Wowpedia:Guild pages policy

The goal of a wiki is to be informative and not to allow self promotion or free advertisement. This policy outlines what is allowed, not allowed, and required when a user creates a page for a guild.

Posting a page including info about a guild in an objective manner is fine, but we have had too many wikisquatters starting guild pages on a site meant to be mostly informative. This could even be classified as stealing our bandwidth which is illegal (at least in the U.S.)!

When writing a guild article, please consider the boilerplate as a good starting point.

Required
All guild pages will be required to follow these specifications.

Naming
Guild pages must be in the  namespace, contain the complete name of the guild, and be followed by the guild's server and EU or US in parentheses.
 * Example:.
 * Note there is no space between Guild: and the guild name. However, there is a space between the guild name and the following parenthetical.


 * Additional guild articles may be created as a sub article of the guild's main article. The guild page policy also applies to sub articles.
 * Examples:
 * It is important that guild and server names are accurate. If your guild is incorrectly named, and your guild is not found on the Armory, the page may be marked as a candidate for deletion.
 * If your guild name contains leading or trailing spaces, do not include them in the name of the article.
 * Redirects in the main namespace to guild pages are not allowed.
 * If your guild name contains leading or trailing spaces, do not include them in the name of the article.
 * Redirects in the main namespace to guild pages are not allowed.

Contents
All guild pages must contain:


 * The Guild tag at the top of the page.
 * The server the guild exists on.
 * The faction the guild plays.
 * At least three (3) sentences in English containing useful information about the guild, such as the purpose of the guild, contact information, recruiting state, rules, and style of play. After these sentences, the main article may be in another language if the intended audience is non-English.

Categorization
The guild page must also be properly categorized as follows:

If your guild cannot be classified as mainly PvE, PvP, or RP, use the category.
 * ,,   – Choose the one which most closely matches your play-style.
 * or

Note that using Guild and/or Guildbox with the appropriate parameters filled in will automatically categorize your guild page.

Allowed
The information here is allowed and encouraged in order to create an informative guild page:


 * A (short) list of players to contact for more information
 * A link to your guild website and/or forums
 * A list of the progress your guild has made
 * A list of periodic events that might be of interest to people outside the guild, e.g. prospective new members:
 * Guild meeting schedules, instance run schedules, PvP raid schedule
 * Note however that the intention is not to allow guilds to replace their own guild sites with Wowpedia pages. The emphasis is still on objectivity and usefulness to people outside your guild.
 * A summary of the purpose of your guild
 * Whether you are recruiting or not, and who you are recruiting
 * A brief summary of guild guidelines
 * Short stories or history of your guild

This is not necessarily a complete list. We do not mind you publishing other information that is useful or interesting to others; but it illustrates the gist of it: pages in Wowpedia are there for the visitors!

Not allowed
Posting the following types of information will result in your guild page being edited or deleted:


 * Biased information - The content on a Wiki is meant to be informative, this includes guild pages. Guild pages, like all other, should be written from a neutral point of view and must follow the Neutral Point of View Policy.
 * A complete list of guild members
 * Forums, message boards, or other forms of inter-guild communications
 * In general terms: don't put any material on the page that requires it to be updated frequently, or is only meant for members of the guild.
 * Redirects to non-guild pages are not allowed in the Guild namespace.

Disbanded guilds
Articles about disbanded or non-existent guilds qualify for speedy deletion. Guilds are considered to be disbanded if there are fewer than ten players in it on the official Armory or if it does not appear under the name indicated by the Wowpedia article on the Armory. If your guild has disbanded but you want to archive the article, please move it to the main author's User: namespace, or the server's namespace, and remove Guild and any guild-specific category.

Pages for renamed guilds or guilds which have undergone a server transfer should be moved to the new correct name.

Guild stubs
Stubs for guilds can be created in preparation of expanding the article with more information. If you create a stub, use the Stub/Guild tag at the top of your article. Guild pages marked as stubs which have not been edited to comply with the policy for 30 days will be deleted. Your guild page is a stub if it does not contain the required information.

Enforcing the policy

 * A page not containing the required information should be marked.
 * A guild page stub should be marked  after 30 days if it has not been fixed.
 * A page containing disallowed content can be edited to comply, or you can mark it with, which places it in Category:Pages with possible policy violations for someone else to fix.
 * Edits adding incorrect information or not allowed information should be reverted. However, edit wars on guild pages, as with any other page, are not desired; those who persist in such behavior on guild pages will be considered vandals and the page should be restored to the edit before the edit war.
 * Any pages or images linked to solely from a deleted guild page will also be deleted.
 * No notification to the creator/maintainer of the guild page is required on behalf of the admin at the time of deletion of the page beyond the presence of Stub/Guild on the guild page for 30 days.

''Note: A deleted guild page can be restored (or permitted to be recreated) at an admin's discretion. However, this will not give you an extra 30 days to comply with policy. Deleted guild pages recreated as stubs are subject to immediate deletion.''

Summary
Please remember that Wowpedia is a place where users go to obtain information about World of Warcraft, not get spammed with useless information. Guilds are certainly a large part of World of Warcraft and can be represented here, but they must follow the proper criteria and not participate in spewing useless biased information or Wikisquatting. Your target audience is not yourself or your guildmates, it is people interested in WoW. Your guild page should reflect this!