the point of view that sparse articles with just the briefest mention of qualifying criteria actually detract from the accomplishments of more established pirates.--Fiddler 12:59, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. Echo! (echo... echo... echo...) --Ponytailguy 13:06, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support - but I hope this applies to all the current articles and the admin can go about with their Deletion stick... --Sagacious ^(talk) 13:10, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. And I agree with Sagacious (above) that this should be applied to currently extant articles. --Barrister 13:20, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. Pages that just write "so and so is a captain of The Crew" have no value in my mind. --Thunderbird 13:25, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. (Yikes, does this mean I need to add content to Zava?) --Zava 13:30, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Yaten ^talk 13:50, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support support support! -Featherfin 15:18, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Neutral. Having seen plenty of "i am the captin of the crew" articles, I still can't fully get behind this as it stands: Often, simply looking up a pirate's information, and adding a portrait and gallary if he or she has one, can boost an article up to being decent, and allow it to be further fleshed out later on (hence, stubs). I realize this can be extremely tedious (I've done it myself in the past), but I'd like to note that the option of proposing deletion because an article has no content is always there if you don't think it's worth expanding upon. Still, I won't oppose this, simply because I see it as a step towards guidelines with different standards for notability, which is what we really need. (If the problem is articles which just state that "so and so is a captain of The Crew," then we need to change what qualifies a pirate for having a page, which, from the previous discussion on this page, it seems we're at least on the road towards.) --Emufarmers 20:15, 22 May 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose. If you think that people complain about deletions now, wait until you're trying to define something as ephemeral as 'substance'. While you may well 'know it when you see it', trying to define it for others will be a battle and will likely wind up with people fighting each other and delete wars.--Thespian 13:02, 25 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Guppymomma 13:19, 29 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Nicksterv ^(t/c) 13:44, 29 May 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose: Thespian's point raises a few questions in my own eye. Yes, I agree that these guidelines need to be updated, but it's near impossible to define "substance," and a guideline lacking some core definition is a bad thing. —Sivius^(T/C) 15:01, 29 May 2006 (PDT)
• Strong Oppose. Should be tagged cleanup. --AtteSmythe 15:56, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
  • Changed to strong oppose. Look at the first 6 pirates of Category:Midnight Ocean pirates. What is to gain by the deletion of these pages, and subsequent loss of knowledge? We have in that selection familiar winners, island designers, an event character, and multiple-time captain, none of whose pages would survive the new wiki order. I don't see these pages as being detrimental to the YPPedia's encyclopedic quality. Rather, I see their omission as much more damaging. --AtteSmythe 16:25, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose strongly: if it was vanity then, why isn't it vanity now? Simply asking the pirates in question, some of whom don't even know they have a page to add in fluff just to fit a guideline is like asking me to pad a debate case with random rhetoric simply because it'll be longer. --Gloraelin 02:19, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

Ideas for a New Proposal

I know we've just started to implement the content provisions, but in their wake, I think now would be a good time to bring this back up. Since all pirate articles are now subject to quality requirements, could we lower the strict rank requirement to SO, and stipulating that the pirate in question must have some reasonable level of notoriety, as determined by a consensus of the wiki community? Or would that be too open to interpertation? I suppose, theoretically, we shouldn't even need any sort of rank requirement, because if an article is only permitted if it has a reasonable amount of content, and frivolous content is removed, you should need to be able to articulate actual accomplishments and the like simply by that standard. Or am I overreaching here? --Emufarmers 20:57, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

There's been talk about ditching the notability requirements altogether once the quality standard is firmly in place. But for the moment let's not bite off more than we can chew, all right? ;) --Thunderbird 20:59, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

Agree with Thunderbird. --Barrister 21:08, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

Eh, fair enough. I guess this will probably keep us busy for a couple weeks anyway. :P --Emufarmers 21:11, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

Quality Template Removal Guidelines

Sorry for starting another new topic here, but I've already seen another issue: Who gets to determine when an article has been sufficiently improved? If someone's making improvements, can he or she take the template off right away if it seems to be sufficient to him or her, or should that be left to the person who originally put it on? What if the editor takes it off, and somebody else thinks it's insufficient? Or should we just wait until the time is up, and then have the article be judged? (And will that be done by one admin, or a vote on the talk page?)

I think we've all got a vague idea in our heads of how this should work, but other wikis have written guidelines on this, and I think we should too. For inspiration, I'm looking at NRV on Uncyclopedia, both because I'm an Uncyclopedia fan, and because that template seems to be the rough equivilent of ours, more so than proposed deletion on Wikipedia. (Does WP have a template that more closely matches this one? I'm not such a WP buff.) --Emufarmers 21:10, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

Pretty much it should work the same as removing other cleanup type templates. If there's an issue with its removal discussion on the talk page until some consensus is reached should work fine. It seems a little too early to be writing guidelines for this as it's a new test/experiment and we have no real information upon which to base guidelines outside of how cleanup has been done here before. --Guppymomma 21:40, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

Hmm, okay; that's fine for now, but we should at least keep in the back of our minds that we'll probably want written guidelines on this at some point after it becomes "regular" policy. --Emufarmers 21:45, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

