User blog:SpaceWeather/A Few Policy Changes

Hey guys it's me, Captain Space of the USS Deletion! So I've been noticing a bit of chit chat about/confusion in regards to policy/categories here on the wiki. So I decided to look over the rules and see where we may be able to improve on policy in certain very grey areas. Please comment below and let me know what y'all think, especially my fellow admins. If enough of us are in aggreance about any one item I'll put it into effect here on the wiki.

Character Pages
Ok so a big area of confusion in recent days has been about chaarcter pages, and how they should be handled in terms of deletion and categorization. Now Gid made some good points on a different blog about ways we can improve our current policy on these types of pages so I'll just relay some of that here.
 * 1) We could use more defined rules for characters that an author has listed as "for hire" aka characters that are open to be used by other authors on the wiki.  Gid's suggestion was to add a category for them if we didn't already have one and then post said category somewhere with planty of exposure like the community corner.
 * 2) Now my additional rule for these characters "for hire" would be that they be deleted after a about six months if unused on the wiki, as they'd just be taking up space from other pages yet to be made.
 * 3) Another rule clarification I think would be helpful is to clarify that even if a user adds their username after a character name, doesn't mean they're exempt from deletion because of non-use.  I recently deleted character pages that were 4 years old and had not been used in their entire existence, but the user thought it was fine since their user name was after the character name.  The point of deleting chaarcter pages isn't just freeing up the name for future use, it's also to reduce clutter here on the wiki in general.
 * 4) Also if we could seperate out all the rules under the "Wiki Rules" section on the rules page, it'd be awesome.  We have a few different catagories such as character pages and story extension pages under that category, and it'd make navigation a bit easier to identify them as such.  Not a huge issue but a small fix that'd make things easier to find for newer users.

Dead Fics
Now I understand that finding motivation is hard and all, but we should probably shorten the time it takes for pages to become candidates for deletion in certain circumstances. After doing a lot of deleteion lately, I'd find these rules to be appropriate for helping out the admins which do the work.
 * 1) Fics with only ONE chapter posted, or under 1000 words posted, should be able go up as candidates for deletion after SIX months instead of a year.  In doing the deletion work I found that there were a ton of pages, from users both active and not, from between 2010 and 2014 that only had a single chapter posted or a handful of VERY short chapters posted.  These probably slipped through the cracks because the admins had to wait a whole year to put these stories up for deletion.  So shortening the time which these placeholder chapters are allowed to sit would make it easier for admins to make sure these pages don't just sit and gather dust as the ones I found had.
 * 2) An author that has had their story page deleted can't just make a new story page with the name of the old one right after it's deleted.  I found this to be an issue more often than you'd think, where admins would delete a page and then the user would swoop in after a month and start the page up again.  I think we need a specific rule against this to avoid this type of thing from happeneing.
 * 3) It should be at the admins discretion whether or not what is posted on a story page is a 'full' chapter.  Now I know this could be a bit of a broken rule, considering some admins may be a bit deletion happy (giant neon sign floats above my head with an arrow pointing down at me reading 'this guy').  However, I ran into a few users that yelled at me for deleting their fics which had all of a a few sentences written after a month, citing that as their first chapter.  This goes back to the 1000 words rule, as there should be some type of minimum standard for what can be considered a truly FULL chapter.  Four or five sentences is not a whole chapter, we all know that.
 * 4) Giving short summaries of events also shouldn't be considered chapters for a story.  I ran into this more in some works from 2009-2011, but some authors beleive that giving a brief three sentence summary in place of actual chapters is perfectly fine.  It really isn't and those 'chapters' shouldn't constitute for a story.  Users come here to read and write fun, detailed fan stories about Total Drama, not soe short summary of what an author would do if they were to write a fanfic here.  Those summaries belong on a blog, not a main page.

Categorizing Stories
Now I had two main targets for this, completed stories and new stories.
 * 1) Completed competition and non-competition stories should get their own category.  I know we have something similar to this in the Classics and Modern Classics page, but that doesn't encompass all the stories that have been completed on here.  I think a whole categroy on completed stories would make it easier for users to find complted works, for those not wishing to be left hangingwhen they reach the midpoint of a story that has yet to be finished.
 * 2) I think there should be a category that EVERY new story that has one or fewer chapters should be put into a category they have to keep until that second chapter is posted.  This would help out the admins immensely allowing them to identify stories that have not received the amount of work that constitutes a chapter on here.  I know it'd lead to more work, but it'd really be a measurement of which new users have actually read the rules before throwing their fics up.  Plus it'd make it much easier for the admins to keep track of pages that don't count as stories.

That's about it from me.
So if y'all agree/disagree with what I've proposed here please tell me below and for the love of everything give me a reason as to why. I don't just want users nodding or shaking their heads, and then giving no reason as to why. Also if y'all have anything you'd think should be added/subtracted from my proposals, please put those below too with reasons. I'm hoping my fellow admins will pay particular attention to these suggestions and give me some feedback. This is Space, signing off!