Transformers Wiki:Policies

No Wikipedia Articles
's users have decided against using Transformers articles from Wikipedia. There are several reasons.


 * 1) Audience — Wikipedia is general Transformers information for people interested in Transformers in a general way.   is incredibly specific, detailed and comprehensive Transformers information for fans and creators that love to wallow in the strange, obscure and disturbing back corners of Transformers
 * 2) Formatting — Wikipedia has completely different article formatting, markup and structure than we do.  An article literally cannot simply be cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia, the end up with little red error messages all over because the Transformers articles on Wikipedia use layout templates for presenting information that that would be impossible to use on Teletraan 1 without simplifying the information to the point it is no longer useful.
 * Example: The Wikipedia   allows you to list a character's 'Alternate Modes'.  Optimus Prime's box lists 6 (one of which is 'a variety of Cybertronian trucks.')  He's had over 30).
 * 1) Quality — Bluntly, a lot of Wikipedia's Transformers content is vaguely-worded summaries of how the writer remembers it happened, sections of slavish detail alternating with glossed-over simplification and lists.  (We hate lists.)
 * 2) Copyright — Though Wikipedia's articles are available for anyone to use or edit under a GNU Free Documentation License, we still require that all article content be written specifically for Teletraan 1 to meet Teletraan 1's different standards and unique needs.  Taking a Wikipedia article and reformatting it to match our layout and structure does not change the fact it was written to a different standard of quality for a different audience.  To prevent this, Teletraan 1 requires that the copyright on all submitted article content be held solely by the uploader.

''Mostly this is a legal justification for a policy motivated by reasons stated above however.

Well, some layout templates but we really don't care about that.

Humor
The most fundamental guiding principle of Wikipedia is WP:NPOV, requiring all articles to be written in a neutral point of view in order to represent the subject fairly and accurately, which Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls "absolute and non-negotiable."

That is a laudable goal. Unfortunately the scope of WP:NPOV has been expanded far beyond its original intent, and it is now used to require that all articles to be not just neutral and fair, but humorless and boring. Wikipedia even includes a notice in their Humor template warning users that this template should never appear in an article because articles should contain only factual and encyclopedic information.

has chosen to allow humor within its articles, provided that it does not get in the way of delivering accurate information.

In Images
Most of this humor is restricted to the captions of images because the consensus was that it is fundamentally pointless to caption of picture of Megatron in Megatron's article 'a picture of Megatron.' That is obvious to anyone with two neurons to run a spark between.

A joke or humorous observation is better than a needlessly redundant description. Jokes can be about the article text, some element of the character, his toy, an actor who has portrayed him/her, an obscure or notorious event, song lyrics (usually source uncredited), puns, in-jokes, snark, an unrelated familar or obscure quote that is humorous transposed against the image (usually source uncredited), meta-commentary about fans or fandom, or simply something completely random. (I have no idea why Phoenix's picture is captioned with lyrics from a little-known Doug E. Fresh song found on the Ghostbusters II soundtrack, and I wrote the damn thing.)

Interesting facts or asides not covered in or expanding the main article text are also encouraged, but please do not simply describe what the image is unless it actually needs describing.

The humor on Teletraan 1, especially in captions, is considered catch-as-catch-can, an easter egg for the fan who recognizes a reference, but is not defined or sourced for those who do not. (If you're curious you can always ask on the relevant talk page though!)

On occasion the images themselves are chosen for their humor value, highlighting a memorably strange or atypical moment.

A Word of Warning
New users, excited that Teletraan 1 isn't dry and boring, often want to make their first edits by changing existing humorous subtitles to new (almost always) less humorous ones. This is considered extremely obnoxious by the other users, because not only does it makes the Wiki less funny, it's not adding content, and most of the original articles captions were written by users who have added lots and lots of content. This should probably not be the introduction you offer you fellow users, it's not like it's exactly hard to find an episode on Youtube and write a summary of it.

Unfortunately the users engaging in this activity are often not monitoring the Recent Changes page of the Wiki and do not realize their additions are being reverted by irritated users. Short term bans are commonly used to get their attention.

Important Distinction: Humorous captions are encouraged because 95% of the time a descriptive caption is considered redundant. However in the 5% of the time when captions are actually used to convey useful information they should never be replaced because it makes the article less useful and is considered vandalism. Use your head.

