Dreamlight Valley Wiki:Site policies
This page is dedicated to the policies of Dreamlight Valley Wiki. By using this wiki, which includes viewing, accessing, or editing the contents of this site, all users agree and follow these policies to ensure consistency in content and to protect existing contributors and contributions.
General Policies
- Vandalism, vulgar language and linking to irrelevant websites are strictly prohibited. Offenders will be banned and their edits removed.
- Avoid edit wars. If your edits are being reverted persistently and you feel the content should/shouldn't be there, please address it in a discussion page, talk directly to the offender, or contact an Administrator. Keep in mind that this wiki is open for the public, and no editors will be punished for editing in good faith.
- This wiki is a public encyclopedia. Contributions are welcome, but editors must understand that everything contributed will become available to the public and credits will not be distributed. Therefore, no edits (except Talk pages) shall be signed. Credits are only given in the history page of every page, where the list of contributors can be found.
- This wiki only supports English. Communicating and discussing with community members in other languages on User pages and User Talk pages is acceptable, although English is preferred. However, content on all other pages must be edited in American English.
- Some pages are protected. This may be due to excessive vandalism or the page consisting of complex coding. If you come across these pages and are unable to edit, it is likely Administrator locked and you will need to contact an Administrator about any edits to that page.
- Avoid off-topic content. Users may add non-game information about themselves (which should be non-personally identifiable for security and safety purposes) to their user page. External linking on these pages to a twitter profile or Discord handle is allowed as a method of outside site contact linking, provided it does not contain any real life personal information. Keep in mind - no edits are really deleted on a wiki, everything exists in page history and personal should not be shared as it cannot be easily removed. Any non-game related content or links outside user pages will be deleted, and repeated offenses may lead to a temporary or permanent ban.
Content Policies
Data Mining Policy
According to Gameloft’s End User License Agreement (EULA), all players are expected to agree that they ‘’“may not decompile, modify, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise reproduce the Software.”’’[1]
Any published information must be sourced from gameplay or inside the game directly, and in all cases the wiki’s information must match the game exactly.
This content policy is aligned with officially managed channels - like Discord. Alignment with these channels allows players to discuss and share links to the wiki, but if the wiki fails to properly enforce these rules it could be banned from those channels as the site would be distributing information which would violate channel policies.
Hard number data related to mechanics presented on this wiki is assumed to have been thoroughly tested and verified whenever possible by contributors through normal gameplay. Since there is no way to ensure all contributed data has been user tested beforehand, all contributions, regardless whether they are datamined or user tested, will be treated as normal user contributions unless they have been clearly collected outside normal gameplay.
Sourced Images
Some game imagery on the wiki may be sourced from the game files under fair use. Any and all sourced game images must be;
- Verified to be front-facing inside the game exactly as published. No imagery, including icons, portraits, or any other visual asset from the game files can be published on the wiki if it is not viewable by a player in-game. Sharing images which don’t follow this rule would constitute a “leak”.
- Displayed exactly as they appear in game - unmodified (except for scaling/compression to accommodate web optimization). That means even if a game image has an issue inside the game, it should not be ‘cleaned up’ or ‘edited’ in any way before uploading to the wiki - like other content it must match the front facing information exactly.
Leaks
The wiki will not present leaked, unreleased, or unfinished content unless a member of Gameloft has explicitly stated its future release, through their development blog, Discord, or other official social media. Content that has been canceled but has been previously announced to be released or content that has been removed from the game are still eligible to be article pages on the wiki.
This policy prohibits any images or references to unreleased content and characters in any fashion from any unofficial (i.e. not Gameloft-affiliated) source - including sourcing sites like IMDb or Wikipedia for information which has not been officially announced, like character voice actors (unless they have been listed inside the front-facing credits inside the game).
This policy includes information which is “staged” inside discussion pages, user pages or comments - for example, listing data-mined items which have not been formally released to prepare for or speculate on upcoming content.
Content announced through official channels may have articles staged and prepared for wiki organizational purposes. In these cases, articles should only be created if the final in-game name has been confirmed, and only information and images shared publically should be used. Staged articles should not be interlinked from any templates or articles except the update article, and should only be staged for the next scheduled update to limit the amount of time incomplete articles exist on the wiki.
Media Policy
General Guidelines
- Avoid player-specific information and custom designs. Whenever possible player-specific info, such as names and/or player-made designs should not be used in screenshots. These elements can distract from the focus of the image - and in almost all places are nonessential information.
- No watermarks. Watermarks are not to be used for displaying image authors nor to advertise domains, images are preferred without watermarking unless distributed from the developer or developer partners. In the case the image has an official watermark or copyright notice it shall not be removed.
- Uploaded media which displays game imagery should have the copyright template added to the page after upload, and be categorized appropriately whenever possible.
- Game images may be sourced from game files - provided they are unmodified (except to resize or optimize) and follow the wiki content guidelines regarding Data Mining (they are not unreleased or sourced from other unofficial non-game sources).
- High resolution images are preferred. Good in-game screenshots should be shown in high detail with high anti-aliasing to reduce jagged edges.
- .png format is preferred. .jpg and .jpeg files don’t use transparency and often become excessively compressed or suffer from additional compressing within thumb tags.
Naming Conventions
- To support template use, all items, characters, clothing, companions, and furniture should all be named exactly as they are in game - including capitalization and punctuation.
- Developer-refenced names, or names sourced from files but not publicly-facing should not be used as per the site Data Mining Policy.
External Media Linking
Unless linked as a reference for original research or a specific reason - external media, image, and video links should not be added. In the majority of cases player-made guide content and videos are not the original source of information (with rare exceptions), and should not be directly referenced as a source per the attribution policy. External reference attribution should be official and verified original sources, not where the editor discovered the information.
In cases where a Youtube video, blog post or player guide is documenting verified original research or information it may be linked as a resource reference. The external content must also otherwise follow the site content policies.
The policy against linking to external content that offers expanded information is largely to prevent edit wars between content creators or fans that may want to promote their channels. Managing these external links also forces wiki editors to watch/review external content to verify the accuracy and appropriateness, which causes management overhead for editors and moderators to review.
Attribution Policy
As per the general policy guidelines; Contributions are appreciated, but editors must understand that everything contributed will become available to the public and credits will not be distributed. Therefore, no edits (except Talk pages) shall be signed. Credits are only given in the history page of every page, where the list of contributors can be found.
As per the media policy watermarks are not to be used for displaying image authors nor to advertise domains, images are preferred without watermarking unless necessary. In the case the image has an official watermark or copyright notice it shall not be removed.
There should be no attribution or credit to the ‘player who discovered something’ (outside that player being listed in the page edit history if they’ve contributed the information themselves). The wiki isn’t a collection of discovery credits, and players shouldn’t feel they need to ‘be first to find’ in order to get recognized on the wiki.
Discord, twitter, forum/reddit posts and other shared discoveries should only be added as reference when there is an extremely high confidence that it is original research and not something that could have been discovered independently by another player.
Official game channels (Discord, social media, blog posts, etc) can always be referenced as an “original source”. In the case of determining the correct source for officially shared and cross-channel information the priority should be: blog, Twitter, other social media, and discord last. This means that if a piece of content is shared on the blog, Twitter, and Discord, the blog link should be the one used in the reference.
Attribution should be wrapped in a <ref> tag and added to a section titled ‘References’ directly above the ‘History’ section in an article.