Team Fortress Wiki:Community topics notability guidelines

This page is about Team Fortress Wiki Policy regarding notability of Community topics covered by this wiki. For the main page of Team Fortress Wiki Policies, see Team Fortress Wiki:Policies.

See Team Fortress Wiki:Community topics notability assessment project.

Community topics are pages about popular and notable content developed within the Community for play with the Team Fortress series games, but not yet published, that is, not yet patched into the game by Valve.

Because the Team Fortress Wiki is treated as a reliable source of useful information by players, all new page additions are reviewed by staff to ensure that they meet minimum quality standards. This naturally includes all pages about Team Fortress series content published by Valve; however, Community topics are particularly scrutinized for sufficient notability to justify inclusion in this wiki.

A significant amount of Team Fortress 2 player time is spent on Community servers where players are likely to encounter many modifications to the current versions of Valve's Team Fortress franchise games and media. It is therefor useful to players for this wiki to cover a limited number of Mods, Custom maps, Community events, and other Community topics applicable to Community servers where practical. The more notable a topic is, the more likely that player will find the page about it useful, and vice versa.

Therefore, in the case of Community topics, to maintain this wiki's standard of quality, certain notability requirements should be met. Before creating a new page for a Community topic, please ensure that it meets applicable notability criteria, and be prepared to demonstrate this to staff should the need arise (either via IRC prior to creating the page, or on the talk page for the Community topic after it has been created). Beware that if review determines that a page about a Community topic is not notable, it may be removed from the Main space of this wiki. Notability will often be a judgment call, between obviously notable and obviously not notable is a wide range; unanimity on notability should not be required. Different players while have different interests; even players who favor the same game mode differ on whether the prefer Valve or Community servers.

As with any article, incompleteness, poor grammar, inconsistent formatting, and other quality issues are completely separate issues from notability — low quality is never a reason to tag for non-notability. All notable topic pages with quality issues can and should be fixed by normal editing. Severely underdeveloped pages can be moved by authors or custodians to User sandboxes until improved to at least stub quality. Similarly, there no requirement that stub be completed; some Valve maps have languished as stubs for years at a time.

Generally, to neutrally reinforce notability, the Community topic page should not be written by anyone who developed the subject of the page.

Notability is forever. Once a topic is notable, it is notable indefinitely; even if a topic can no longer be found hosted in the Community, or by Valve (e.g., Asteroid), it still retains its notability.

Mod notability

A mod is a Community modification of a Team Fortress series game, which, naturally, are distributed and hosted only by Community servers. (See: Category:Mods) Team Fortress itself was a mod of another game. A particular mod is notable enough for coverage in a page in this wiki if it meets all of the following criteria:

• Running on multiple servers: The mod in question must be shown to be in use on multiple servers, run by different entities (meaning that if there are a half-dozen servers being run by one group or person, it doesn't count). These servers also have to show a reasonable amount of player activity, and not simply be empty all the time. If a mod truly is notable in the community, then players will request that server admins run the mod and/or plugin, and it will see reasonable activity in those servers.
• Discussion among the community: Discussion of the mod must extend beyond the thread announcing its creation and development. It must be shown that the mod is actively discussed by multiple users over multiple communities, in order to illustrate its popularity among players.
• Reported in game media (blogs, youtube, etc): A very good marker of popularity is if a prominent YouTuber uploads a video of gameplay of the mod, or a popular Twitch streamer plays it (with or without fans/subscribers is acceptable). Simply showcasing the mod over the course of a few videos and a few personalities is proof enough of trending popularity, it does not have to be multiple videos over a consistent time period.

However, a Mod page on this wiki must not serve as the website for the Mod; the "owners" of the Mod have the responsibilities of supporting the Mod online as necessary.

Community event notability

Community events are significant, higher-profile events sponsored by organizations other than Valve; such as content competitions, special server activations, charities, tournaments, campaigns, or tours. Community events have been a source of many Community maps, community items, and other content that have been added to the game by Valve. However, Community events can be significant areas of Community activity in their own right, rivaling the popularity of some activities on Valve servers.

• Promotion by Valve: including Valve's official Team Fortress blog posts and news] and/or patched promotional/reward items
• Running multiple event servers
• Significant participation: player count, players earning rewards
• Perpetual event: Event content (e.g., maps/mechanics) are/were publicly used outside of the event on Community servers
• Reported in game media (blogs, youtube, etc)

To be useful and to prevent the loss of historic record, coverage of a Community event should begin with Valve's notification of the Community event (or other condition of notability) and continue past the end of the event. Essentially, coverage that begins after an event can lose much useful information. Valve's announcements might not cover important changes to the event, and the Host may delete records of events shortly after the event is over. If the event turns out to be non-notable after all, coverage may then be tagged and removed according to discussion (less harm is done by giving temporary attention to a trivial event than by permanently missing details of a notable event). The TF Wiki article covering the event should ...

• ... include at least as much linkage to important information and resources for the event as the Valve announcement does (e.g., Valve’s announcement of Operation: Digital Directive provides no less than 6 links into the host’s website.)
• … include updates for important changes in the event (extensions, rule changes)
• … include event outcomes, such as participation numbers, achievement levels, contest winners, and charity donations
• … include navigation to similar past events run by the present host and other host as relevant

However, a Community event article should be no more than encyclopedic; it must not perform the functions of the host's webpage.

