Wiki:General Rules and Guidelines

From OS-tans.moe Wiki

In order to keep the OS-tans.moe Wiki a well organized, structured, and friendly place, we established some rules and guidelines, and expect every member from the community to follow them.

What is the OS-tans.moe Wiki and how to join?

MediaWiki Manual

Like many others, this Wiki is based on MediaWiki. If you need it, a manual is available in order to learn all the technical stuff like how to format text, what are categories, how to use templates,... The manual can always be accessed via the navigation menu, just click on the Help about MediaWiki link.

Page Creation and Edition

Firstly, if you want to create a new article, please read the Admissible Articles page in order to know what content is allowed here. Please also take a look at the Copyrights page, notably to be clear about what other people can do with anything you add on the Wiki.

In general, feel free to improve existing articles by editing them to fix typos, add illustrations, complete sections,... Really, don't hesitate, that is why wikis exist!

However, don't edit original content like another user's personal page or article about an Original Character or Universe, even if it is to fix a typo. Instead, let the user know in the relevant Talk Page. If there are structural issues like missing or wrong categories, the administrators regularly look at new changes and will certainly catch them, so let them fix those. If you see a particular problem that remain unfixed, you can always contact them.

When documenting stuff that are not original creations like legacy OS-tans or their merchandise, your additions should if possible be verifiable via reliable sources, like they would be on Wikipedia. Use Ref tags to properly source your information. That said, we don't have a strict "No Original Research" policy like Wikipedia, so if you have interesting statements that are found nowhere else, feel free to include them.

Original Character Article Titles

There are two options to name articles about your Original Character : either

  • Use the character's name (like Mona),
    • If several characters share the same name, the first entry may usually keep the title as is, while subsequent entries must have the username appended. Example of a possible restriction for the first entry: if several people create a character named "Lisa", they should all append their username, while the "Lisa" page would be a disambiguation page because the Apple Lisa computer or the Lisa OS are very popular.
  • or the format "Personified Thing (Username)", "Personified Thing-tan/kun (Username)" or similar, like iPhone 3G-tan (Sinclair-Speccy).

You may also refer to the Original Universe instead of your username (example: Xenix (UNIVER.SYS)), but make sure to be consistent and not use the username for some and universe for others. The username or universe may be omitted if the title would most likely never cause any confusion, especially when a non-existing thing is personified (for example, Nanami Server 2069-tan).

Use whatever option you prefer. The unused title may be redirected to the other one.

Subpages

The MediaWiki Subpages feature (not to be confused with Categories) should be used when making pages to organize or develop your original universe. For example, instead of having the following titles,

  • Introduction to My Awesome Fanon
  • My Awesome Fanon's Character List
  • My Awesome Fanon's Lore

You would have:

  • My Awesome Fanon/Introduction
  • My Awesome Fanon/Character List
  • My Awesome Fanon/Lore

This effectively makes three pages (Introduction, Character List, Lore), that are subpages of "My Awesome Fanon" (which must of course exist) instead of belonging nowhere. On these subpages, there will be a link to the parent page at the top.

When linking to these pages, you can do something like

* [[My Awesome Fanon/Introduction|Introduction to My Awesome Fanon]]
* [[My Awesome Fanon/Character List|My Awesome Fanon's Character List]]
* [[My Awesome Fanon/Lore|My Awesome Fanon's Lore]]

Subpages may be appropriate in other cases, like making galleries for each of your characters. Feel free to make use of the feature if it is appropriate.

Where to not use Subpages

Pages that are about a specific thing like a character, place or event should not be subpages. Examples:

In case of a naming collision, follow the rules for the character titles (add your user or universe name in parentheses).

On the other hand, Xerox Star (UNIVER.SYS)/Artworks is an appropriate use of subpages.

User Page

A special user page is assigned to your account and belongs to the "User" namespace. You can access it by clicking on your username at the top left of the page. Use it to introduce yourself, talk about your projects, put links to your other site's profiles,... Don't create another page for this purpose.

List of all Users on the Wiki.

Discussions

Every article has an associated Talk page where you can discuss about it. Please follow the guidelines regarding this, notably: don't forget to sign your messages with ~~~~ and indent your replies with colons.

Uploads

To upload a file, click on the Upload file link on the navigation menu, this will bring you to the Upload Form. Please fill it properly and select the correct license. You can always edit and complete your upload entry later.

Allowed uploads are anything that are relevant for any admissible article and not redundant, as well as artworks of OS-tans and related characters. Don't hesitate to use the Wiki to upload your OS-tan art or share interesting ones from others! That said, Admins reserve the right to remove low quality uploads in order to keep the categories and galleries clean, as well as save some space on the server.

Behavior

Chibi Marina sending off someone
Don't headbutt people!

Like most communities, we expect you to follow standard behavior rules. Don't troll, vandalize pages, harass people, spam, etc.

Failure to do so will result in a caution or even the revocation of the Wiki permissions and a ban on the OS-tans.moe community platforms for serious offenses.

Admins have the right to remove or edit any content at any time to fit the rules or for any valid reason. Please don't take this personally or negatively if this does happen. The reasons will always be mentioned in the Edit's Summary.

All the content on the site must be suitable for a general public. Don't add or upload NSFW/mature content.

Inactive Original Content and Deletion Requests

Should a user be inactive on the Wiki (based on last edit time), Forum (last visit time), or any other platform associated to OS-tans.moe (last known activity time) for a period of one year, any original content created by the user will be considered as inactive and marked as such, while any internal link and reference pointing to the said content from any other part of the site will be removed. However, the content itself will otherwise be left as is.

You can request the deletion of this original content (pages, uploads, etc.) by doing one of the following:

  • Edit your own personal page and clearly request the deletion of your content;
  • Edit and empty all original content pages you created (don't worry if you miss some pages, we will understand your intention; you can still make a statement in the Edit Summary if you want);
  • Directly contact an administrator on the Wiki, Forum, or another platform associated to OS-tans.moe like r/OStan or the Discord with an account that is proven to be yours.

We reserve the right to ask for clarifications if we are unsure about if the account used to make the request is really yours. Unauthorized requests for deletion may result in a permanent ban of your Wiki account, deletion of your Forum account, as well as a deletion of all your own original content in the same way it is done for legitimate requests.

Once the conditions met, we will then make every effort to delete all your original content, as well as your Forum account. Your Wiki account (and some of its edition history entries) cannot be removed completely for technical reasons, but we will block it and rename to something like "Deleted User 123".

This is an irreversible action, so be sure that you really want to do that, or make sure that you have some backups if you want to share your content elsewhere.

Your Forum Posts will remain, unless you explicitly asked for their removal as well.

Note that we cannot do anything regarding archival services or search engine cached pages, it would be something that must be considered before posting any content on our site. Contributions that are not original content but rather common knowledge (like information regarding legacy OS-tans or merchandise) will also not be removed (as you agreed to put them here under the CC-BY-SA License).