The Elder Scrolls Wiki:Policies and Guidelines

TESWiki is an Elder Scrolls encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers, who are known as TESWikians. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any article right now by clicking on the  link that appears at the top of the page.

Much of TESWiki follows a similar setup to its parent wiki, Wikipedia.

Browsing TESWiki
TESWiki contains a huge amount of information on all sorts of subjects within the official Star Wars universe ranging from individuals, locations, technology, weapons, organizations, and vehicles to everything and anything in between. It also includes real-world articles on real world culture, and the creators who help build the saga. Try browsing the various categories now.

You can also search for text in articles. Just go to the "search" field to the left, enter your search term and click "search". Note that the built-in search function may be disabled in times of server overload; in these cases you will be redirected to a Google-based search of the TESWiki database.

If you read something that you really like, then why not drop a note on the article's talk page? First select the  link (look for it in the tabs above the page), to get to the talk page. Then select ' on the talk page, or click the + to the right of ' to simply add a new comment. We always love to get a little positive feedback.

Editing
Everyone can edit pages in TESWiki &mdash; even this page! Just click the  link at the top of any page (except for protected pages) if you think it needs any improvement or new information. You don't need anything special; you don't even need to be logged in. If you want to experiment first, without risk of "messing up" a real article, head over to the sandbox, where you can practice editing to your heart's content. To practice editing an existing page like this one, just copy and paste it from the article's edit page into the sandbox.

If you want to learn more, check out the pages listed in or help page index. Our editing help and editing FAQ pages should help you to learn the basic info you should know as a member of our project.

Policies
TESWiki has a few policies and guidelines that you should look at. The three most essential principles are NPOV, GFDL, and civility. What does this mean?
 * NPOV, or neutral point of view means that articles should not be biased, and should represent differing views on a subject fairly.
 * All contributions to TESWiki are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA). This specifically ensures that TESWiki will remain freely distributable in perpetuity. Please do not submit any content that is copyrighted without permission of the copyright holder. (See Copyrights for more information).
 * Civility. TESWiki works by cooperation, consensus, and therefore mutual respect, civility, and wikilove should be practiced universally. Please assume good faith when you disagree with someone, stay cool, and talk things over civilly. It is good practice to provide an edit summary explaining your changes so as to assist others with noticing and accepting your changes. If you find that your edits get removed or modified, wait a moment before reinstating them. First check the page history, your talk page, or the article's talk page to discuss. See also Wikiquette.
 * Style: TESWiki articles should be written according to our Manual of Style. In particular, new editors should ensure that they write their articles in an "in-universe" perspective. Titles of the saga (such as movies, books and comics), alternative endings of games, non-canon and real world information should never be incorporated in the article itself. The articles present history as real. To add such commentary, use the Behind the scenes section of each article.

Want to join?
Anyone can edit, but there are advantages to creating an account if you want to contribute regularly. To join, create an account and then introduce yourself to the community at the new user log.

Don't be discouraged
If you run into conflicts in your first forays into editing, then don't let it get you down. In any collaborative project there are clashes. Have a look at the writers' rules of engagement page as well as the other articles in the tutorial wing below. Use them to help you resolve the problems and learn how to become an active and productive contributor. If there is a slang phrase or term you aren't familiar with, look it up in our glossary.

And if there's anything you don't understand &mdash; be it technical or social &mdash; and you're not sure where to look, just post a question at the Council Club, and someone will be happy to help you.

Have fun!