User:Tanaric/Starting out

The Guild Wars 2 Official Wiki is new, and as such has little structure or organization. The following are suggestions to make the creation of this wiki as simple and painless as possible.

Creation of content and policies

Worry not about policy (but certainly feel free to contribute to discussions about it). Remember that this wiki is about content, not about policies. We create policies if they are needed to help us host content, not because creating policies is an end in itself. If a policy is not needed to host content, most likely it is not needed at all. Policies naturally arise when the community settles on a way of doing things.

Some people feel that blindly proposing policies in order to regiment ideas and content that doesn't exist yet never works well. Others, however, feel that using the long time until actual content for GW2 is available can be fruitfully used to decide on the structures of this wiki, so we will not be stuck with ad hoc measures when GW2 is released. Voice your own views on this talk page and the policy talk page.

Formatting guidelines

As standards begin to emerge, create an article to document said standards. Don't label this article "policy" if it is really meant to be a formatting guideline. Guidelines are easier to change and less strict.

For example, if you're the first person to make an armor page, make a document describing the format you're using. People can suggest better ways to go about it as time goes on -- nothing is set in stone. Certainly don't wait to add content just because there's no policy or guideline describing how to do so.

Only fight battles worth fighting

There's no need to draw a line in the sand about the heading color of an infobox. If somebody has started making armor infoboxes with a cornflower blue heading, follow the same format. If you really hate cornflower blue... deal with it. There are a million more productive things you can do than campaign against a color that offends your aesthetics.

Enhance, don't delete

If somebody dumps a poorly-formatted article about something in place, try to make it better. If there's a page formatting guideline that they've ignored, edit it yourself and bring it up to speed. You can notify the user about the guideline if you wish, but no warnings or other impoliteness should be given. It's better to have poorly-formatted content than none at all.

Never delete anything just because of formatting issues.

Patrol content, not users

Similarly, if you're the type to patrol recent changes, patrol looking for things to improve, not for things to squelch.

Don't change things just to be different

There's no need to do things differently than previous community wikis just because you didn't like the previous wiki. Regardless of how you feel about the GuildWiki or the official Guild Wars Wiki, they both did a lot of things right. Learn from their mistakes, certainly, but learn from their successes too.

Don't keep things just to be the same

Research and think about guidelines and customs that you're involved in making. A good foundation goes a long way.

Don't think too much

If worrying about foundational guidelines is upsetting, distracting, or annoying, then don't. Just build content.

Be nice, we're (not) all here for the same reason

In the end, some early adopters are all here to make a great, sustainable resource for what presumably will be a great, sustainable game. Remember that even when somebody disagrees with you, they're disagreeing because they're trying to enhance the project. Don't let politics fool you -- we're just making a guide to a video game.

Have fun

You don't have any responsibilities -- don't go crazy or become stressed thinking that you do. Do what's fun (as long as it's constructive) and stop when it's not.