User:SnowedLightning/Guide

Introduction

 * Hello! If you're viewing this, then welcome to the wiki! My name is Jayce, and I'm one of the administrators here. I've decided to rewrite and vastly expand upon a tumblr post that I made in October of 2014, as an introduction and in-depth tutorial to the wiki! Many things have changed since then, prompting the expansion of this page.

Who We Are and What We Do

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 * The goals of Warriors Wiki have been, and always will be, to compile and complete articles about every aspect of Warriors. This includes character articles, book articles, and articles relating to other aspects of the series, such as what kind of prey they eat, locations, medicine and herbal remedies, and natural disasters that occur within the books.

Founding and Adoption

 * Warriors Wiki was founded on June 12, 2006 by Oglog. In November of that same year, Kitsufox joined the wiki, and soon after, she adopted it. That began the long journey to make it what it is today. She was later joined in 2007 by Eulalia, and while both users have since departed from the website, their legacy lives on, and their influence and creations are still used to this day.

Chatroom and Discord Moderators

 * First up on the list of staff are the chat moderators! These users are vital to keeping peace in the chat room, and monitoring it while they are on the wiki. While our chat can be fairly inactive, there are times where it can be too much for one staff member to control. To obtain chat moderator rights, a user must fill out a request for chat moderator rights application. As of 2018, the Warriors Wiki has switched their chatroom to a Discord server, and all chat moderators, rollbacks, and administrators are considered Discord moderators as well.


 * After that, an administrator can either chose to endorse or not endorse an applicant. Should the administrator in question endorse a candidate, they will be subjected to voting from the other chat moderators, rollbacks, administrator, and bureaucrats. All voting is done on majority ruling, unless a user violates the chat room rules or other policies during their endorsement period.


 * Listed below are all current and former chat moderators on Warriors Wiki.

Rollbacks

 * Rollbacks are the next step up on the rights tier here. They possess the ability to "rollback" an edit; this means that if a string of edits is done by one user (such as vandalism), the rollback tool will eliminate all of those edits with one click! To obtain rollback rights, a user must fill out a request for rollback rights application. Normally, a user must have already been a chat moderator, but exceptions have been made in the past for extremely exceptional users and situations where users cannot access the chatroom.


 * Listed below are all current and former rollbacks on Warriors Wiki.

Content Moderators

 * While not considered administrators, content moderators are given many of the same rights that administrators are. The main differences between content moderators and administrators is that they cannot edit the MediaWiki namespace, are unable to block users, and cannot promote or demote users. These roles have been considered junior administrators, in a sense, but not everyone who has content moderator rights desires to become and administrator.


 * Listed below are all current and former content moderator rights on Warriors Wiki.

Administrators and Bureaucrats

 * Warriors Wiki has had many administrators and bureaucrats, each of them giving their time and love to the wiki in their own special ways. To obtain these rights, a user must fill out a request for adminship form. While in some cases, RfAs are unsuccessful, a user may later on obtain those rights due to other circumstances, such as lack of activity in other administrators. A user must have already obtained chat moderator and rollback rights before they are permitted to obtain administrator and bureaucrat status.


 * By proxy, user who is an administrator or bureaucrat will possess the powers of the tiers below them. This would mean an administrator would also be classified as a chat moderator and rollback, but due to which tier ranks highest, the 'admin' tag would show up on their profile.


 * Administrator and bureaucrats, while normally grouped together, are actually different rankings. A bureaucrat has the ability to promote chat moderators, rollbacks, administrators, and other bureaucrats. An administrator, on the other hand, cannot promote rollbacks, other administrators, and bureaucrats; they are only permitted to promote chat moderators.


 * Listed below are all current and former administrators and bureaucrats on Warriors Wiki.

Content Projects

 * The projects handle the core content of the wiki. These are projects that handle mainspace articles, such as Into the Wild, Firestar, Prey, or 2011. Each group of articles has their own respective project to which they belong, and each project is lead by a group of highly skilled, active, and dedicated users.


