OpenGeofiction:Site policies

This page contains the general rules, guidelines, and site policies of OpenGeofiction. All policies listed below are in force, along with the necessary dependent pages.

General rules and guidelines

Be realistic	Keep it real. No fantasy, science fiction, joke territories, etc. See OpenGeofiction:Verisimilitude.
Be original	No imports from OSM. No copying trademarked maps. Doing these things may get you banned. No extensive copying of real world geography. Try to avoid using well-known place names, real or fictional. No real world companies or organizations. All images — photos and artwork — must be free to use, and must contain a link to source and/or copyright info. All wiki text must be your own writing. No copying others' mapping, without their permission.
Be respectful	Show consideration. The admin team are volunteers. Please refer to the FAQ page, the help and resources portal, territory assignment procedures and OSM tagging guides to first attempt self-support. Incomplete or repetitive messages will be ignored and may result in your account being blocked. No mapping in others' territories or moving the borders of others' territories without their permission. No writing about others' territories in the wiki without permission. Respect the open seas by following the rules for sea borders, islands, and shipping lines. Do not extend your territory beyond its shape on the overview map. For borders with unclaimed neighbors, keep them within 10 km of the original line. No sockpuppets. Only one account per user. No vandalism. No offensive or insulting content. Consult admin before forming any OGF-related group off-site No "empires of paper" in the wiki - avoid overwikification.
Be active	After a prolonged period of inactivity, we may mark your territory for withdrawal. Then, if still no activity happens or we don't otherwise hear from you during the following several weeks, we'll mark the territory as free for other users to claim, and close your account.
Violating the rules may result in suspension or termination of your account.

Site usage terms

All OpenGeofiction users must consent to the site terms of use and contributor terms upon creating an account. Any user that continues to edit on OpenGeofiction does so under the subject of these terms.

Civility

OpenGeofiction prides itself on being an open, welcoming community with mappers from around the world collaborating on a huge, diverse project. As such, in addition to treating other mappers with respect at all times, we ask that all participants understand that the project will have a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints, not all of which will be shared by each person in the community. However, deliberately hateful mapping, speech, and actions will not be tolerated.

Civility extends to potential conflicts between users on and off-site. If conflicts arise in mapping, especially in free-edit ("blue") or collaborative ("purple") territories, please see the territory etiquette page to begin conflict resolution.

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude means "like real", so the issue of verisimilitude is related to what kinds of countries we are working to build together in OpenGeofiction.

This guideline has been established for a simple reason: we all have to share this one fictional planet. If we want our "world map" not to turn into a crazy patchwork of improbable kingdoms, if we want the trade and diplomacy and geology and everything else to make sense and fit together, we all have to be following the same laws of physics and sociology. It's a way to make sure we are all putting together the same jig-saw puzzle.

For further information about what constitutes or does not constitute verisimilitude, or to inquire about items on the OpenGeofiction map, please see OGF:Verisimilitude.

Image policy

All users using the OGF encyclopedia are required to abide by the following image policy:

Upload only free use images (self-created, public domain, or Creative Commons licensed). This applies to artwork as well as photographs. There are literally hundreds of millions of free use images out there, including most of the images you see on Wikipedia and lots of other places. For details see below. Do not upload images already on Wikimedia Commons. This wiki provides for Commons integration, so any image available on Wikimedia Commons is already available to you and approved for use. All you have to do is link to the image normally as you would an uploaded image. Whenever you upload an image, you must include a the relevant copyright information and a link to the source of the image or other information indicating that it was self-created. No obscene, vulgar, or graphic imagery is permitted. Please consider the policy on civility before uploading images. The OGF encyclopedia is not an image-hosting service and is publicly viewable. All images must be relevant to encyclopedia contributions or will be removed. Unused images will be purged periodically. Because the site is public-facing, please know that any images of yourself or other individuals will be visible at large. Any images you upload that violate the privacy of others is a violation of OGF policy.

Further information and explanations may be found by clicking here.

Wiki policy

The primary focus of OpenGeofiction is what the community builds on the map. At the same time, one of the benefits of a wiki is to have a forum for further describing what exists on the map. The wiki is organized into multiple different namespaces reflective of function. The "main" namespace is where community members can create articles about their territory and help introduce it to the world. The "user" namespace is where users can introduce themselves, have sandbox pages, and communicate with others. The "collab" namespace is designed to house the main collaborative framework pages for individual projects.

To keep the wiki clean, and to ward against 'overwikification,' a few limits are in place. Members are encouraged to create a territory page and populate it with information relevant to the map. In addition to the territory page, users may also wish to create the following articles:

• Administrative divisions of (territory name): This article would include a listing and brief description of second-level, third-level, etc. divisions of the territory. Provinces and cities would be explained here. This could be done as a list, table, article, clickable map, or a creative combination.
• Capital or largest city: This separate article allows for the political, economic, or population center of the territory to have its own place on the wiki.
• Culture of (territory name): This article would include additional details about the important cultural elements of the society, from religion to sports and more. Cuisine, attire, and the fine arts are all things that can populate this article.
• Economy of (territory name): This article explains the economic functions of a country, from the currency to major businesses and corporations. Important historical business leaders and merchants would be mentioned herein. Once again, it could be done very effectively as a list, table, article, map, or combination.
• Government of (territory name): An article about government and politics can be important, because it allows users to list major historical figures, describe political structures, and express the cultural-political mores of the population.
• Infrastructure in (territory name): This meta category of transportation allows for issues of rail, road, aviation, and marine transport along with electricity, dams, and other public-works projects to be expanded upon in greater detail.

Are users limited to just these pages in the main namespace? For the time being, yes. Users will not be permitted to create multiple individual articles for each highway or historical figure. The limiting of page creation is done in part to keep a degree of standardization across articles and also to help prevent issues with cleanup in the event of territory turnover. Additionally, users should aim to cap their page contributions around 100kb of size, although there is understanding that the MultiMap extension may inflate page size dramatically. The goal of the wiki right now is to start creating what is essential and allowing it to evolve over time, as the community builds. Additional pages may be permitted at admin discretion for events or multinational considerations, such as the approved Pancontinental Games pages.

Next, all content pages must be categorized. The territory article, along with any secondary articles, must be in a category that features the territory name (e.g. Category:Gobrassanya). Uncategorized articles will be marked for deletion after a period of time.

Additional rules about the namespaces and overwikification may be seen by clicking here.