BTW if you're talking about the newstandard template, that's only supposed to be temporary to help migrate things to the new policy. --Guppymomma 21:47, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

Er, more generally, I was referring to the poor quality article someone made for use after this, but I just had to switch to the laptop, and thus can't search very well, so I'm not sure exactly what became of it...Anyhow, I think we'll have a specific template for future violations of this policy, so I was really referring to then, but even now...Well, if we've got hundreds of pirate articles with the newstandards template, then that could mean quite a few talk page discussions, particularly if someone comes back, and becomes angry when he or she sees his or her article being put up for deletion like this. (Remember, one benefit of written guidelines would be that we wouldn't need to explain individually to every user just what is being done [the template itself links to this very page, but that's not quite the same].) Anyway, maybe it won't be a big deal, but we should consider it. --Emufarmers 22:15, 30 May 2006 (PDT)

Proposal to increase the time to 3 weeks

Since this is a community driven process, I figured that a vote should be taken on this matter since it's come up in many comments. I'm proposing to change the Template:Newstandard to be 3 weeks instead of 1 week. I love the new standard, I just think that a little patience with a little more time will go a long way toward building community support & assistance with this project due to the constraints of RL & of information flow about this change. --Guppymomma 15:15, 31 May 2006 (PDT)

• Support --Guppymomma 15:15, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support++ --Sagacious ^(talk) 15:23, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Neutral --Barrister 15:25, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Weak Support. I think three weeks is a bit long (I'm a big fan of even numbers), but one week is definitely too short. --Yaten ^talk 15:44, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support, but I believe that a provision that some progress must be made within 14 days would be useful - if nothing new is added within 14 days, it probably won't be added within 21. A good faith effort to try to improve the article should be required. --Lizthegrey 15:45, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Strong Support. A change of this magnitude should have warranted a notice on the main page. --AtteSmythe 15:54, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support. It's still exam time - people may not have the time to contribute at the moment. --Nicksterv ^(t/c) 16:03, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Weak, weak support. I'd prefer a month.--Ponytailguy 16:20, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support, and I like Liz's addendum dealie. --Fannon 16:36, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support -Jacktheblack 20:03, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support -Fiddler 20:14, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
• Support --Zava 08:11, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Strong Support, While it may seem like plenty of time to people who live and breathe the wiki, many people are far from less familiar with what's going on . --Drc500free 09:59, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

Proposal passed (12/0/1). --Lizthegrey 04:30, 2 June 2006 (PDT)

Proposal to add speedy criteria for lacking substance/poorly written deletions

A page flagged due to lack of substance or poorly written content may be deleted by an administrator after half the minimum time if no good faith effort has been made to expand or clean up the article during the initial period.

• Support Moving my proposal out for separate voting.--Lizthegrey 07:52, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Ponytailguy 07:57, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Support --Zava 08:12, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose. This solves a nonexstint problem - the offensiveness of a non-visited page. --AtteSmythe 08:44, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Support. --Sagacious ^(talk) 09:11, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose. Sometimes people don't even know about their page, and the original author has forgotten. If it's not known about, what's the harm in it staying a bit longer? --Gloraelin 11:09, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose. May as well give them the whole time frame. --Barrister 12:27, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose - The more I thought about it, the more this seems backwards to me. I'd rather give extensions for a "good faith" attempt rather than shorten the timeline. --Fannon 12:37, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Oppose - You're removing useful information because there's not enough to meet an arbitrary standard of information content. Whitefire 16:14, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

Proposal to make Ringer pages officially exempt from lack of substance policy

This could solve alot of things. There seems to be an issue some users have with Ringer pages having an apparent lack of material on them. To be honest I think they should be exempt from the new policy. Not every ringer has a tale to tell like Liz.

• Support --Sagacious ^(talk) 12:52, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• I'm going to support this. Player pirates have a history behind them, while the developer/OM pirates might not (particularly if they don't wish to have their player character (if any) known). Heck, Buffy doesn't even look like it's controlled by the person who did skellies (which that page links to). --Thunderbird 12:58, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Neutral. I would support this if extended to all characters qualifying for 'out of character' reasons - i.e. island designers. They are much less likely than an OM to have a relevant character history. --Drc500free 13:04, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Support. But it would still be nice to have the pages fleshed out somehow. --Piplicus 13:09, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• This one's getting shoved through by OM decree. --Thunderbird 15:06, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
• Support. Basically what Piplicus said. --TheUnderlord 15:20, 1 June 2006 (PDT)

Vote closed by administrative fiat. Ringer and OM pages are exempt from the lack of substance policy. That being said, adding additional information to the OM and Ringer pages would be very nice. You might be able to find some "information" from the selected contest entries where the new OM's got backstories. --Lizthegrey 01:19, 2 June 2006 (PDT)

Link to the revamp proposal

It's over at YPPedia talk:Policies and guidelines/piratearticlesrevamp. Please take a look. --Guppymomma 12:40, 3 June 2006 (PDT)

Nuke it.

I think it's worth finally archiving or just baleeting this sucker. At this point, I daresay it's only serving to confuse people who miss the "No longer in effect" notice rather than serving any practical purpose. --Ponytailguy 21:17, 5 September 2006 (PDT)