Rules for Wiki Wranglers

This page provides a series of rules and guidelines for volunteer Wiki Wranglers helping out with the maintenance of the GPF Wiki. By following a common set of instructions, we can all hopefully create a helpful database of metadata surrounding the comic that will be of use to everyone, including Jeff himself.

Please note that this, like all Wiki articles, should be considered a "living document" that can change and grow over time, so it might be a good idea to refresh your memory of these rules from time to time.

• Jeff's edits are final. This is Rule #1 for the entire Wiki. If you write an excellent, well-crafted article and Jeff comes along behind you and edits it, you are not permitted to change it back. Period. There's nothing personal about these edits, but as creator of the comic and thus Wiki Editor in Chief, Jeff has the final say in the content of every article. Most of the time, Jeff's edits will mostly serve as enforcement of the rest of the rules listed below. However, even if your changes seem to be in line with the rules and the change seems to be nit-picky, Jeff probably has a very good reason for making the change.
• Wranglers shall waive copyrights for their contributions. By contributing to the GPF Wiki, you will officially be waiving any copyright claims to the text you contribute and granting those rights to GPF Comics and Jeff. As of this writing, the Wiki does not use any sort of Open Source or Creative Commons licensing, although we may change that in the future. Officially, all content written by Jeff in the past remains copyrighted by him, so redistribution without permission is restricted. Because it won't be easy to reconcile this copyright policy with user contributions, we ask respectively that if you plan to contribute you agree to hand over those contributions to us. We, of course, make no claims on any non-GPF-related content you may have created elsewhere outside this Wiki.
• Be encyclopedic. Like Wikipedia, the GPF Wiki strives to have an encyclopedic tone. We are concerned primarily with summarizing facts and making them easy to find and cross-link. As such, Wiki articles should concentrate on facts and be written in an academic tone. Summarize events rather than give an excessive amount of detail; concisely distill plots to their essentials to support the facts and whet the reader's appetite for more. If readers want everything there is to know about something, they can read the story for themselves.
• No speculation... unless it's important. One of the things we love about GPF is the multiple plot lines and surprising twists. Many times, Jeff will foreshadow events months if not years in advance, laying hints in seemingly innocuous places. Often these hints tend to be open secrets among fans, sometimes laid down in the strip with such an obvious tone that you might expect the characters to nudge you in the ribs and a wink knowingly. That said, it's not a fact unless it's spelled out plainly in black and white (well, maybe gray scale and sometimes color). Speculation should be avoided in general in this Wiki. That said, sometimes this speculation becomes such an important part of the story that it cannot be ignored. In such cases, it might be OK to include speculative comments, but only if they are clearly marked (i.e., "Some readers speculate that..."). Just don't forget Rule #1: If you include speculation in an article and Jeff removes it, you can't put it back.
• Spelling and grammar are important. Like the comic, the GPF Wiki is written primarily in American English. While we'd love to offer both the strip and the rest of the site in other languages, that's far too big of a task for us to do alone and most volunteer efforts fail before they get started. As such, make sure to write your articles in American English. Use American spellings for words that vary among dialects ("color" instead of "colour", "mold" instead of "mould"). Spell check, spell check, spell check! Many browsers have built-in spell checkers, so there's no excuse to misspell anything. Use proper grammar unless directly quoting a character whose grammar is atrocious. If American English is not you primary language, it might be a good idea to have someone proofread your article before you submit it.
• Keep it clean. No profanity or obscene language, period. Mild expletives ("darn", "heck", "crap", etc.) can be used when quoting a character, but not otherwise. Similarly, innuendo is permitted provided you're quoting a character who uses it. In general, the comic itself should be your guide; if you haven't seen it in the comic, it shouldn't appear in the Wiki.
• Keep external links to a minimum. Ideally, we want to keep readers on the GPF site, both to keep readers engaged and entertained, and to increase our page views and by consequence our ad revenue. As such, we try to keep links to external sites to a minimum. However, external links are often helpful for expanding the reader's knowledge, providing additional reading for those who want it. When linking to an external site, do not use misleading text. Under no circumstances should you link to sites containing malicious or objectionable material. If you are caught using the GPF Wiki for spamming or self promotion, your edit access will be immediately revoked.
• Use Interwiki Tags for internal links. We use interwiki tags to link to other pages within the GPF site. These help standardize these links and their appearance. See the Interwiki Tags page for more details.
• Your best resources are the comic, Jeff, and the Wiki itself. The comic itself should be your primary standard. If something does not happen in the comic itself or in its ancillary material, it should be considered speculation. Use existing Wiki articles as a guide for both how articles should be written and what content they should contain. And when in doubt, you can always ask Jeff himself. You may have to wait for an answer occasionally, but he will always try his best to help Wranglers with questions.
• Be respectful of other Wranglers. Malicious or spiteful editing of other Wranglers' articles will not be tolerated. If you have a problem with another Wrangler, either solve it quietly amongst yourselves or bring it to Jeff for arbitration.
• Violators of these rules will be dismissed. As much as we appreciate all the hard work you may put in to improving the GPF Wiki, the simple fact is that if you can't play by the rules, we'll have to ask you to leave. Users who repeatedly bump heads with Jeff and can't follow these guidelines will have their editing access revoked. You will, of course, still be able to read and search the Wiki as any non-Wrangler can, and all your contributions will remain attributed to you.