Policies and guidelines

The Fables Wiki has several guidelines to try and ensure maximum quality of its content, but this is to be a fun and collaborative space so all good intentioned contributors have the opportunity to contribute. As with any group of people working together, everyone is expected to follow the rules. We've been doing this since 2009, so we've had some time to work out the kinks. We're aware that the breadth of guidelines we've established over that time is not insignificant, so we hope this page helps new users find what they need to be cooperative and successful editors.

Where do our policies come from?

Generally, Fables Wiki policies come from one of two sources:

From a standard or good practice that has been followed subconsciously for some time because it is common sense and has become an established precedent.
From a deliberate proposal by a user or a group of users, usually from a forum or blog discussion. Such proposals must achieve full community consensus before being formalized as a policy.

Most of the policies that fall under the first category are derived from similar practices on other wikis.

Things to keep in mind

There are just a few things the administrators ask that everyone keep in mind when editing content and contributing to this community:

Keep it civil: Do not make personal attacks on other people. If you need to criticize another user’s argument, do so without attacking them as a person. Do not use bigoted language, including slurs which degrade another person or group of people based on gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, etc. Bullying will not be tolerated under any circumstances - we can have discussions with each other and its best to come to a fair conclusion in a disagreement.
Be a productive member of the wiki: Contribute to the wiki in line with the established processes and conventions. Need help? Ask an administrator! Disrupting the wiki with "edit warring" over differing opinions of a topic with another user or group of users is not productive. Pages that are subjected to edit warring or counter-productive edits can be locked until a resolution can be reached. Temporary blocks can be enabled if warnings are not followed.
Do not engage in excessive self-promotion: The wiki is a collaborative community resource for the topic at hand. It is NOT a free place to advertise your related website, YouTube channel, blog, social media account, etc. Have a question about whether your link would be welcome? Ask an administrator!
Do not harass other users: If somebody asks you to stop posting certain content on their wall, respect their wishes. It is their wall.
Do not hound other users: Do not hound, bait, or troll. Friendly debate and conversation can be useful tools in creating a resourceful wiki, but deliberately pushing others to the point of breaching civility is not allowed.
Personal information: Asking for personal information, such as your age, your address, your password or phone number isn't allowed. If you see someone doing that, please report it right away.
Underage users: Users aren't allowed to be on Wiki that are under the age of thirteen. If the admins find out you are under thirteen, you'll be globally blocked.
Sockpuppeting: Making several accounts and trying to dodge bans by doing that is against Wiki policy. There are no warnings. If you made one, please deactivate it or not tell anyone.

Coverage

The Fables Wiki covers official productions authorized by each property's rights holders. Fan fiction is not allowed. While the Fables and its spin-offs are based on folklore, literature and mythology, this wiki is primarily oriented to catalog the information as it pertains to the Fables Universe. Information from the real world, such as details about a character's inspiration or origins, can be included in behind-the-scenes sections.

Style guide

Keep the following principles in mind when editing articles to help keep the style as consistent as possible.

When a community has established formatting, it’s important to adhere to that, especially when spoiler content is involved. Given the fact this series has been over for several years now, we do not expect this to be a particular issue, but as always contact an Admin if your unsure as to if you're remaining true to this wiki's format. The following are a few format styles we do ask you keep in mind for this wiki:

Comics should be referenced, in-text, as follows:
- Fables #1 - "Chapter One: Old Tales Revisited" in infoboxes, quotes, and references.
- In an issue's actual article, it is written as "Chapter One: Old Tales Revisited" or "Old Tales Revisited." No need to include the issue number in-text.
- Fables #1 for character appearance sections and gallery captions; as a placeholder it is also okay to, temporarily, use this format in references.

If you are confused about how to format anything in the wiki, the following are pages are the best go-to's as examples:

Snow White (comic series) — character article
Bigby Wolf (comic series) — character article
Fable — species articles
Fables #1 — comic issues

Spelling

If you're unsure how to spell anything on this wiki, we go by, in this order, these sources for the proper spelling of characters, places, items, etc.

Article titles should be gramatically correct. They should only be capitalized if they're proper nouns; other article titles should be be in sentence case, not title case. Note that even though the Fables Encyclopedia uses capitalized headlines for all of its entries (such as "The Little Dog," "Frankenstein's Monster" and "the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe"), this is a stylistic choice by the authors and is not gramatically correct.

Grammar

Entries are expected to be made with proper grammar, capitalization, and spacing. The Fables Wiki community is not as vast as Wikipedia, so your expectation can't be that someone else will come along and fix additions made in haste. Users with excessive violations may see their good faith additions reverted, so please do your best to thoughtfully construct sentence structure.

Some other best practices to keep in mind:

Remember to capitalize the letter F in the word "Fables."
Don't capitalize the letter M in the word "mundy;" it's a pejorative word in the Fables Universe.
Use American spelling (which favors "z" spellings such as "organize" rather than "organise", and "o" spellings such as "color" rather than "colour").
Commas and punctuation marks belong inside quotation marks, according to American grammar rules. For example:

Bill Willingham created "Fables." is correct.

