This wiki has been automatically Future History:Article Guidelines
This page details the guidelines for writing an article or future history timeline on the Future History Wiki.
For policies regarding user conduct, see Future History:Policy.
For image guidelines, see Future History:Image Guidelines.
Content and scope of wiki
This wiki is generally about future studies also known as futurology which is the study on how the future could be based on current trends, but more specifically about future history, which are timelines of events which could've happen in the future.
We do not post alternative histories, which are similar to future histories, but deal with how the past up to the present could've changed if events from the past had a different outcome from our current timeline. If you are looking for alternative histories, you can go to the Alternate History Wiki on Miraheze, the Constructed Worlds Wiki, the AltHistory Wiki on Wikia, the Alternate History Wiki on ShoutWiki, or the alternatehistory.com forum.
On the topic of alternate future histories, which is a combination of both alternative history and future history in which events of an alternative history timeline take place in the future. OTL future histories usually start during the present or near future from the time it was started. As time passes different events in OTL start to occur, which technically makes them alternative future histories. Those are allowed to stay. However, we don't hosts alternate future histories based on alternative histories with a point of divergence set far into the past.
Fantasy and magic are not allowed on this wiki, as these are implausible in the real world. Topics on aliens or fictional species and planets are allowed on this wiki if they maintain plausibility.
And finally, we are not Wikipedia. Although futurology articles provide factual information in the wiki, most content here is mostly fiction. And if you're one of those people creating pages full of spam or just to troll or harass users, then please do yourself a favor and get out of this wiki.
Any pages which do not follow these guidelines will be deleted.
Articles, scenarios and map games
On the Future History Wiki, there a three types of content, articles, timelines and map games.
Articles are factual and scientific pages about current trends in various fields such as science, sociology and politics and how will they go in the future. You should add articles to the article category.
Future history timelines on the other hand, also known as scenarios, are a narrative sequences of postulated history and events which are postulated in the future from the time the scenario is developed within our timeline (or OTL, which is alternative history jargon for history which has occured up to the present), and are the most common type of content on this wiki. Scenarios can include future events such as wars or elections, future companies and corporations, future countries and nations, utopias and dystopias, future alien races or human evolution, extraplanetary colonization or invasion-It can go way beyond. Future histories are related in concept with alternative histories, in which events from the past changes from our timeline creating a divergence of events which are different from our own history, as they are both forms of speculative fiction. A good future history timeline must be plausible, meaning that its events could've reasonably happen. The main page and category of a future history timeline should be placed in the future history timelines category.
Map games are collaborative games in which a map is posted by the creator and different users take their turns to make changes to the map by posting different events. In this case, the starting map is the present moment.
Naming
When naming an page within a future history timeline, they should start with the name of the page first, followed by the name of the timeline inside parentheses. For example, if you are writing about "Mars" as part of the "Mars Terraformation" timeline, you would name it "Mars (Mars Terraformation)". That is because for pages which have the same name but are part of different timelines can cause confusion, and it also helps keep articles organized as part of a timeline. It's fine for the main page of a timeline to just have the name of the timeline itself. It also helps creating a category for you timeline to contain your pages by writing [[Category:<name of your timeline>]] at the end of each page.
Featured articles and timelines
Articles and timelines on the Future History which shows exceptional quality, can be nominated and voted on by the community to be displayed on the main page as a featured timeline and timeline of the month. Timelines which are or have been featured on this wiki have a template placed at the top of the page, as well as this template for articles. A list of featured timelines can be found here as well as featured articles here, and they can be nominated at the featured timelines and [[Future History:Featured articles. page.
Contributing to a timeline
Some authors may choose to make their timeline open to contributors, which allows other users to make edits or add pages to the timeline. Usually the author would put up a notice that their timeline is open to contributors.
Other authors may choose that only themselves or some other users they have selected, can make contributions to their timeline. Thus, these timelines are closed to contributors and other users must respect the authors decision. Usually, authors can protect their pages by clicking the "Protect" tab at the top edge of the page, and setting the protection level to "Protect from non-authors" and then clicking "Confirm", which will set the page so that other users except for administrators can make edits to your page. You can also place a notice to the top of your page that you have decided to make it closed to contributors. If the page is not protected, other users are allowed to make minor edits to your page.
Adopting a timeline
If the authors of a timeline abandoned it or decided to stop contributing it, they may decide to leave their timeline open for adoption to other contributors.
Finding sources
For a good article or page for a future history timeline, it is a good idea to look up some sources elsewhere on the Internet in order to back up information on your page or to make your timeline more plausible. If you find useful information that you would like to incorporate to your article, it is important that you cite it and place your references at the bottom of the page. Here's a link to Wikipedia which can help you in how to cite sources.
It is also good to read up on other user's article and future history timelines for some inspiration.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism, which is when someone takes information and ideas and incorporates them as their own, is not allowed on this wiki.
Examples of plagiarism include:
- Taking information from an outside source and incorporating into your page without citing it or giving attribution to the original source, regardless of if the information is copied verbatim or not.
- Stealing ideas or content for scenarios or future timelines from other users, including making duplicate pages.
- Taking maps and flag designs or other images from other people without their permission. If the file uploaded to this site came from outside this wiki and/or Wikimedia Commons, it can also be considered a copyright violation.
Any form of plagiarism will be deleted or reverted. If you need help in adding information or designing graphics, please ask another user.
Copyright
By default, all content on this wiki is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, meaning that any content you have submitted here can be reused and distributed without requiring your permission as long as they give credit and redistribute it under the same conditions as well as indicated by the CC BY-SA tag at the footer as well as indicated at the bottom of the submission form during editing, unless otherwise stated. However, if you choose to publish your contributions under a different license or completely reserve all of your copyrights over it, as well as any files that you upload here, you must indicate that.
Deletion
Sometimes it is necessary for the administrators to delete articles on this wiki which are irrelevant to the scope of this wiki, do not follow this guideline, violate wiki policy, under the request of the authors, or in order to be compliant with Miraheze's global policies. If you feel that a page should be deleted, you may mark it for deletion in order to bring it into attention to the administrators.