In articles
Humor is much less tolerated in the articles themselves. In general humor in an article can be:
 * 1) An ironic contrast — such as creating a link to another article with a humorous or whimsical connotation.  Example: The Forbidden Zone article links to the out-universe article about safety testing.
 * 2) Inappropriate or selective detail — The Skids article includes a lengthy write-up of Skids role in the animated series- where he was a non-speaking background character that appeared twice.  Alternately, the Sunstreaker article goes to great lengths to point out every instance of Sunstreaker being a jerk, no matter how small, since being a colossal jerk is his distinguishing character trait.
 * 3) Restricted to the opening write-up — Scattershot's profile contains an extended joke about the coloring book Decepticon Patrol, but it is used in a manner that still illustrates his personality.
 * 4) Non-intrusive — The Wheelie article is written entirely in rhyme, to reflect the character's speaking style.  It is a completely functional article, covering all his appearances, abilities and distinguishing characteristics... written entirely in rhymed couplets (except the section on Japanese fiction, because Wheelie did not speak in rhyme in Japan.)

In summation, humor should be used with great restraint (if at all) in an article body. If it misleads, confuses or gets in the way, it has ot go. The article's functionality comes first.

We Hate Lists
Lists are barely a form of content. Would you read the Phonebook to learn what the people in your neighborhood were like?

Lists may sometimes be a necessary evil- tolerated because they are useful- but they are never a virtue.

De-snarking
De-snarking refers to the process of curbing or altogether removing humor or sarcasm from an article.

De-snarking is necessary when excessive humor or sarcasm in an article interferes with the information the article is supposed to be delivering. Examples include:
 * Sarcastic statements (saying the opposite of what they mean) open to be taken literally.
 * Unnecessary convoluted section structure in service of a joke.
 * So much humor that the signal-to-noise ratio of the article drops.

Humor should be used sparingly, if at all, in articles outside of image captions (where it is usually encouraged.)

The #1 cause of de-snarking is new users. New users often become so excited by 's policy of allowing/encouraging appropriately humorous tone (unlike many wikis) that they add many more jokes to articles without adding any content to go along with it. The #2 cause is dogpile edits.

Reverting an edit when the only change was to replace one joke caption with a new, unfunny one is also commonly called de-snarking.

Dogpile
Dogpiling (verb or noun) occurs when multiple users make successive edits to an article (usually in a short period of time) that causes one aspect of the article to grow, then bloat, then spread like cancer. That which was once a good part of a balanced article has grown out of control and become unpleasant.

Dogpiling can cause one joke to spread through an article (each user only adding one or two instances of it) until it becomes unreadable. Less frequently gentle jabs can turn nastier and unpleasant, and eventually toxic. The Fandom article began as a light-hearted poke at Fans siller (and stupider) tendencies and slowly became a hate-fest that caused considerable conflict. (The entire article was cauterized down to a stub and has re-emerged in its present dryly-factual form.)

IP user
Activity by unregistered users on shows up as an IP address, an anonymous string of numbers. Some internet service providers don't provide their users with 'fixed' addresses, so many different addresses can represent a single user.

Dubious or unsupported claims by by IP users ("Optimus Prime (Animated) will have a different voice actor in Australia") are usually deleted out-of-hand without asking why. IP users include the lion's share of 's cranks and trolls. While their contributions are appreciated when helpful, there is very little patience towards them when annoying.

IP users involved in heated discussions on talk pages will often be told to register for an account (they never do, but we keep asking) because it's very difficult to tell who's who, and arguing with 'a number' makes regular users cranky. This is not merely elitism on the part of regulars- changing IP addresses and unsigned posts can make it incredibly confusing to sort out who an anonymous post belongs to

SIGN YOUR POSTS
The all-caps request that another user SIGN YOUR POSTS on talk pages indicates that they've probably been asked before, and it's begining to get annoying. Simply type four ~'s ( ~ ) at the end of a post and Mediawiki will convert it to a name and timestamp. (Derik02:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC)) It makes everyone's life much, much easier, so please do it.

Signal-to-Noise
Signal-to-Noise is the measure of:
 * 1) How much information an article conveys per its length.
 * 2) A user's contributions to site content vs. their non-content edits.  (Jokes, etc.)

Ideally, articles should have a high signal-to-noise ratio, being very informative. An article which is a stub with a joke image caption (Example: Phoenix) has a low signal-to-noise ratio.

wants its users to contribute to the wiki. Writing or expanding articles, checking facts, making corrections, sorting, categorizing and generally increasing the informativeness of is good. Adding (or removing) jokes, making funny edits, and complaining about wiki policy on talk pages without regard for the consensus are not constructive are all bad.