Factorio:Wiki rules
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Below are the community guidelines for the Official Factorio Wiki. Infringing upon any of these rules will result in either a warning or a temporary/permanent ban, depending on the circumstances. These rules are not final, and are subject to change. Additionally, all admins hold the right to enforce as they see fit, even if the rule they enforce is not specifically enumerated here.
We at the Official Factorio Wiki thank you for your cooperation, and we hope that you see these rules as fair and acceptable. Of course, you may message an admin at any time to discuss the rules or ask for clarification.
Our rules are fairly standard to what you'd find on other wikis.
Discipline
Before getting into the list of rules, the process that the Wiki administration team takes will be explained here. We follow a very simple system, which progresses from a polite unofficial warning to a permanent ban, depending on the severity and times that the event has occurred. Their violation will also be undone. There are a few 'shortcut' rules that if broken will skip stages, however.
- An unofficial warning - The user will be sent a kind message pointing out that they did something incorrect, and that's it. The violation will be fixed by an admin.
- An official warning - The user will be sent a kind message stating that they have been officially warned to cease what they're doing. It will use the phrase "This is an official warning."
- A temporary ban - The user will be temporarily banned from the Wiki, for a variable amount of time, depending on the case. They will also be sent a message.
- A permanent ban - The user will be given a permanent ban, and a message.
If the user goes some time between violations, the stages will undo back to 2. However, certain violations result in an immediate ban, such as vandalism, spamming external site links, attempting to mess with the mediawiki installation, etc. These are further detailed below.
Conduct
- Be respectful to all editors, and readers. All forms of hate are not tolerated, and will result in an official warning directly.
- All forms of vandalism and spam are not tolerated, and violators will be banned without question.
- Wiki talk pages are for discussion of their respective page only. Please keep all discussion of in-game mechanics to the forums or subreddit, the links to which are in the sidebar. An article's talk page is intended for discussion or questions regarding the article's content. It is not a forum for casual discussion. Game suggestions, personal stories, shout-outs, etc. will be removed.
- Similarly, self/other promotional content is forbidden unless it is for specific examples and educational purposes. Edits made that simply show off or enumerate user creations will be removed.
- Always remain civil during discussions.
- Registered users are expected to use a single account for all editing under most circumstances. The use of more than one account by a single individual is known as "sockpuppeting", and is a very high offense. A second account can be used in certain rare circumstances by longtime established, trusted users. Some valid reasons to use a second account may include those below. In those cases, it must be made absolutely clear that the accounts are operated by the same individual.
- Technical testing
- Bot (automated) accounts
- Administrators who want to use non-admin accounts in less secure editing situations.
Editing
- Do not edit-war. If a user overwrites your change and you disagree, do not edit the page back and forth, discuss it on the talk page of the page in question. In instances of edit warring, the oldest version is preferred until a decision is reached. Moving a page back and forth and un-deleting a page without permission is also considered edit warring.
- This ties into the above rule, but assume good faith. If a wiki editor makes a mistake due to human error, the fact that they are new to the community, or any other honest reason, fellow wiki community members must assume good faith. Rather than insulting, berating, or lashing out at the editor, community members should approach situations like these with a helpful and understanding attitude. This is why unofficial warnings are given first.
- Refrain from using profanity unless it is used within a direct quotation. Preferably, censor the curse with stars.
- Refrain from editing other users' user pages, unless it is to remove broken links.
- While the Wiki can be easily reverted in the event of a mistake, please try to avoid creating work for others.
- Mod related documentation is not to be hosted on this wiki. The Official Factorio Wiki is meant for documentation of the base game only. Instead, users looking for documentation or developers looking to provide documentation should do so on their mod's entry in the mod portal, or bundle the documentation with the source code of the mod. This wiki does not document nor enumerate mods.
- Tying into the above rule, the Wiki also does not enumerate user creations. User creations should only be placed on the Wiki for demonstration and educational purposes only, simply enumerating or showing off designs will be removed as there exist better portals for this.
- Pages with high amounts of transclusions/importance will be protected, to both protect against vandalism, and to protect the servers from load caused by edits to these pages. Contact an admin if you want a change one of these pages or feel like it should not be protected.
