Community Guidelines

The rules by which this community operates are a work in progress, and will probably continue to be for some time, until we settle on a good format for how this should be conducted. At this initial stage, I need the input of my fellow Writers' Box participants to see how we can bring some of what we did in the real world into the virtual one. However, since I imagine few of you are particularly familiar with how wikis work in general, this may be difficult. So, we'll have to work together: I'll supply the technical background, while the rest of you supply the insight into how to run an online community.

To begin with, however, here's a few proposals:

• Pages like this one, which set community policy or otherwise address wiki issues on a meta-level, should remain relatively fixed in content. Revisions are certainly welcome, but the page should have a professional-enough appearance, both in terms of wiki style and content, that outside individuals viewing this site can find it helpful and informative. However, while they're still being developed into their first useful state, instead of incorporating changes into the main body of text (the paragraph immediately below the top heading), community members should offer their proposals as additions to the bottom of the page. These should be signed, as are comments on the Wikipedia forums. In this way, a discussion will be formed much like the ThreadMode pages on MeatballWiki. However, this discussion will ultimately be deleted, or at least archived on a separate page, and the main document changed to reflect the policies which are resolved upon.
• All the pages that offer some sort of definition should likewise have a fixed content section immediately after the top heading, which should be the name of that which is being defined. However, an ongoing discussion should be free to go on underneath, members likewise signing their contributions.
• The pages which define people who are members of the community should be "owned" by the people who they define. They have the right to revert any changes that others make of which they don't approve. However, members should aim to have their pages provide a description of themselves which would be informative to anyone who saw it. External links should be permitted to their pages on other sites, and possibly other sites which they find interesting (although some kind of content standards should be enforced). Comments should be placed on their comments page, for which the naming convention should be [Firstname_Lastname_(comments)|Comments], and which should be linked at the bottom of the page.
• Comments on members' comment pages should be signed.
• Poems and other creative works should be considered the property of their creators. Comments and proposed revisions should be added below and signedP
• As should be obvious, all comments are the property of those who make them and should not be edited, except possibly for profanity or blasphemy.