Changes: Transformers Wiki:Caption

Revision as of 04:16, 9 September 2008

Template:Defenestration

A picture is worth 1000 words.

Unlike most Wikis, Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki does not have a complete ban on humor, particularly in image captions where a description saying "a picture of Megatron" would be completely redundant. Instead, we prefer to lighten things up with humorous image captions, because Transformers is inherently ridiculous, and denying this probably isn't healthy.

Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki is a fun community which welcomes new members' contributions with open arms. That said... if your idea of "contributing" is to change the existing jokes to new, "funnier" jokes... don't. This holds true for changing them to blanks or boring, patently-obvious descriptors as well.

There are several reasons we discourage new users from editing image captions.

Your jokes aren't funnier.

Funny image captions are like a fun bonus you get to do when you make a page or a new section or upload a needed image. For the people who wrote the text, or found and edited the images, this is their reward for that hard work. If you're not expanding the article, you really shouldn't be making jokes.

If you're changing a joke, you're removing content created by a user who's contributed to this community, and replacing it with something from someone (yourself) who has not.

Simple Rule of Thumb

If you haven't contributed anything, don't change the image captions.

Removing joke captions

File:Captions.png

Edits which do nothing but change the funny image captions to new funny image captions, or remove those captions altogether, are reverted back to their original state.

You will be banned if you repeatedly remove jokes simply for the sake of doing so despite warnings given. The humor thing has been discussed at length for quite a long time; the policy will not change, and trying to "make a point" will only result in us removing the troublemaker.

We have guidelines about what level of humor is and is not acceptable; try to stick to "PG-13" or lower. Bear in mind the four-letter f-word indicating copulation is right out.

Adding joke captions

It is okay for an image to have a factual caption, or *gasp* no caption at all.

Please note that an image without a caption is not an open invitation for anyone to come along and slap in whatever inane thought first crosses their mind. A captionless image is not some grievous error in need of immediate correction. Anonymous and minimal-contributing editors who add captions in such instances are rarely doing the wiki a service.

We allow humor. We don't discourage it. But we certainly don't mandate it, either. The purpose of this wiki is to convey information; the jokes are an occasional bonus, not the driving force.

Having no caption is better than having an outright dumb, inane, pointless, or unfunny one.

As with pretty much everything else, we demand quality. While humor is highly subjective, a joke caption should generally have some kind of thought, reasoning, or intelligence behind it.

If you can't even punctuate or capitalize, don't bother. If you haven't contributed substantive content, don't bother. If your joke caption isn't funny enough to make you laugh, don't bother. If your "joke" is so obscure or internalized that nobody on Earth will ever grasp it except for just you, don't bother. We have plenty of jokes already.

Regular contributors who decide not to add humorous captions to images they've uploaded or inserted into articles are encouraged to add more "standard", factually descriptive captions instead. We would rather have that than weak attempts at humor by non-contributing editors.

For further information, see: Project:De-snarking

@@ Line 30: / Line 30: @@
 Please note that an image without a caption is '''not''' an open invitation for anyone to come along and slap in whatever inane thought first crosses their mind.  A captionless image is not some grievous error in need of immediate correction.   Anonymous and minimal-contributing editors who add captions in such instances are rarely doing the wiki a service.
-We ''allow'' humor.  We don't ''discourage'' it.  But we don't precisely ''encourage'' it, either.  The purpose of this wiki is to convey information; the jokes are an occasional bonus, not the driving force.
+We ''allow'' humor.  We don't ''discourage'' it.  But we certainly don't ''mandate'' it, either.  The purpose of this wiki is to convey information; the jokes are an occasional bonus, not the driving force.
 * '''Having no caption is better than having an outright dumb, inane, pointless, or unfunny one.'''
 As with pretty much everything else, we demand ''quality''.   While humor is highly subjective, a joke caption should generally have ''some'' kind of thought, reasoning, or intelligence behind it.
-If you can't even punctuate or capitalize, don't bother.  If you haven't contributed substantive content, don't bother.  If your joke caption isn't funny enough to make ''you'' laugh, don't bother.  We have plenty of jokes already.
+If you can't even punctuate or capitalize, don't bother.  If you haven't contributed substantive content, don't bother.  If your joke caption isn't funny enough to make ''you'' laugh, don't bother.  If your "joke" is so obscure or internalized that nobody on Earth will ever grasp it except for just you, ''don't bother.''  We have plenty of jokes already.
 Regular contributors who decide not to add humorous captions to images they've uploaded or inserted into articles are encouraged to add more "standard", factually descriptive captions instead.  We would rather have that than weak attempts at humor by non-contributing editors.