Page creation
- Work in progress pages of new content must be created in the author's userspace, and preferably an admin should be asked before merging into the greater Wiki.
- Any other language has no right to obtain a page name which collides with English. There exist a few words that are the same in multiple languages (The word 'So' means the same in English and in German, for example), these words cannot be used for page names to avoid collisions.
- No other language has the right to use a page name which means the same or something different in another language. This is also to prevent confusion.
- Language pages when translated should use the English name with the language code appended to the end of the name. For example, "Transport belt" when translated to German should be named "Transport belt/de". For a list of letter codes by language, see here. With the exception of
pt-br, we use this standard. Please note that any languages that are not listed here are not reachable when translated (won't show up as a language the page is in). Please ask an admin to add support for a new language you wish to translate to.- See also: Translation guide
- Page names should only be capitalized at the first word, with some exceptions. Essentially, Petroleum gas, and not Petroleum Gas. This is both for readability and for the internal code of the wiki to work correctly. Failing to do this will result in the page's name being fixed.
- Translation of WIP pages or pages in someone's userspace is highly discouraged. While it won't be stopped, it is very likely to result in a waste of effort, since the page may never reach the public eye, or be finished. Instead, if the WIP page is a tutorial, writing a new tutorial from scratch in a native language would be much better, as you wouldn't have to conform English to your language.
- Pages may only be created in the user's userspace if they are meant to end up on the general wiki or otherwise relevant to the wiki (sandboxes, etcetera). If the page is not related to the wiki, it has be related to Factorio, and may not be linked from outside sources, including the general wiki. Uploading files for a non-wiki-related page is not permitted.
Templates and redirects
- Redirects may only be created in the following circumstances:
- The redirect is being used to fix several similar red links, and it would be too much effort to correct them in other ways.
- The redirect is being used to 'autocorrect' a common mistake, such as not prefixing a tutorial with
Tutorial:. This does not include spelling mistakes! - The redirect is being used to fix an incorrect external link that occurs on many sites. If the incorrect link only occurs on one site, have the owner of that site fix it.
- The redirect is to a file, to fix several file based red links or broken icons.
- The redirect is created automatically by a page move.
- Redirects may NOT be created under the following circumstances:
- To redirect on a common community slang (e.g Underneathies -> Underground belts). People are smart enough to search for the actual in-game name.
- To solve a small amount of red links. Where possible, fix the red links directly.
- To fix small issues such as incorrect capitalization, etc. There is a search feature on the Wiki.
- Redirects may not be created unless there is actually a lot of links going to them. Redirects created with the idea of "This might be useful someday" are noise and provide nothing. Again, there is a search function. There are rare exceptions to this rule, stated above.
- Redirects may not exist within user spaces, except when a page was moved and the redirect was created by that page move. Any other redirects created or placed into a user's userspace will be deleted.
- Templates may be created in the following circumstances:
- The creating user has permission from an admin to create the template and use it on pages. Often, we may have an easier method of solving the problem the editor is attempting to fix with a template, but is unaware we have it. Ask us, we don't bite.
- It is acceptable to create a template inside of your userspace, for use with testing another WIP page. However, you may NOT use this template anywhere but within your userspace.
- Upon approval, you may create the template, or move it out of your userspace, but not before.
- Why we discourage the use of templates:
- Templates are a powerful feature, so much so that users often attempt to fix problems with them. However, to put it to an analogy, using a template to fix a small problem is like using a backhoe to weed your garden. Most of the time, it is overkill and provides no clarity or convenience that could not be provided via other means.
- Templates are inefficient, and require many resources from the server to resolve them when a lot of them are put onto a page. This can put load onto Wube's servers, which we try to avoid.
- Templates make it harder to understand pages. Since they can create text arbitrarily, it can be difficult to determine which of the many templates on a page is creating text that shows up on save. It is better to have less templates, so it is easier for editors to understand the construction of a page.
Requesting admin work, Misc
- There exists a few templates for this purpose, mainly {{Delete}}, {{Move}}, and {{Merge}}. These may be placed on pages to request action be taken by moderators or by editors. However, do note that the request may be denied.
- Files that are unused are always up for deletion, so ensure that any images uploaded are immediately used somewhere on the Wiki.