 * Each Project has their own grading system, and they all follow the order of: planned, started, bronze, silver, and gold. Please see the project's individual guidelines for in-depth ways to compile a respective project's article. To obtain each rank, the following qualifications must be met:


 * Planned; 0 ; initial grading upon page creation. User can rank this without a nomination.
 * Started; 1 ; article must have basic formatting and information starts to compile on the page. User can rank this without a nomination.
 * Bronze; 2 ; article is almost complete, but might be missing sections or small gaps of information. User can rank this without a nomination.
 * Silver; 3 ; article must be complete at the time of the nomination, and articles going for silver ranking must always be nominated. Complete includes quotes, proper citations, and a complete family tree to the best of your ability. User cannot rank this without a nomination.
 * Gold; 4 ; the only way to obtain a gold ranking is for the article to have been featured. For articles that have been featured, but were not supported for gold nomination as well (due to lack of summaries, incomplete sections, ect), they can be nominated for gold once the article is complete at the time of the nomination. User cannot rank this without a nomination.

Books
 Current Status: Open 


 * Leader: Appledash
 * Deputy: Patchfeather14
 * Senior Warriors: Broken Foot, Mapleclaw, & Spookycat27
 * Important Links: Operations Page, Guidelines, Grading List, Current Featured Article, Senior Warrior Nominations.
 * Grading Categories: Planned, Started, Bronze, Silver, Gold
 * How to Join: Leave a join request on their talk page.


 * Project:Books is one of the "backbone projects" of the wiki, due to the content of the project's articles. Included within this project are pages for canon books in the series. This does not include anything related to fanfiction, fan-aspects, or characters that are not canon in the Warriors series. Examples of articles that Project:Books handles are:

Characters
 Current Status: Open   Often Shortened to "PC" 


 * Leader: Stealthfire star
 * Deputy: SnowedLightning
 * Senior Warriors: Appledash & StarlightGirlHSS
 * Important Links: Guidelines, Frequently Asked Questions, Prospective Featured Articles, Current Featured Article, Senior Warrior Nominations, Tutorials, Part One, Tutorials, Part Two.
 * Grading Categories: Planned, Started, Bronze, Silver, Gold
 * How to Join: Leave a join request on their talk page.


 * Project:Characters is another one of the "backbone projects" of the wiki, again due to the content of the articles it manages. This project maintains and takes care of articles regarding canonical characters in the series. If there is a discrepancy with a character's description, all comments come to this project. This does not include anything related to fanfiction, fan-aspects, or characters that are not canon in the Warriors series. Examples of articles that Project:Characters handles are:

Reality
 Current Status: Open   Often Shortened to "PR" 


 * Leader: Appledash
 * Deputy: Spookycat27
 * Senior Warriors: None
 * Important Links: Guidelines, Operations List, Current Featured Article.
 * Grading Categories: Planned, Started, Bronze, Silver, Gold
 * How to Join: Leave a join request on their talk page.


 * Project:Reality is another one of the "backbone projects" of the wiki, again due to the content of the articles it manages. This project is fairly new, having taken some of Project:World's workload, and this project maintains and takes care of articles of realistic aspects of the series. This does not include anything related to fanfiction, fan-aspects, or characters that are not canon in the Warriors series. Examples of articles that Project:Reality handles are:

World
 Current Status: Open   Often Shortened to "PW" 


 * Leader: Mapleclaw
 * Deputy: Appledash
 * Senior Warriors: None
 * Important Links: Guidelines, Operations Page, Current Featured Article, Senior Warrior Nominations.
 * Grading Categories: Planned, Started, Bronze, Silver, Gold
 * How to Join: Leave a join request on their talk page.


 * Project:World is another one of the "backbone projects" of the wiki, again due to the content of the articles it manages. This project maintains and takes care of articles related to the series, but do not fall under a Book or Character category. This does not include anything related to fanfiction, fan-aspects, or characters that are not canon in the Warriors series. Examples of articles that Project:World handles are:

Adopt a User
 Current Status: Closed   Often Shortened to "AaU" 


 * Leader: None; Project is Closed
 * Deputy: None; Project is Closed
 * Senior Warriors: None; Project is Closed


 * Project:Adopt a User is a closed project, meaning the mission has been completed and the project disbanded. This is based on an adoption process, where each new user was assigned a mentor to teach them the ways, rules, and ins-and-outs of the wiki. Membership was not mandatory, and some users even had more than one apprentice at a time.


 * While the project's closure means there is no longer an official mentoring program for the wiki as a whole, there has always been an air of unofficial mentorship between some of the newer users and the older ones, and the senior members will always be willing to take you underneath their wing and teach you what they know. This is, in fact, how many of the elder users now got their start back when they were new.

