Inkipedia:Proposals/Passed/Sandbox Policy Proposal

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A proposal to install a formal policy regarding the sandbox userpage feature; the final draft may be read on this page. This policy page draft aims to explain sandboxes' basic functionality, as well as officially define certain types of sandbox content as not permissible.

If pre-existing sandboxes are found to be in major violation of the proposed sandbox guidelines, they will be handled on a case by case basis at a later date should the policy pass. Yoshifan52 (talk) 07:04, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Start date: 3 October 2023

End date: 24 October 2023

Support

1. Adalent {talk ✧ contribs} 23:33, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
2. Heddy (talk) 13:30, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
3. Trig Jegman - 15:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
4. FancyRat 15:55, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
5.  GX_64 (talk)  01:53, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
6. yes Xando (talk) 16:44, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
7. Slate Talk Contribs 07:47, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
8.  Perfectionist  (talk) 08:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• Overall I think the policy is very good, but there are a couple of small things I am slightly worried about. The first thing is the link to the Wikipedia Wikitext help page. Although most of it also relevant to Inkipedia, there are a couple of things there that are only for Wikipedia, which might be confusing. I'm not sure what the best thing to replace it with is. Maybe a link to either our, or MediaWiki's Help:Contents? However, they aren't only about wikicode, so it might be better to use the Wikipedia link. The other thing I am concerned about is in the part about fanon, fanfiction and blogs. I am worried that "Extensive usage" is too vague. Perhaps there should be a quantitative rule, like maybe the length of the page?  GX_64 (talk)  02:18, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for commenting with your concerns! The Wikipedia link is meant to both explain what wikitext is and offer an exhaustive list of well-explained examples of it in action; I intentionally wanted to link something off-site to demonstrate that wikicode as a whole is used outside of this specific wiki. If considered necessary, I would be open to swapping it out for the MediaWiki manual page on the topic, which leads to a similar help section, but I find the Wikipedia version combines the definition and example aspects better. I would prefer we don't link to Inkipedia's help page as it is a far less complete page, offering fewer examples with no definition of the term for new editors to learn about... maybe more work is needed on our help pages.
The excessive use of sandbox as a fanon/fanfiction/blog page aspect is up to staff discretion; under the proposed guidelines, editors would be allowed to create such sandboxes in the context of experimenting with the software. The problem lies in editors' eventual sandbox edit count to mainspace edit count ratio; if editors are primarily, consistently editing their sandboxes with off-topic content unrelated to the wiki, nearly not at all participating in other editing, then they're essentially using Inkipedia as a web host for their personal webpage. I would be open to adding a clearly defined limit, but I'm afraid I don't think it's easy to impose a page size limit or edit count limit upon off-topic sandboxes, as the excessiveness is determined by the editor's overall wiki editing activity; so far these issues are handled on a case by case basis by staff. I honestly doubt there will be more such instances following the new User Content Policy's implementation, but I'm open to others' views on the matter. Yoshifan52 (talk) 22:45, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I have thought about the Wikipedia link more, and I think it is better to use it. I thought it was unusual to link to another wiki, but I think that their page will be the most useful for editors. I think that it will be better to have a clearly defined limit for fanon/fanfiction/blog pages, because then it will be easier for editors to know if their sandbox is allowed, but since it is based on editor's overall activity it will be difficult to make one, so the rule is fine.  GX_64 (talk)  02:04, 6 October 2023 (UTC)