User blog:Lancer1289/Mass Effect 3 Community Launch Plan

With Mass Effect 3 now under four days until release, it’s time that we inform the Community about things that will be happening.

We know some wikis lock down, whether it be for registered users, or admins only, when a new game is released to give people a chance to play it before spoilers show up. We won't be doing this. The wiki will continue to be free and open to anyone to edit. What this means is that we will get a lot of people making a lot of edits quickly. Because the admins, more on this in a minute, can't possibly monitor everything, we will need the Community's help to enforce site policies, directing people where to go, reporting vandals, and numerous other things. This will be a team effort so if we all work together, we will weather this storm. I'll go into detail more on each subject.

Enforcing Site Policies

Because of the massive influx of new editors, we will need help with people enforcing the site policies established in the Mass Effect Wiki:Manual of Style and Mass Effect Wiki:Community Guidelines. If you are not familiar with these policies, then please read over them and make sure you are familiar with them. The ones that will probably cause the most problems are the Language, Banning, and Spelling Policies so be on the watch for those.

Direction

This one is a bit more direct. Talk pages on this wiki are not for topics like "what did you think of this character". They are about the upkeep and specific questions about the article. Things that are "who didn't like this character" belong in the forums or a blog post because that isn't the point of talk pages. If you see a topic like this, please inform the user of that and leave it at that. Don't continue the discussion even if you want to participate. Do that in the proper place.

Dealing With Vandals

Since admins will be busy doing things, we will need the community's help to report vandals. There are numerous ways this can be done. Vandals need to be dealt with quickly and efficiently. Don't encourage the vandals. Just revert their edits, report, and if it keeps happening, then just keep doing it. Don't goad them, don't leave messages on their talk pages. Just revert, clean, report, and ignore. Repeat if necessary.

Report Vandals at the following places.
 * Admin talk pages
 * Commdor's talk page
 * Lancer1289's talk page
 * SpartHawg948's talk page
 * JakePT's talk page
 * Vandalism, Spam Task Force
 * Report Vandalism
 * Report Spam
 * Other Users who have been known to help in the past
 * Randomtime's talk page

Senior Editors can revert vandals quickly, and especially if they make a large amount of edits. Senior Editors here are:
 * H-Man Havoc's talk page
 * Teugene's talk page
 * Dammej's talk page
 * Arbington's talk page
 * Bronzy's talk page

Admins

Over the course of the next week, JakePT, SpartHawg948, and Lancer1289 will either be gone or here in a very reduced capacity.


 * From the information that I have now,
 * JakePT will go dark once he sees copies of the game getting into the hands of editors. He can still be reached by email, just don't send him spoilers.
 * Spart will either be dark or here in a reduced capacity. Again no spoilers please.
 * I will be here in a very reduced capacity. I will probably have my laptop open and can be reached by email or a message on my talk page. Again, no spoilers please.
 * Commdor will be here as usual so he will be the primary one to go to for some time. Anyone who can help him out will be greatly appreciated as he can't do everything.

It is unknown how long this will last, but again from the information I'm reading, it will be until we all have a complete playthrough. For me, I might be back on as early as Friday or Saturday but I cannot make a guarantee.

Admins will more than likely have notes on their user pages and user talk pages about this as well.

Spoilers

General rule, if you don't want spoilers, don't read articles. We will post information as quickly as possible so if you don't want to read them, don't go beyond the spoiler tags. Please do not ask admins to lock down talk pages or articles to deal with spoilers as we won't. Generally pages here only get locked down if there is persistent vandalism or it becomes a higher traffic page than anything else.

Don't Know How to Do Something

General rule, if you don't know how to do something, then please ask, especially with templates. No one will look down on you for it. We've had good natured edits to templates that have broken templates in the past because the person making the edit didn't know what they were doing. It is nothing against people, templates are generally tricky things and if not done right, they can blow up in people's faces.

If you are unsure of something else, ask an admin or senior editor. They all generally have the lay of the land, and will be more than happy to assist you. Just for the next week or so, please avoid giving out spoilers when you leave messages.

Help

If you have a general question, please use our Help Desk Forum. That is why it is there. Any user can respond there and is usually done within a day at most. If you need further assistance, contact one of the admins or senior editors above.

General

Again be on the lookout for vandals, and treat new users with good faith. There are cases where an edit can look like vandalism, but it can just be someone who didn't know what they were doing.

If you have the time, please clean up edits as they are made because we need proper grammar and spelling here. We don't accept texting or internet language here. Proper English Spelling and grammar. This will only help in the long run.

Give everyone time. It takes time to get used to editing a wiki, I know it took me some time when I started. Use patience in dealing with new users, even if they start to get on your nerves. However, don't tolerate harassment or insulting language. If things get out of hand, contact an admin immediately as we have zero tolerance for that here. We know discussions can get heated, but that is no excuse to start insulting others.

So, good luck, have fun, and enjoy Mass Effect 3.