This policy is enforced by staff, and is determined on a case-by-case basis. Should you feel any violations are occurring within this policy, feel free to PM any member on the staff list to report it through wikidot PMs or through Discord.
Whether giving or receiving critique, there is one rule everyone should follow:
DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE
It is expected that site members act civilly and politely in order for the critique process to proceed smoothly. Receiving critique can be intimidating for those new to the writing process, and offering critique is done by volunteers who are not paid. Respect and civility need to come from both sides of this process. Should you feel this rule is being broken, report it to staff.
There are other things that should be kept in mind when giving critique.
1. Your critique should be substantial.
- Stating things such as "I like this!" and "This isn't good" is not helpful. In order for a page to be posted to the site, critique needs to be at least 500 characters (roughly 100 words). Don't waste the time of the author or your time by providing shallow critique. Explain why you think these things.
- Your criticism should tell the author exactly what you found wrong, but more importantly, should tell the author how to improve on the work itself. Good critique is specific, relevant to the page, and to the point.
- Don't state that any of the problems are "obvious". If the problems were obvious, the author would have noticed. Instead, state the problems which are allegedly obvious, in order to help the author themself.
- Inexperience in critiquing is not a valid excuse for giving poor critique. We have a how to critique guide, an experienced greenlighting team, as well as countless resources on the Internet that explain the critiquing process. However, it's okay to admit you don't know something. Be polite and don't be afraid to ask questions.
- You are free to tell your author you are leaving a placeholder. However, please refrain from leaving a large amount, and try to get to those placeholders in a timely manner (24-48 hours is a typical amount). Should someone leave you a placeholder, then not reply within that time period, feel free to PM them reminding them of the placeholder itself.
2. It is more helpful to leave an explanation for why you downvoted something than just downvoting.
- While you are not obligated to leave a comment explaining your reasoning, giving your reasoning can help the author improve for the next draft.
- Downvotes should only be related to the content of the page. Downvoting for anything else but the content of the page is considered malicious downvoting.
3. Have an open mind when giving critique.
- There is no one interpretation of the Backrooms. There is room for all kinds of pages here. Your job as a critic is to make every page the best version it can be. If you consistently offer edits that substantially replace the author's work, reevaluate your critique.
If you are receiving critique, keep these in mind:
1. If you want critique, you must give critique.
- As part of a writing community, the system does not work if you do not give back to the community. Experienced authors should lend their hand to newer authors, and newer authors should encourage each other.
2. Be patient.
- We all have lives to attend to. If someone is taking long to get to your page, give them some time. However, if after a week or so they have not responded, it is okay to contact someone else.
- Additionally, it is good practice to wait until your critic has completely finished with their critique to ask questions or clarify things.
3. Take the critique to heart.
- Even if someone has completely misunderstood your page, use that as a learning experience. Where did your vision clash with what they understood? Where were you unclear? Even if the critique isn't immediately helpful, try to think what led them to it.
If you have any questions about the policy itself, leave your point in the forums, or else message us via PM or on Discord!
Cite this page as:
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"<a href="https://backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com/component:revisions-tabs">Revisions Tabs</a>" by Backrooms Wiki Staff, from the <a href="http://backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com/">Backrooms Wiki</a>. Source: <a href="https://backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com/component:revisions-tabs">https://backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com/component:revisions-tabs</a>. Licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC-BY-SA-3.0</a>.
For more information about on-wiki content, visit the Licensing Master List.
As our site has grown and evolved with its authors, we have decided that we want a certain level of quality curated by our community. Therefore, pages that are deemed to have an unsatisfactory level of quality are removed from the wiki. However, there are other cases where a page may be deleted.
Articles can get deleted due to four primary reasons:
- 1.) Author request. The author of an article may, for any reason and at any time, desire to delete one of their written articles.
- 2.) Coldposting. Pages that have not gone through our posting policy or received a greenlight will be immediately deleted by staff for failing to follow the process of quality control. This process will be summarized later in this guide, but is detailed in this page.
- 3.) Deletion threshold. Articles require to stay above a certain threshold of community acceptance to remain on the site. This threshold is expressed as a rating of +10 for for all non-translation page types. Pages in the positives that do not have downvotes will not be deleted.
- 4.) Staff decision. Staff reserves the right to delete articles that break the rules of the site in other ways.
Staff will not delete an article because of personal preference or bias.
The process behind the first three possibilities will be elaborated upon in this guide. Consult the table of contents below to skip ahead.
If you feel your article has been deleted unfairly, be it that you have correctly followed the greenlight process, or that your article was above the deletion threshold at the time of deletion, or any other reason, please reach out to staff.
AUTHOR REQUEST
You, as an author, have the inalienable right to delete your content from the site whenever you want, provided you are the sole author of such content. With content that was made with other authors, the majority of authors must all agree to remove their works from the wiki.
Once you have made a request to staff, staff will delete the pages for you. Non-staff cannot delete their own works. Send a Wikidot or Discord message to any staff member and they will process your request. Please allow for a few days for staff to process your request.