Custom map notability

“

[Most Custom maps] were either part of something important, like a community mapping contest, or they are very well known maps that have had a lasting presence in TF2 (Achievement Idle, Walkway, etc.) Maps don't usually get pages on the wiki unless they were part of something that had some form of importance, whether or not they have a lot of work put into them. — ClockworkSpirit2343, 24 April 2018

”

Custom maps are maps created in the Community for play with patched and/or modded versions of Team Fortress, Team Fortress Classic, and Team Fortress 2. (Particularly, these are not maps termed by Valve as "Community maps", which are Community-created Custom maps that have been officially Patched into published Team Fortress games, and therefore are automatically all notable enough to be covered by tfwiki pages.) Many Custom maps are incomplete or amateurish, but several have become popular on Community servers or have significantly influenced game play. Some Custom maps have eventually been included in the the game by Valve as Community maps. The following criteria should be considered for assessing the notability of a Custom map.

Note: It is not necessary that a map meet all or even many many criteria to be considered notable enough for a page, since some criteria are mutually exclusively and a few other overlap. Neither should the notability assessment consider the completeness or style of the map's article -- article quality is subject to other policies. As is the case with any article about Official and Community maps, it is acceptable for a Custom map to remain at stub quality indefinitely.

• Original version: A Custom map later modified for and patched into a Valve Event is often considered notable on this basis alone (for example, Fifthcurve).
• Significant use: Popularly counts to notability, as measured by player count, multiple server occupation at least during peak hours (several Valve maps on Valve servers go unoccupied, even in peak hours.)
• Vetted quality: Winning or placing in a judged competition supports notability.
• Used in a notable Community event
• Rivaling Valve servers: Custom maps with multiple variants that recently or historically collectively rival popularity of Valve maps, even if not highly finished (e.g., Achievement Idle); such may receive a collective article broadly covering the variants.
• Originated or particularly promoted new Community activities: Certain Custom maps that created or supported popular new Community activities definitely rivaled some Valve game modes, especially when including many derivative variants in the consideration. Examples: Achievement Idle (Idling maps), Walkway (Community training maps), Trade Plaza (Community trading maps), etc. A particular factor is whether the wiki has reason to mention the map in a mainspace article.
• History making: Maps that were notable for introducing significant mods, Community activities, or official modes (for example, trading, Surfing, etc.) (singly or collected as appropriate)
• Perpetual event: If the Custom map was part of a Community event, its notability is especially supported when it is/was hosted on Community servers not associated with the original event (that is, independent Community use continues after the event).
• Difficult to assess but may support notability:
  • Reported in game media (blogs, youtube, etc)
  • Discussion among the Community

As is the case with any other type of Community topic, Custom map articles must conform to all policies and styles applicable to official map articles.

The following do not count for notability:

• "This is a really good map." (Let a Competition and the Community be the judge of that.)
• "Obviously, someone put a lot of time and effort into this map." (If, so, then enter it into a competition!)
• "Such and such have pages and they aren't notable, so this one should get a page, too." (Staff is working on it; join the editors and help the process of discussing and categorizing notable Community content.)

Custom MvM missions

Due to hiatus of Valve publication of new MvM maps and missions and the increase the Community MvM events of recent years, custom missions have been added to the Community. Of course, some of these missions have been used in notable events, but missions should still subject to guidelines to prevent flooding the wiki with non-notable custom missions, e.g., custom missions never used in events.

As a factor for notability, a custom mission may only be noted/granted an article if:

• It is used with a notable Custom MvM map, and
• It was part of a Community event that has been announced by Valve, e.g. Operation Titanium Tank, Operation Canteen Crasher

As is the case with any other type of Community topic, custom mission articles must conform to all policies and styles applicable to official map articles. Any media must conform to the naming schemes as well as categorizations, meaning that files are to be prefixed with the event name, e.g. File:Operation Digital Directive Blimp.png and categorized under Category:Custom missions media along with the mission name, e.g. Category:Spyware Shipping (mission). In addition to this, custom mission articles should be categorized under Category:Custom missions along with the event name, e.g. Category:Operation Titanium Tank.

Per Policy, media that contains copyrighted material is prohibited and is subject to deletion. See also Licensing.

Community content "patches"

e.g., Swamp Theme Concept for policy needs further development

• Fan updates: unofficial content releases, most of which is usable only on Community servers

Variant games

( e.g., Fortress Forever and Team Fortress 2 Classic ) Concept for policy needs further development

• Policy not only for notability (or complete exclusion), but to what extent it should be covered, e.g., not a self-promotion )

Tags and assessment process

Concept for policy needs further development Some tags have been developed (Tark please link)

• Community topic pages not yet discussed for notability should be tagged to prompt assessment by editors under a Community topics notability assessment project.
• Community topic pages assessed as notable are tagged as such with link in the tag to the subpage where the topic was assessed (subpages of Team Fortress Wiki talk:Community topics notability assessment project.
• Community topic pages assessed as not notable are removed from the mainspace.