NOTICE:
This page covers topics related to the Metawiki itself.
Here's a rundown of this wiki, as legibly comprehensive as I can possibly make it.
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Table of Contents
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Metawiki coverage
What Metawiki covers/will cover
- Official SCP Foundation and Wanderers' Library wikis, international branches (established and developing), administrative sites, and sandboxes
- Unofficial and/or offsite SCP/WL wikis and sandboxes;
- Official and unofficial/offsite SCP/WL communities, subcultures, and websites;
- SCPs, locations, Groups of Interest, items, characters, entities, etc. from official and unofficial/offsite wikis and communities, as well as their relevant contexts, histories, variants, etc.;
- Relevant official and unofficial/offsite creators (writers, artists, coders, game makers, YT channels, actors, et al);
- Documentation of SCP/WL community histories, trends, memes, and events;
- Fanworks, adaptations, derivatives, and outside references/homages;
- Theories, interperations, and headcanons;
- Literary analyses regarding community trends, concepts, and other relevant topics; and
- Statistical analyses (per page, per site/community, per periods of time, etc.)
These are subject to change at any time.
What SCP/WL does not/will not ever cover
- Personal information of creators that are disclosed involuntarily (i.e. doxxes);
- Leaks from private messages/sites/chatservers/communities;
- Unpublished/unfinished sandbox drafts;
- Topics wholly unrelated to SCP/WL;
- Methodical play-by-plays of community dramas/discourses;
- The in-universe "stats" and "power levels" of SCP/WL community creations;
- Trolls and vandalizations that are not historically relevant;
- Hostile/bad-faith/spite communities unless - and only if - historically relevant;
- Users who are members of SCP/WL communities with no notable contributions;
- Parasocial speculations about creators/members;
- Pubically available/leaked social media links/handles and websites wholly unrelated to SCP/WL;
- Pubically available/leaked social media links/handles and websites of harmful ex-creators (see below); and
- Other exclusions mentioned below.
These are subject to change at any time.
Addressing the elephant(s) in the room
There are certain parts of SCP/WL communal history and culture that are touchy subjects and extremely controversial. Here is how Metawiki aims to cover them.
Harmful ex-creators
An unfortunately non-zero amount of creations on the SCP/WL wikis and communities were made by people who were outed as being harmful to community members for any multitude of reasons, and made persona non grata after discovery.
With one exception (see below), Metawiki - in the interest of near-comprehensivity - will still include pages factually covering these creators and their works, and all relevant/notable information up to their removal from the community. For the sake of protection, no handles or websites for these individuals - past, present, and future - will be given, implied, insinuated, or referenced in any capacity.
TheDuckman
Expanding off of SCP-EN staff's footsteps, Metawiki is enacting damnatio memoriae and harm-reductive deterrence on TheDuckman and their creations. No standalone pages on them will be made; instead, anything that would link to a relevant topic will instead be redirected to a modified version of the Bright List Deletion Message[1], hosted on Metawiki and giving as much additional context as is legally and safely possible.
Additionally, no excerpts and media that would require attribution to TheDuckman in the License Box are allowed to be put on Metawiki. Any valid sources cited that happen to involve them in some capacity - which is an unfortunate inevitability, especially in sources from the community's early years - will be given warnings.
AlienSpaceBat has deemed TheDuckman and their creations to be the sole, irrevocable exception to Metawiki's anti-revisionism/anti-erasure stances, due to the scope of harm caused by these topics.
Creations that were self-deleted or purged en mass by their creators/Site Staff
Over the history of the offical SCP/WL communities, many creations have been self-deleted/mass-purged by either themselves or by Site Staff. Sometimes this is done out of disillusionment/retroactive embarassment, successful deletion thresholds, summary staff judgments, protests, spite, quality assurance, requests to staff1, and - in one case - legal notice (see below).
Currently, SCP-EN operates in compliance with authorial intent when it comes to such matters. However, unquestionable and total adherence to this principle on Metawiki is antithetical to its goal of near-comprehensive coverage of all topics SCP/WL-related.
As such, all removed creations that have been determined to have had historical and/or cultural impacts in/on official SCP/WL communities will be catalogued on Metawiki, as part of the Deleted and Lost SCP/WL Media research project. Additions will be made on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with the SVSN method (see below).
Fishmonger
In 2010, the creator known as Fishmonger messaged then-current SCP-EN staff, stating that all of their works were to be purged from the wiki, under threat of legal action.[2] The request was honored.
Fishmonger has been handled like a sort of "boogeyman" in subsequent times, albeit in a declining frequency over time. For a while, members would be rebuked - and sometimes even subject to disciplinary actions and message deletions - for even hinting at archives, backups, or the contents of these works.[3]
Metawiki, however, will be documenting and cataloging these creations, under the Deleted/Lost SCP/WL Media category of research. This is for three reasons:
- It has been sixteen years, and giving Fishmonger and their creations the hushed "speak of the Devil and he'll appear" treatment is - frankly - ridiculous;
- Not only does contemporary/current consensus indicate that the legal request was frivolous, incompatible with CC-BY-SA, and would be thrown out of court if it did ever go to trial; but all subsequent legal threats have been responded to with permanent bans from all official communities instead of compliance; and
- Their creations have had - and continue to have - historical and community cultural impacts all these years later, and ignoring them would be a disservice.
Politics and Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion
The SCP/WL community has its roots on 4chan's /X/ board[4], and it carried all the inherent baggage with that association for several years. Gradually, however, the majority of the wider community has become magnitudes more compassionate, culturally sensitive, and diverse.