Official pages, guides, and articles created by other users, or in collaboration by other users cannot be deleted like this except with staff approval.
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COLDPOSTING
In order to post an article of any kind to the site, you will need to go through a process of quality control. This process involves getting three pieces of critique from 3 different users, each being at least 500 characters (roughly 100 words).
Or you can reach out to a greenlighter, ask them to read your article, and get their approval (greenlight) to post.
This is to ensure a universal bare minimum of quality and make it easier to filter out unacceptably poorly written pages, such as those that feature abundant and blatant grammatical errors, or feature extreme misconceptions regarding the nature of the site and its content. Read more about our posting process [here.
Should your article be deleted this way, you will be informed about it via your Wikidot account, and the text of your article will be preserved. Consult the "MESSAGING AND LOGGING" section for more specifics.
Note that for certain contests and other writing events, this rule may be voided: make sure to consult the rules of the contest before posting. Even in these exceptions, getting critique is strongly recommended.
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DELETION THRESHOLD
The Backrooms Wiki has an up/downvote system of rating articles. This is the primary means by which content is accepted or rejected from the site, and thus is a way in which articles may be deleted.
The deletion or downvote threshold of the site is a rating of +10 for non-translations. This does not mean that any article receiving a downvote will be deleted: this will happen if the total sum of up and downvotes on any given article is not above a total rating of +10. In addition, a minimum of three downvotes is required for the threshold to be in effect.
For example, if your article has 6 downvotes and 16 upvotes, the total rating will be displayed as +10, and thus will be safe from deletion. If your article has 6 downvotes and 15 upvotes, the total rating will be +9, and thus will undergo the process of deletion. However, if your page has 9 upvotes and has 2, 1, or 0 downvotes, it will not be deleted.
Additionally, all pages are subject to a grace period. When new articles are posted for the first time, they have a grace period of 96 hours(4 days) from the time of posting, which means they will not be deleted should they hit deletion threshold during that time.
When an article stays below the thresholds, the article will then enter a deletion range check, in which it will have 24 hours to go above that rating before it is deleted and receive an 'in-deletion' tag on the article. If the vote goes up during those 24 hours, then the tag will be removed, but if it remains below the threshold, the page will be deleted.
In the time between the start of the counter and the final deletion of the article, any user may request the right to rewrite it from staff or the original author(s). The rewrite will be documented but all articles posted after February 2025 will still be subject to deletion by threshold. You can read more about our rewrite policy here.
Once the counter reaches 0, if there are no requests to rewrite, it will be deleted by staff and logged appropriately (see MESSAGING AND LOGGING section).
Articles that have received a greenlight or critique can still be deleted if they reach the downvote threshold. Greenlighters can approve of your article and consider up to site standards, but community members may still decide it unfit for the site and downvote it.
It is generally good manners to explain the reasons behind a downvote in the forum section of an article. Understanding why a page was downvoted can help the author improve for the next draft. However, this is not a requirement or obligation.
You may reach out to individual users if you would like to know the motives for their downvote, but they are not required to answer or give any explanation. If they do not respond or request that you cease engaging with them, you have to do so.
Downvotes can occur for any number of reasons: misuse of the setting, poor syntax or structure, etc…, but personal bias cannot be one of them. If you think someone is downvoting you for any reason but the contents of your article, please reach out to staff.
If your page is deleted, you are always free to rewrite your article and try again! You can ask for more feedback, ask different people, give yourself some time to think and regroup, etc. — Rome wasn't made in a day, and lots of really successful articles started out with the wrong foot. Don't give up if things didn't go as planned!
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MESSAGING AND LOGGING
If your article is deleted for any reason but your own choice, you will be informed via Wikidot private message and the deletion logged in the deletions thread of Backrooms Oversight, the administrative site.
Private messages communicating the deletion of your article will look like this if it was deleted due to coldposting…
… and like this if it was deleted due to reaching the downvote threshold.
Together with these messages you will always receive a copy of the source code of your article.
Additionally, deletion logs look like this:
They will list the original URL, the reason for deletion, the date of the deletion, your Wikidot username, and have a collapsible containing a copy of the source code of your article.
At the top right of any Wikidot page, you will see the name of your account and a button marked with a downward arrow. If you have a new private message, you will see a number between parentheses fading in and out: this is the amount of unread messages you have. To access your private messages, click the downward arrow button, then click "Messages."
- How to navigate forum threads?
Forum threads are becoming less and less used by the day, so you should not be ashamed if how to use them is not immediately apparent to you.
The navigation bar of a given forum thread (marked in red) allows you to quickly read past a large amount of posts. Each numbered page contains exactly 6 posts (plus any amount of replies, which are indented to the right). If your article was deleted recently, it'll be in the latest page(s), or those with the highest numbers.
To find your article more easily, you can search for your username in each page by looking at the top right of your browser, clicking/tapping the button with the three dots, then clicking/tapping "Search" or "Find" and typing your Wikidot username. On desktop, this can be done with CTRL + F.
The search bar will not show up any new results when you change pages until you type on it again. You can type a single space then delete it to make it reset.
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