Factorio:Wiki rules
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.
Page creation
- Work in progress pages must be created in the author's userspace, and preferably an admin should be asked before merging into the greater Wiki. All WIP pages made outside the userspace will be moved into the author's space, and the author messaged.
- 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. - 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.
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.