Wiki of Westeros:Policies, guidelines, and parent filter

This page outlines the policies and guidelines that should be adhered to when adding images and pages or making changes to the Wiki.

Parent Page

• Read about our Parental Guide here: Parent Page

User behavior

• Vandalism will not be tolerated and will always result in a block of varying severity depending on how major an admin judges the act to have been.

• Rudeness towards other users will result in a warning, and persistence will have to be met with punishment. This is a community, and things are a lot easier if everyone isn't insulting one another.

• In case of an edit war, users are to discuss the issue between themselves either on the article's talk page or their own user talk pages. If a result cannot be agreed upon the incident may be mediated by another user, or eventually an admin if the dispute still fails to reach a resolution.

• All comments (entries submitted to talk pages or the forum) are to be signed using four tildes (~~~~) so that commenters can be identified easily and without the need to peruse a page's history. This practice should not be carried onto article pages as "signing your work" is inappropriate for a wiki and does not conform to community standards.

• Political views (particularly those of an extreme nature) should not be broadcast on this wiki, as it usually leads to continuous arguments that cannot be resolved.

This is a wiki about the TV series

This Wiki is based on the Game of Thrones TV show and not the Song of Ice and Fire novels. The two are separate entities with their own canon and continuities. What is true for one may not be true for the other. This means that: GAME OF THRONES SUCKS ?BITCHES? 

• The existence of a character in the TV canon should not be assumed because they appear in the novels. Book characters who have been mentioned but have not appeared yet (most notably Stannis Baratheon and Balon Greyjoy as of Season 1) can certainly be added to the TV Wiki, but it should not be assumed that say Oberyn Martell will be in the TV series just because he's in the books.

• The same goes for noble houses. There are over 300 noble houses listed in the books or in semi-canon resources, but it's unlikely that the TV show will ever show more than a tiny fraction of these. We can give entries to mentioned houses or to houses featured on the HBO 'Viewer's Guide' website, but most houses will not warrant a mention. We want to create a safe environment. 

• TV character names should be followed at all times. For example, the entry on the young lord of the Vale is at Robin Arryn, which is his name in the TV series, not 'Robert Arryn'. The same for Rakharo rather than Jhogo. Most notably, the name of the nonhuman antagonists of the series is the 'White Walkers', not 'the Others'. Noting name changes is fine in the 'In the books' section, but TV terminology and names should be used throughout.

• There is an excellent wiki for the books here, if you wish to contribute to a novel-based wiki rather than one based on the TV show.

NO SPOILERS

A spoiler as a plot detail that has not been featured in an aired episode. Plot details from aired episodes are not spoilers and the wiki aims to be up to date with the latest episode so viewers who are not up to date are likely to find plot details that are new to them.

The TV series is based on a series of books and at the current rate will take many seasons to catch up to the novels. As such, essentially the entire storyline for the series for at least five seasons (and potentially more) is known to many hundreds of thousands of people. Since this is a Wiki about the TV series alone, no spoilers, events or characters from future books may be added to the Wiki until the TV series introduces them. Certainly the fate of major characters and the outcome of major storylines should not be revealed under any circumstances.

New editors contravening this policy in good faith should be made aware of it by placing Template:Spoiler Policy and an explanation on their talk page. The template reads:

The Game of Thrones television series is an adaptation of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels but has deviated from them in some areas. In addition this wiki is meant for the enjoyment of watchers of the television series who do not have any knowledge of the books. For this reason, spoilers and events from the books are not permitted on entries on this Wiki. Information from the books can be added to entries once the TV series has reached the same point in the story. For book-specific information, please visit the Wiki of Ice and Fire.

Deliberate or persistent violations of the policy will be met with a block from editing, duration to be determined by an administrator but typically 1 year for violators who contribute nothing but spoilers.

Using official and American spellings

Although set in a land reminiscent of Medieval Europe, Game of Thrones is an American series based on an American sequence of books by an American author which uses American spellings throughout. As such, the 'correct' spelling of words on the Wiki should be the American ('As High as Honor' for the Arryn motto, not 'Honour', for example).

What is more important is that the correct spellings of terms, names and terminology are used. So it's 'khal', not 'kahl' and definitely 'White Walkers', not 'Wight Walkers'. If in doubt, check the HBO Viewer's Guide website.

Image policy and relationship with HBO

The use of official promotional HBO images is permitted under Fair Use, though if possible smaller images should be used rather than high-resolution ones.

The use of screencaps is specifically permitted for this Wiki by HBO, as long as we don't go overboard (i.e. drowning each article in screencaps where a couple will suffice) and as long as we understand that HBO reserve the right to ask us to remove specific or all screencaps at any time. Given the number of Wikis out there based on HBO shows with tons of screencaps, I doubt this will ever be an issue.

New images should be uploaded with:

1. A description.
2. A link to the image source or a description of its origin.
3. A licensing tag.
4. An appropriate category.

Because this Wiki is based on the TV series and the TV series alone, the use of images unrelated to the TV series should only be considered if absolutely necessary. Using the covers of the novels to illustrate the book article under Fair Use is one thing, for example, but the use of other copyrighted material (Amoka's portraits of book characters, Ted Nasmith's castle artwork etc.) must be avoided.

We enjoy a cordial relationship with HBO at present. Anything that will threaten that relationship and the long-term future of the Wiki, such as publishing spam, illegal download links and so on, will not be tolerated.

Featured articles

We feature one article on the main page each month. There is a Featured Article nomination process for suggesting articles for this highlighting. The wiki has a Featured Article archive of past recipients.

Underage users

Game of Thrones is rated TV-MA, which means the series is meant for adults. Any user under the age of 18 will be unable to edit the Game of Thrones Wiki. We appreciate all the editors who help, but unfortunately we must take precautions when it comes to underage users editing on a more "adult" site.