Ice Hockey Wiki Guidelines

Please read what is written here before beginning to contribute. This will give you the basic guidelines to follow in order to make this project reach its goals and spare you from making some mistakes that may have a small or large impact on the project as a whole.

Goals
The Ice Hockey Wiki (IHW) has been created with a goal: to become a thorough, complete and accurate encyclopedia on everything ice hockey. This encyclopedia is made so that everyone can edit it to add his or her own knowledge to that already gathered, making the encyclopedia larger, better and more complete with every new edit. Ultimately, the encyclopedia should become a reference for people looking for specific information on hockey, as well as a great way for neophytes to learn the rules of the game, its basics and history. While such a project exists on Wikipedia, the Ice Hockey Wiki intends to be more complete and much deeper than its Wikipedia counterpart, mainly since the IHW is specifically dedicated to the topic, whereas Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, where ice hockey is no more than one of the countless topics covered, and where the rules make it so that many very important, not to say vital, aspects about documenting ice hockey, such as statistics, are seriously limited. Here, if it is ice hockey, it has its place. Any organised league deserves its article. Every team, past or present, of such league deserves its article. Every pro player worldwide deserves his/her article, just as do most semi-pros. Every amateur player having played in an international competition deserve his/her article. Every element of the game, every rule, every equipement part... you get the point? If it's hockey, it's Ice Hockey Wikia.

However, please note that your recreational league or beer league does not have its place here, and that your best friend who scored 6 times in that memorable match against the neighbouring body parts shop's staff team don't have his either. IHW is about organized hockey, from junior to pro.

Legal stuff
The IHW is available under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) licence, meaning that everyone can edit the texts here and link to them or distribute them freely.

This means you do NOT own the article you have written, and that you should NOT take that nifty article written on a copyrighted website or in that amazing book and copy it on IHW - you have to write a new one yourself. You may inspire yourself from original material, you certainly may use the information the source provides, but what you write here has to be your own writing (except what is from another site using the same licence, if you acknowledge its source in the proper manner).

Same goes for pictures uploaded. Most pictures found online are copyrighted and should not be uploaded to the IHW, as it constitutes a legal infringement. There are some exceptions to the copyright rule, however. You actually may upload and insert copyrighted team or league logos on the IHW without permission of the copyright holder to illustrate your articles. This is called fair use or fair dealing and exists because the use of such image can't be replaced by a licence-free image (could you replace the Montreal Canadiens logo by something else to illustrate the Montreal Canadiens logo? Certainly not. In such circumstances, fair use applies). You should however only use those copyrighted logos and pictures for the aforementioned purposes, as it otherwise may be considered copyright infringement.

In order to avoid such situations that could harm the project and its participants, please avoid copyrighted materials. Anything copyrighted that does not respect fair use will be deleted.

Respect
When it comes to cooperative projects involving many people, the most important thing to do is to respect each other. Not only will they respect you back, but it will diminish the chances of quarrels and disputes among members. We're all hockey passionates brought here by the same love for the sport and the same will to share knowledge and build the greatest hockey encyclopedia ever, so we shouldn't waste our energies quarrelling with each other. That'll make the project much less fun to work on. You should respect and consider every single contributor as your equal, wherever he/she comes from and whatever opinion he/she has. And should a divergence of opinion arise... stay cool. No need to drop the gloves, no need to call for penalties and have people sent out for game misconduct, just discuss with the other party calmly. Would you happen to be unable to solve the conflict solely with discussion, you can always bring the discussion to the attention of a third party or make it public so that it can be solved collectively. But the best way to solve a conflict is and will always be to actually not have any conflict, so please do everything you can to avoid such things - that'll make everything much easier for everyone. Also, do not verbally attack, flame, or insult any user under any circumstance. It is the best possible way to get yourself banned, along with spamming and vandalizing.

Neutrality
When writing an article, write it in a neutral way, i.e. so it is simply stating facts and not opinions. You have your favourite teams and players, so does everyone. But when writing about these, do not write in such a way that they appear greater than they are; in the same vein, don't write about teams and players you dislike in such a way that they will appear as worse as they are. Stay neutral, bring facts, and keep your opinions for yourself. Adjectives are great, but be sure to use them correctly. Saying "Wayne Gretzky is considered by many as one of the best hockey players ever" is correct. Saying "Mario Lemieux is indoubtedly the best player to ever have laced up skates in the NHL" is incorrect - no matter how good he was, you just can't say he (or anyone else, for that matter) was the best, as it's a very arguable question (additionally, there was a spelling mistake in the word undoubtedly, which is something else you should pay close attention to. Re-read what you write!) And saying that "Tie Domi is unarguably one of the best player of the NHL" is just silly. And saying "XX totally rocks", "YY is cool" or ""ZZ really sucks" is totally inappropriate and unacceptable here. Maybe you should take a look at several articles before beginning to contribute, just to get a feel of the kind of style prescribed by the IHW. A Manual of style exists to help you get started with writing.