GuildWiki:Community expectations

There has been a recent offer by Mike O'Brien, one of the founders and an a chief execitive at Arena Net, to have a Guild Wars Wiki hosted in an official fashion by Arena Net.

Several contributors of the GuildWiki have responded with support for this idea (and a mixture of surprise and excitement that the existence of the GuildWiki is known to people at Arena Net). However, Karlos, LordBiro, and others have raised the question of editorial freedom (or lack thereof) that comes from official backing.

This page is an attempt to document what the GuildWiki community expects from whoever backs the GuildWiki, whether it be Phil (Gravewit) or Arena Net.

Freedom to Document
The GuildWiki should be free to document every aspect of the game. This includes, but isn't limited to:


 * Observed bugs regarding skills, quests, missions, etc.
 * Workarounds for said bugs.
 * Research on various phenomena such as drop rates and damage calculation
 * Community gathered information on future campaigns and other material not officialy released by ArenaNet

The GuildWiki community understands that bugs can lead to unbalancing exploits, but believes that full disclosure is generally the best strategy. Better a bug known to all and exposed than a bug known to a few and hidden.

Freedom to Criticize
While our main articles always try to maintain a neutral point of view, the discussion pages for articles are an entirely different story. The GuildWiki community expects


 * To be able to criticize the game in talk pages.
 * To argue with each other about aspects of the game.

Freedom of Expression in User Pages
While our main articles always document the game Guild Wars, the users of the GuildWiki also spend a lot of time maintaining user pages. On these pages they chronicle their activities in Guild Wars, make shrines for their characters, and often engage in silly antics.

It has been the policy of the GuildWiki that users be granted extraordinary leniency in crafting their user page (and subpages) as they wish. Of course, this leniency does not extend to illegal material, or material that would lead to destabilizing the GuildWiki or the game Guild Wars, but so far we have rarely felt the need to redact a user's personal page.

The GuildWiki expects


 * User Pages to be self-goverened; sysops should only intervene on a user's page if the user in question displays illegal material and refuses to amend it.

Freedom of Governance
The GuildWiki selects from among their active and dedicated users candidates for sysop status. These users are granted certain additional powers not given to regular users. These powers include:


 * The power to delete a page
 * The power to protect a page from edits
 * The power to edit protected pages

However, importantly, they do not have the following powers:


 * The power to promote other users to sysops.
 * The power to demote sysops.

These powers are retained by the overall administrators of the GuildWiki.

The community expects to be able to continue to use this governance scheme because it has worked well for the GuildWiki thus far. All sysops have equal powers, and are expected to behave like any other user of the GuildWiki when not exercising their administrative powers. These powers are generally always exercised after a consensus is reached by interested parties.