Bill Willingham created "Fables". is incorrect.

Apostrophes

An apostrophe does not accompany any word that ends in s.
In cases where apostrophes should be used in words that end in s, please use AP style:

correct: Santa Claus' sleigh
incorrect: Santa Claus's sleigh

External links

Please don't add links to Amazon or other commercial sites. It's nice to help other Fables fans find the cool products that are available, but we don't want to look like we're trying to sell things. We also don't want to open the possibility to people posting sponsored Amazon links, or links to their own Ebay store. If a product is currently in print and available, you can note that in the article. If that inspires readers to buy the product, then they can find it online themselves. Only link to a commercial site as a means of citing a source.

In the case of legitimate external links, sometimes these expire because the website has either moved or retired the article. If you find one, rather than removing it, check to see if an archive service has the link backed up. archive.org and archive.li are good long-term solutions, while Google Cache may have more recent content.

Editing

Edit summaries are helpful for explaining your edits: why you're removing, changing, or adding something. However, users who do not use them will not be penalized.
Wikia offers three editing modes. The first is simple code, and the other two are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors:
- Wiki code (or source editor)
- Rich Text Editor
- Visual Editor
Try to avoid the over adding of broken links.

Article length

It is acceptable for articles on important real-world topics (i.e. comic writers, artists, comic issues and other Fables releases) to be brief, but users are encouraged to expand them to their full potential.
Articles on in-universe topics, i.e. characters, items and locations, should a minimum of circa 130 words of relevant information, not including infobox material, introduction, quote, wiki text, appearances, behind the scenes information or references. Otherwise, all such characters or information are to be added to the appropriate "list" pages.

Relevance

Fables Wiki is an encyclopedic project about Fables and every article is oriented around that focus or related ones (see Coverage) to different degrees. As a result, additional quotes, facts, or trivia which is not directly relevant will most likley be removed, even if sourced. A statement can be true without necessarily adding to a Fables Wiki article. This applies even when quoting people who are relevant (voice actors, The Wolf Among Us cast) from interviews, podcasts, or social media. While we hope a lot of this will be evident, here's just a few instances:

Detailed histories of a company's ownership are better left to Wikipedia. For corporate stuff in particular, the Fables Wiki uses the names at the time a given company/network/channel actually did anything related to Fables, ignoring subsequent mergers or name changes after the fact. Pending or possible name changes don't count until or unless they happen and the new name is actually on something with the Fables Universe.
Voice actors should be sourced to Wikipedia.
Podcast comments identifying additional performers or directly relevant information about a project are worth adding. Information not worth adding includes lengthy, quoted passages with repeated phrasing or tangents. Interviews are often built more on entertaining anecdotes and reminiscences rather than the factual approach Fables Wiki uses. Memories about working on a project or with someone (first experience as a co-editor, for example) are usually irrelevant. Passing sentences about enjoying meeting someone or having fun on a project are also not relevant, unless they lead in to factual info.

Images

Images need to be named and referenced properly (i.e., comic series title (abbreviated is okay for Fables comics, not for Fairest) followed by the issue number, and then a description for the image.

Please note that if you don't put an image on a page within a twenty-four-hour period, it'll probably be deleted. If you aren't going to put an image on a page, don't upload it. We want our unused images section to remain clean and empty, and help to add images that are there right now will be greatly appreciated.

Galleries

Galleries of less than fifty images should be displayed on the appropriate articles under the aforementioned section. If over fifty images are applicable, then a gallery subpage may be created.

Other general policies

Editing user pages that aren't yours isn't allowed, unless you are reverting vandalism; or you are an admin or have explicit permission from the user.
Nonsensical blog posts, featuring spam and nonsense, will be deleted.
Any inappropriate or sexually suggestive language will be removed from the Wiki and treated harshly. This goes for images too.
Please keep it civil and respectable in the Discussions area of the wiki as well. No overuse of vulgar, sexual, or inappropriate language of any kind will be tolerated.
Do not remove warnings on your user page or message walls by admins.
Moving pages to nonsensical, counterproductive, and/or unrelated names will be reverted.
New pages, with nonsense, unrelated content and spam will be deleted.
If you remove a lot of content on a page with no reasoning to it or remove all the content from a page, your edit will be reverted.

Blocking rules

Good faith edits are always welcome! Nobody's perfect, so editors may make mistakes. If your skills aren't suited to a particular area of editing, such as grammar, there will always be someone to help correct those mistakes, so feel free to do what you can to contribute to the wiki. You will not be banned for making mistakes.
Depending on the severity, breaking the wiki rules listed above might result in a warning. If you have to be warned multiple times, you may be banned from the wiki.
Obvious vandalism, such as page blanking, may result in an immediate ban.
Posting threats or excessive vulgarity may result in an immediate ban.
Sockpuppetry is not permitted and may result in an immediate ban.
Asking for users' personal information such as age, location, etc. is not allowed, and recurring requests for such information may result in a ban.

Blocks will begin at 24 hours and will increase depending on the number of offenses and type of offense. If you feel you have been blocked unfairly, you can reach out to an administrator on their Community Central message wall.