Awards
 Current Status: Open   Often Shortened to "PA" 


 * Leader: Spookycat27
 * Deputy: ThunderStar321
 * Senior Warriors: Appledash, SnowedLightning, and Stealthfire star
 * Important Links: Guidelines.
 * How to Join: Leave a join request on their talk page.


 * While still fairly new, Project:Awards was created to honor and recognize the hard-working users of this wiki with banners for their userpages. These awards are to be created and awarded by individual users, and should be given after clear and proper thinking. This project, due to the absence of interested users, has halted in its progress, but activity should spark up when the time is right.

Character Art
 Current Status: Open   Often Shortened to "PCA" 


 * Leader: SnowedLightning
 * Deputy: Patchfeather14
 * Senior Warriors: Appledash, Broken Foot, Cosmokitten, Ivybreeze, Stealthfire star, & Winterwhisper432
 * Important Links: Guidelines, Tutorials, Image Approval Page, Image Tweak Page, Image Nomination Page, Senior Warrior Nominations, Mentorship Program.
 * Grading Categories: Planned, Started, Bronze, Silver, Gold
 * How to Join: Leave a join request on their talk page.


 * Project:Character Art, often shortened to "Charart", is the most active project on the wiki. This project requires many more leads than a normal project, due to the massive amount of members and the processes that each lead (collective term for the senior warriors, the leader, and the deputy) does. Leads can approve images, decline them, CBA them, and add them to character articles once they are approved.


 * PCA also had a mentorship program, but due to lack of activity and interest, this has been close for the time being. This mentorship program is not a requirement for becoming a warrior or senior warrior, and will not be held against you, should you chose to not take part. Our news section is run by Appledash, and if there are things that need to be mentioned, it should be addressed on her tak page.


 * The goal of PCA is to create images for every article that we can. Should there be a disagreement over a character's description, it should not be brought to PCA; it should go directly to PC. PCA creates each and every image presented on the articles here by themselves, and they all go though a rigorous and often heat-filled approval process. Many of the editors here are also members of PCA, as it is often considered the "easiest" project to handle, due to users working with art programs. Membership in other projects is not required to advance in PCA.


 * PCA has genderless blanks for the following ranks:


 * Examples of PCA's work can be found below:

PCA's Image Grading Scale

 * PCA has a grading scale, although it operates on a slightly different medium than the other projects, who all use the same one. While this project still has planned through gold ranking, how the articles obtain those rankings are all dependent upon the images themselves, not the article's content, barring gold rank, which will be explained.


 * Planned; 0 ; initial grading upon page creation. Article does not have an image in place, or an artist does not have it reserved. All unreleased characters have their charart section as planned by default.
 * Started; 1 ; a user has reserved an image on the Project Table. This rank is obtained before an image is posted on the approval page.
 * Bronze; 2 ; a user has posted their image on the approval page and is awaiting critique and approval. The time an image is on the approval page varies greatly from artist to artist.
 * Silver; 3 ; the article has at least one image approved by PCA upon its page. Other images pending approval or reservation do not need to be completed in order for this article to obtain silver charart status.
 * Gold; 4 ; the only way to obtain a gold ranking for charart is for the article to have been featured. There is another requirement for this rank, however. The article must not have been part of a content drive in order to complete the article. The article must already have silver charart status in order to be ranked gold.

Userboxes
 Current Status: Maintenance   Often Shortened to "PU" 


 * Organizers: SnowedLightning & Spookycat27


 * Project:Userboxes is another one of the older projects on the wiki. While currently in a "maintenance-only" mode, the objective of the project is to repair, update, and maintain the userboxes that this wiki uses. Whether they be for project membership, showing your support for characters and pairings, or letting the users know what your favorite book is, PU will have those userboxes ready for your userpage.


 * Some examples of what a userbox is are below:

Sockpuppetry

 * Unless you are moving accounts, there is no need for a second, third, or even fourth account on Warriors Wiki. While we understand that sometimes things happen, such as being locked out of your account and no longer having the password or email to it, abusing multiple accounts to obtain rights, PCA chararts, or to rig any kind of forum vote is against our rules and you will be blocked.


 * Exceptions have been made in the past for the testing of MediaWiki, and experiments with users and how they treat new people.

On Blocking

 * Once a user has been blocked from the wiki for an infinite period of time, the block will not be lifted. Permanent blocks are given in extreme cases, such as personal attacks, intentional vandalism, and abusing multiple accounts. Any subsequent accounts made to evade the block will also result in another block. Repeated offenses from one user to evade bans will result in the request sent to Wikia for an IP address check.

