Player contribution guidelines
From Enlil
This page describes how to go about fabricating entirely new canonical information, rather than describing what happened in a play session. This is necessarily going to require some back and forth with the DM, so this is a proposition of a work-flow to allow you to add flavor and depth to the world. Players should generally confine their contributions to their own character's background, but this is just a rule-of-thumb.
An example might be fleshing out an incidental NPC that your character knows or knew (such as Hans Vardamin to Solomon), or adding some local piece of lore or language that does not interfere with general history (such as the Whaqnokit). You may note that players already do this all the time while in game, in little ways, and it's to be encouraged. By extending such creativity to the Wiki, we'll hopefully end up with a richer world, and one that the players have a greater stake in.
What is not acceptable is to use this as a way to make your own character more important or more knowledgeable than he or she already is. The classic example is to fabricate a story about how your character is secretly a gold dragon or half dragon, but more subtle examples exist. If you need information from a prominent blacksmith about an item he once crafted, it is not acceptable to decide that your character was in the same guild as the blacksmith in question. If your character has a background in smithing, as Liesl does, it is however acceptable to decide that your character was once in a blacksmith's guild, though the story should fit the level of skill the character has. Likewise, while Solomon Knotbeard may know of a lot of people, his charisma would indicate that he doesn't have a large network of friends, and such concerns should be taken into account when adding background to his character.
Player-contributed material can take two forms: whole fabrications and alterations. The line between these two is necessarily fuzzy, so when in doubt, contact the DM.
[edit] Alterations
Remember: this is only for things that the player is making up about the world, not descriptions of things that happened or were described in the play sessions, nor simple editing.
If you'd like to make an alteration or small addition relating to an already existing article, make a new header in the talk page (use the '+' button at the top of the page) with the header "Suggestion: " followed by a title for your suggestion. In the body, describe what you'd like to add or change, and where possible, write up the added or edited paragraphs and post them, so we can work out the exact changes. I keep a close eye on changes, so I should notice quickly, but if you don't get a response, please contact me. When I give you the go-ahead, we'll transfer the changes into the page.
[edit] Fabrications
If you're interested in adding something larger than a simple change, that would affect many pages and require a page or pages of its own, please talk to me in person or by email first. While these pages are being developed, follow the standards for alterations for existing pages, and any new pages should only be linked from those suggestions and from your own user page. We use the non-canonical template to denote pages that are in this category. Just add {{noncanonical}} to the top of the page in question. This automatically adds the page to Category:Non-canonical.
