Fairfaxpedia:Guidelines

Before editing and contributing to articles, log in or create an account. If you are familiar with many of the common guidelines for Wikipedia, simply review the guidelines below and begin editing. If you are new to the wiki model, review what Fairfaxpedia is all about and consult the help page for markup tips and other features of what the wiki can do. Feel free to play in the sandbox for practice!

Content
Be Neutral


 * Since Fairfaxpedia is technically an encyclopedia, information must be as unbiased and factual as possible. Do not edit or create articles with the intention of defaming the subject of the article.

Cite Sources


 * Whenever possible, editors should cite verifiable sources for all information, and especially for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor. As the focus of Fairfaxpedia is more specialized than Wikipedia and other encyclopedia projects, many areas of knowledge are not well-documented by online sources. Worse still, information derived from non-reputable sources may be inaccurate. Citing verifiable sources therefore helps to establish the overall credibility and authoritative character of Fairfaxpedia. Biographies of living persons should be sourced with particular care, for legal and ethical reasons. All negative material about living persons must be sourced to a reliable source; if you find unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about a living person, remove it immediately! Do not leave it in the article and ask for a source. If a particular claim in an article lacks citation and is doubtful, consider placing after the sentence or removing the claim. If an article has no or very few references, but you are unable to find them yourself, you can tag the article with the template.

Interact respectfully with other users in the discussion page


 * Since Fairfaxpedia is a open encyclopedia, contributors will be editing other individual's content and your content will be editing in return. This is part of what makes a wiki system possible, by allowing collaborative writing. You can discuss edits in the "Discussion" page on the top right of the article. Feel free to question certain edits, citations, or anything that pertains to the structure and fairness of the article. Do not use the discussion page as a debate forum for the topic itself.

Write Clearly


 * Fairfaxpedia is meant to be a community resource. Be sure to write coherently and clearly, and proofread your work. Grammar and spelling should all be correct, and language should not be very complicated.

Respect Copyrights


 * The license Fairfaxpedia uses grants free access to our content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle is known as copyleft. However, this applies only to original works by Fairfaxpedia contributors. All other works are copyrighted unless they either fall into the public domain or their copyright is explicitly disclaimed. If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use", or if you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under the terms of our license, you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates). It is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Fairfaxpedia's material as possible, so original images and sound files licensed under the GFDL or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use.
 * Images and photographs, like written works, are subject to copyright. Someone holds the copyright unless they have been explicitly placed in the public domain. Images on the Internet need to be licensed directly from the copyright holder or someone able to license on their behalf. In some cases, fair use guidelines may allow a photograph to be used. Image description pages must be tagged with a special tag to indicate the legal status of the images, as described at Fairfaxpedia:Image copyright tags. Untagged or incorrectly-tagged images will be deleted. It is currently unclear what should happen in cases where the same image has been uploaded more than once with different respective copyright statements. If you suspect a copyright infringement, you should at the very least bring up the issue on that page's talk page. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. The most helpful piece of information you can provide is a URL or other reference to what you believe may be the source of the text.

Portions of this page were based on writing from Pensapedia.