Metawiki, however, will not pretend everything is sunshine and rainbows. The wiki will not shy away from documenting callouts and criticisms of bigotry, systemic failures, and other nastiness present within the wider communities, while complying with TBAPOV and SVSN principles (see below). To ignore these prevailing issues would be a diservice to knowledge.
Additionally, page edits, additions, and removals done for bigoted reasons will not be tolerated.
Triggering and NSFW material
Despite the varying tones in SCP/WL communities and their creations, the official SCP Foundation and Wanderers' Library spaces are primarily aimed at adults. Heavy topics such as physical/mental/sexual abuse, suicide, systemic abuses of power and authority, and totalitarianism/authoritarianism are - the majority of the time - inherent to the overall setting.
To coat it all in euphemistic algospeak or palatable simplifications would be immensely disrespectful to everyone who has contributed to the overall mythos and has been part of the wider community.
As such, Metawiki will:
- Discuss these subjects plainly but tactfully; and
- Utilize a modified version of SCP-EN's Adult Content Warning component as needed across the wiki.
The latter is non-negotiable. If it is something that would make it unbearable to browse this site due to personal feelings on content/trigger warnings, please either leave or fork the contents onto a new wiki without them.
On a related note, while Wikidot's Terms of Service nominally prohibit pages that mention and/or contain sexual themes, a lot of creations - both official and not - utilize them in some capacity, due to Wikidot being more or less abandoned by Wikidot, Inc.'s staff.
While Metawiki will not pretend these don't exist, it will not:
- Cover them in a way that is titillating and/or sexually gratifying;
- Allow the upload of sexually explicit visuals involving penetration and/or bodily fluids/excretions;
- Allow visuals that do not involve the above prohibitions to be unblurred by default;
- Allow sourcelinks that do not have content/trigger warnings;
- Cover media that presents sex crimes such as pedophilia, rape, sexual assault, etc. in endorsive/glamorizing/otherwise positive lights.
The above-mentioned modified ACW component will also be applied to all pages that delve into sexual territories.
On sourcing, verifying, & subject notability (SVSN)
When making and/or editing pages for official and/or community topics, the following questions should be taken into consideration at all times:
- Are there valid and corroborating sources for the information present on the page?
- Are these sources verifiable via publically accessible means (forum posts, social media comments, web/database archives, etc.)? How easy is it to access said sources?
- What impact - historical, cultural (communal, online, etc.), or otherwise - has the creation, creator, community member, et al had?
These questions are the crux of Metawiki's SVSN principle. Because while it aims to document as many topics - widely known and obscure - as possible, it's genuinely infeasible to cover all creations, subcultures, fan communities, fanworks, and/or members. If we did, there'd be a real risk of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of stub pages for registered lurkers, fanworks with zero/single-digit views, and other stuff scattered throughout the site. So, in the interest of server storage and quality assurance, please remember this principle while creating or adding to a page.
There will be some lenience to all of this. No disciplinaries actions will be made towards contributors who forget to add sources, cite them retroactively, and/or delayed fom adding them due to external circumstances. Just don't neglect it for a month or anything, without a heads up at least.
What Metawiki considers "Invalid Sources"
- Materials and media in/from "lolcow" communities - These communities are inherently based on doxxing, harassment, discrimination, and other harmful activities, with members being selective, manipulative, and/or outright lying about the alleged information they've claimed to have gathered. In the interest of reader and user safety, we will not be giving a comprehensive list of what is considered part of these communities; just know we operate on a "know when we see it" basis, and that you should exercise caution while doing research.
- Materials and media in/from "anti-SCP Wiki" spaces - In short, if these spaces - in any capacity - claim to be "apolitical", use the term "containment fic/confic", and/or use "woke"/"diversity"/other progressive phrases as snarl words, they are automatically and irrevocably barred as a Metawiki source. Once again, we will not be giving a comprehensive list for safety's sake, and advise you to be mindful/cautious of your research sources.
- Comments, posts, and/or other means of correspondence from/with ex-community members deemed harmful.
- "VS Battles" and other powerscaling-centric spaces.
Tone, Biases, and POV (TBAPOV)
Metawiki strives to make sure that - barring the below exceptions - topics are covered in a tone and POV that isn't excessively negative or positive, while also making sure that things aren't sugarcoated, downplayed, promotional, or otherwise subject to historical revisionism.
As such, topics will be documented objectively and neutrally, unless it's on a page that involves:
- Certain literary analyses, e.g. interpretations, applicability, and thematics, etc.; or
- Critique/opinion pieces/editorials
- The workings of Metawiki itself
That said, some biases will inevitably pop up in page creation, subconsciously or otherwise. These will be ironed out as soon as they are realized and/or brought to attention. Additionally, the above pages must follow
Accessibility
Metawiki will strive to be as accommodating as possible towards those who are hearing-impaired, vision-impaired, colorblind, photosensitive, etc. That means the following:
- All images will have alt-text;
- All audio will have transcripts;
- Epilepsy warnings will be given;
- Characters that interfere with screen-readers and/or TTS programs will be avoided as much as possible;
- Relevant pages will have alternative versions for those who are colorblind or visually sensitive;
- And any other accessibility options deemed necessary.
Final TL;DR
- Respect the scope of Metawiki's coverage, and the limitations
- Don't be an asshole
- Source and validate your contributions
- Try to be as unbiased as possible on objective pages
- Be considerate to disabled users