The Basics of Editing and Contributing

 * Editing is at the forefront of the wiki, and is considered its most important aspect. While some users, such as myself, have well over 75,000 edits, that does not mean that number was easy to get. Many a years have been spent trying to edit this wiki to make it the best that it can possibly be, from grammar fixes and writing summaries, to finding templates so the content can show up the right way. While no form of editing, barring vandalism) is considered bad, persay, a high-quality contribution is considered over a numerical amount.


 * When a user is running for a staff spot, the administration team will look at all of their contributions. As we take pride in our work, users who have made malicious edits will typically need to work a little harder than someone who has not intentionally vandalized the wiki. We do not hold past edits against another user if they have already paid their due, however.

Contributions: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 * As has been previously said, editing is what makes this wiki have its content. Without users editing, the wiki will not have any content. Below, I attempt to touch upon what I would consider when making an edit.

Edit Bumping

 * Edit bumping, while not against the rules, is frowned upon here. Due to the focus of the content of an edit, excessive edits in quick succession are typically looked at with unease. These edits can sometimes be seen as raising your edit count by large numbers in a short period of time, whether to obtain rights or beat out another person in edit count. Warriors Wiki does not promote this kind of behavior, and we encourage you to make quality a priority over quantity.

Grammar & Linkage Fixes

 * Though a broad range of our users use other variations of English, or any other language, Warriors Wiki is committed to using American English, as the books are written in it. As you write an article, you are expected to write it in present tense: unless it is referring to an action a character did previously. When you write, whether it is headings or the titles of an article, you will want to capitalize the first word and any proper nouns - anything other than that should not be capitalized.


 * Words capitalized include anything capitalized in the book - such as names of the Clan cats, name of groups (such as The Kin and the Tribe of Rushing Water).


 * When linking, if you are linking a place, such as "the mossy clearing" or "the sandy hollow," make sure the first letter of the second word is decapitalized. If you are linking something like ThunderClan, it will stay capitalized. Examples would be:

the mossy clearing instead of the mossy clearing Lionpaw instead of Lionpaw Jaykit instead of Jaykit Larksong instead of Larksong

"The ThunderClan leader's pelt was dark brown." instead of "The ThunderClan leader's pelt was dark brown." "Firestar's new deputy is Brambleclaw." instead of "Firestar's new deputy is Brambleclaw."

Can I Use Article Content On Another Wiki?

 * Due to the users themselves writing the article content, we ask that you do not take our information and use it for your own benefit. While users can create their own Warriors Wiki with their own ideas and words, stealing our content and using it without permission will result in action taken against you. This includes article history, chararts, policy pages, and things of the like matter.

Warriors Wiki Twitter

 * Although fairly new, the Warriors Wiki Twitter is used to generate information to a broader range of users who may not check Warriors Wiki as often as they check Twitter. The Warriors Wiki Twitter will retweet news (especially from the authors), tweet about new Warriors info, and talk about any news in the Warriors Wiki community.

COPPA
''For the official website, please see coppa.org.


 * COPPA is the "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act", and this was put into place to protect all children. A "child" is defined as anyone under the age of 13.See here Due to this, Wikia's Terms of Use state that children under the age of thirteen (13) many not use the Service or accept the Terms of Use, thus are unable to sign up for an account on Wikia.


 * Warriors Wiki follows Wiki's ToU very strictly and we do not knowingly allow users under the age of thirteen (13) to join and interact with the users here. Should an age be revealed that is below the age stated in the ToU, a block will be placed upon the account until the holder reaches the proper age.


 * Action will not be taken upon those who have violated the ToU in the past, but did not reveal their age. If user has revealed they were under thirteen when they joined, but are over that age at the date of revelation, they will not be blocked from Warriors Wiki.

Wikia's Terms of Usage
 For the entire Terms of Usage agreement, please see here.



Good Faith Policy

 * Wikia's Golden Rule is to Assume Good Faith with every user, regardless of background. If you see a new user, do not assume that they are there to vandalize or cause problems, unless they have given you a reason to do so. Good Faith is defined as the following:


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 * Good Faith is the most important rule and the guideline we must all abide by. Not assuming good faith with a user will result in action being taken. Do not attack another user, and do not assume they are there to vandalize.