Help talk:Contents/Purpose

Proposed change on Bios
Currently, the section entitled What the ISFDB Wiki is not includes the following text:

"'The ISFDB Wiki is not a place to record author biographies. It's harmless to add biographical information to these pages, but it may be deleted by editors who work on the bibliographies of those authors. Wikipedia is an excellent place for biographies of sf authors, and the ISFDB has a facility for adding a link to the Wikipedia article for each author.'"

I propose adding a new section Biographies which will say:

"'The 'Author:' pages of the ISFDB Wiki are not for recording biographies of authors. They are for bibliographic notes about the work of the author, and for discussing how that work should be recorded in the ISFDB.'"

"'Wikipedia is an excellent place for biographies of SF authors, and the ISFDB has a facility for adding a link to the Wikipedia article for each author from the authors database page. For those authors who do not have and are not eligible for Wikipedia articles, or whose Wikipedia articles might plausibly be deleted in future, a brief, neutrally-written biographical article can be placed on the page Bio: . (Note: Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion have varied over time and are not always consistently enforced. In general they demand a certain level of 'notability' or 'significance' and the existence of secondary reliable sources. Specifically, the notability criteria for biographies say 'A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability.' and 'The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, which has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.' among other criteria.) '"

"'When an author Bio page is posted on the ISFDB Wiki, it should be professional in tone, not facetious or blatantly promotional. Some authors engage in jokes in printed 'About the author' sections of books, or on their own websites, but the ISFDB is not the place for such writing. The purpose of any Bio page on the Wiki is to inform users and other editors briefly about the facts of the author's life. Bio pages should not include blurbs from or summaries of the author's works. Bio pages ought to be factual in content, and the facts ought to be verifiable.'"

I propose changing the What the ISFDB Wiki is not section to read:

"'The ISFDB Wiki should not be used for posting book reviews, whether favorable, unfavorable, or neutral in tone. It should not be used to publish advertisements or announcements of events, even if SF-related, such as conventions. It should not be used to publish advertisements for books or merchandise. Lists of an author's work ought to be made as entries in the regular database, not as Wiki-pages, but such lists may be useful temporarily, while database records are being entered or modified.'"

Does anyone object to these proposed changes? -DES Talk 15:55, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Some support and no objections having been posted, i have made the changes. -DES Talk 20:28, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Non-advertising
I propose to add to the What the ISFDB Wiki is not section the wording "The ISFDB wiki should not be used to advertise the professional or commercial activities of anyone, including ISFDB editors or SF authors, whether editors or not." Any comments or objections? -DES Talk 13:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)