GTA Wiki:About Policy

This is the official policy page of GTA Wiki. Policy includes instructions on how to behave, what is or is not appropriate, and how decisions are made.

Rules and Guidelines
Policy on GTA Wiki is split into two distinct groups: rules and guidelines.

Rules are absolute restrictions on what cannot be done on GTA Wiki.

Most other policies are Official Guidelines - these are not the absolute rules, but methods of working on GTA Wiki. Examples of Official Guidelines would be the deletion policy and selection of administrators.

There may be other guidelines and suggestions around GTA Wiki that do not form part of official policy, such as how to do things. An example is the guidelines of how to use userboxes.

The Aim of Policy
The general aim of Policy is to help GTA Wiki run smoothly. Without any policy, anybody could do anything they wanted on the site, and it would never have become a useful hub of information if that had been the case.

Where Policy Comes From
A lot of our policy is adopted from Wikipedia, as they have established good methods of working on a wiki over years of discussion and development. None of our policies are copied word-for-word, but the spirit and purpose is the same. It should be noted that policy on Wikipedia is NOT necessarily policy on GTA Wiki, but Wikipedia policy may be used for reference where there is none on GTA Wiki.

Most policies are suggested by the administrators, if not introduced directly by User:Gboyers. Policies can also be suggested by users. All users are invited to discuss alterations to policy, for example to cover areas not already covered, or to reflect changes in GTA Wiki since the policies were introduced.

Important Policies
There are several policies integral to the smooth running of GTA Wiki. These have not all been documented yet, but their effect on GTA Wiki is profound.


 * Accuracy and Reliability - This policy is the cornerstone of all article editing on GTA Wiki, where all editors should aim to write as accurately as they can, and to make their writing as good as possible. This also includes spelling and grammar.
 * Perfection is not Required - To contrast with Accuracy and Reliability, GTA Wiki does not aim to be a perfect source of information. That is not to mean that we should not try to get as close as possible, but mistakes will be made and we need to allow for that to happen.
 * Consensus - This policy means that GTW is run as the users think it should be, and everybody is invited to help out and suggest edits to policies. This also applies to detail in articles, where extreme views are not supported by the rest of the community, and so are not kept in the article.
 * GTA Wiki is not a Democracy - This is the flipside to Consensus, meaning that some actions can be taken by the owners of GTA Wiki without community discussion, and that some policies will stay in place even if the community disagrees. This is used mainly for security purposes, and currently only User:Xenon has this right.
 * Copyrights - Infringing copyright is stealing the work of others, and is counter-productive to GTA Wiki if it has to be removed.


 * See Category:Policy for an unofficial list of policies. See GTA Wiki:List of Policies for an official list.
 * See also: GTA Wiki:Rules