Our site keeps growing! This is awesome, but we have to put in some groundwork to support it. These guidelines should help prevent a lot of squabbles and arguments, as well as keep the place more-or-less organized. Follow them as best you can and send questions to one of the admins: Joe or Peter.
Important: These guidelines are a work in progress again, thanks to our move off of Google Sites.
In general, the ownership of a page defaults to its creator. So, GMs will own most of the pages related to their game, and players own the page or pages detailing their character. Certain pages are more complex, like a community-managed npc list, and those less clear-cut cases need to be worked out by that game's GM and players.
A good rule of thumb is not to edit someone else's page without their permission, even if you are the GM of a game and they're a player in your game. Let each person handle their own stuff. If you aren't sure who's managing a given page, ask that game's GM. For minor things like spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc: let it slide. We're here to have fun, not be pedantic. If something really bothers you, ask if the page's owner could fix it. Or, ask if they would allow you to do so instead.
Everyone who contributes to this site has the ability to edit basically every page we have. Don't abuse that power! There are a few pages that are open season – detailed below – but otherwise, limit yourself to the pages you own.
All of the site's pages support comments and inline files. For uploaded files, the smaller they are the better! If you need to embed a big image, video, or other file, host it somewhere else and add a link.
Sub-pages are not linked automatically, so be sure to add a link to them from the parent page.
Games come and go in an easy cycle: the idea, the announcement, playing it (maybe for a really long time), and wrapping it up. The idea phase doesn't have a good place to live on our site, so these rules outline how to advertise your game, set up and maintain its pages, handle temporary suspension for breaks and the like, and finally what to do when it's over.
Once you know what your prospective game is all about, it's time to let people know about it. There are tons of ways to do that, but the one we're concerned with is posting it on this site. If you don't have editing privileges, now is when you need to ask for them.
Create a main page for your game, under the /games folder. Add the "lfp" tag to that page, along with a tag for its system.
Make an entry on the front page under Upcoming and Suspended Games. Upcoming games get star billing and can safely be placed above any suspended games. This entry needs to include the game's name, what system it uses, your name, a brief synopsis, and the number of player openings. For formatting reference, here's a sample:
Vector
System: Diaspora
GM: Peter Andrews
Synopsis: You're alive. You shouldn't be, but here you are. When the invasion struck, you and four crewmates were on an orbital relay above your home star. The relay is gone, the fleet is gone – hell, most of the planet is gone – but not you. Now in command of a flying wreck, you face the oldest question: fight, item, run...or magic.
Player Openings: 5
If you're uncomfortable using your real name in the GM field, that's fine: use your online handle or something similar instead. Also, keep the synopsis to two or three sentences, so the front page doesn't get too large.
That's it! Talk up your game at URSGA or other club meetings, introduce it to interested friends, etc. Once you have enough players and know when your first session will be held, you can move on to Current Game status.
This is where you start doing some serious site editing: it's time to create a new section of the site devoted to your game. Start by creating a new page underneath the site's main Home page. This will be your game's homepage, so name it accordingly. It's typical to use the game's own name. This is a good place to restate the game synopsis, and maybe add those sentences that didn't fit on the front page.
With your landing page done for now, you need to decide which pages your section will include and where they'll go. You can change it all later, so just go with something that makes sense for the current state of the game. That said, location does matter! Try to keep your pages organized in a logical way. Pages that are almost always found immediately under a landing page are the game's house rules, an NPC list, and a page for each PC in the game.
Once you've squared away where your pages are, let an admin know that your game is starting and they'll add links to your game in the sidebar. The last bit of setup you need to do is change your game's front page blurb. Move it up to the Current Games section, this time at the bottom, and get rid of the Player Openings line (unless you're starting with open slots, which is fine).
As your game goes on, you'll no doubt make changes to its section. That's a good thing! If pages get moved around, ask an admin to update the sidebar accordingly.
As we post more games, our collection of house rules is only going to grow. When considering rules for your own game, it's a really good idea to look through the rule pages for other games which used the same system. Since this site doesn't support tagging, the process of finding all applicable rules is difficult. We're working on it! If you find an existing rule that you want to use, just copy it to your own house rules page, then you can tweak it as needed for the circumstances of your own game. You can also link to the old rules page, but that can become tedious on too large a scale.
Admin duties boil down to two tasks: keep things organized, and keep things pretty. Admins are responsible for the overall formatting of the site, the maintenance of special pages, and the upkeep of the site's resource pages (like templates and scripts). To this end, they can sometimes transcend the ownership rules and make changes to any part of the wiki. The key word is "sometimes": admins are users too, and should do their best to get permission before messing with other peoples' things.
There are some pages in the site that don't fall under the "creator owns it" rule because they help form the site's structure. Instead, they're managed by the admins. Users can still contribute to some of them (according to each page's rules below), but admins handle everything else about the page. These special pages include:
Some of those are index pages which aggregate settings or systems. Those linked pages still belong to whomever created them; it's only the special index pages which belong to the admins.
Responsibility for maintaining the site Guidelines page lies solely with the wiki's administrators. If you have a change you'd like to make, bring it up with an admin and let them decide if, how, or when to make it.
These pages are linked from the sidebar under Resources and are open to general editing by everyone on the wiki. These guidelines are meant to give an idea of what is appropriate for each page. While the full formatting might not be described here, it's a good idea to follow the format of similar entries on that page when adding your own.
The front page and the sidebar are rather special. Not only are they the first things visitors see, but they're also the main listings for all of our games. While GMs have some limited editing privileges (see the Game Management section for an explanation), the final word lies with the admins: it's their job to curate these parts of the site. So, please don't be offended if an admin rearranges or edits something.
This page is a free-for-all. Add your game to the list if you'd like to be gifted occasional NPCs. On the other side, please add NPC ideas to a game in need if you have extras! Further guidelines are on that page.
A place for links to fully-developed settings. If you have a setting you want to add, run it by a few other GMs first to make sure it's ready (also for feedback on improvements). There are more detailed guidelines on the Stock Settings page itself.
This is a place to aggregate SRD's (System Reference Documents) for our homebrew systems. If you've made a homebrew system, add a link to its page. If you have more than one page for your system, choose the best place to start for someone new. See the New Systems page for more explanation.
Webcomics, gaming pictures, funny quotes, character tropes, you name it. Add whatever tickles you! If you want to add something from a particular game, like quotes or a brief story, first make a page for it within that game. Then, add a link to it from the global Fun Stuff page.
To clarify, things like an artistic interpretation of the Hedge from Changeling: The Lost don't need a separate page, since they apply to a whole system and not just one particular game. A drawing of your characters having an umbrella fight in the hedge, however, probably needs some context and should be on a page for that game.
This page has links to all sorts of useful tools. Please add your own! The more tools we all know about, the better our games can be. If you find a broken link, first try to fix it (i.e. the page moved). If the link can't be fixed, then it's safe to take off the list.