Geopoeia:About
The aim and purpose of Geopoeia (this website) is the exchange of information about Creative Counterfactuality. ‘Creative counterfactuality’ is the creation (or ‘construction’) of fictional (imaginary, counterfactual) variants of parts or aspects of the world as we know it, and includes geofiction, constructed worlds and languages, and alternate/counterfactual history. This website furthers its aim and purpose by (1) gathering and sharing information about creative counterfactuality and making this publicly accessible in an encyclopedia-like format by means of a wiki; and (2) facilitating discussion about creative counterfactuality by means of a forum.
creative counterfactuality
Although Creative Counterfactuality can take many forms and can have many purposes, this website is explicitly focused on forms of geographical, social, cultural, historical, and linguistic counterfactuality with no other primary purpose than the joy of creation; such as:
- geofiction: the creation of fictional geographical entities (countries, cities, planets, etc.);
- constructed worlds or ‘conworlds’;
- counterfactual or alternate histories; ‘what-if?’ histories; ‘uchronia’;
- constructed languages or ‘conlangs’.
The first two, ‘geofiction’ and ‘world-construction’ overlap, but neither is a subset of the other. Geofiction is generally defined as having no other primary purpose than the joy of creation, while many constructed worlds are created for game purposes or as the setting of a novel. The latter, having another primary purpose than the joy of creation, are not included in the ‘creative counterfactuality’ that this website intends to cover. The same is the case with counterfactual creations that are or are intended to become more than counterfactual, i.e. that are realized or intended to be realized. Examples include artificial languages that are intended to be used such as Esperanto, and Utopias that are intended to be realized (and thus, are political more than literary or descriptive). Many Micronations are excluded for the same reason, but even non-serious micronations are role-playing games more than ‘creative counterfactuality’.
This, however, does not mean that such excluded counterfactual creations cannot be mentioned or cannot have (brief!) wiki entries on this website, but it does mean that they are not part of the website’s focus, and consequently, that any content that exceeds brief description will be deleted. (In other words, a brief wiki page describing Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Esperanto (with links to further information) is (very) welcome, but detailed descriptions of Mordor or Esperanto grammar are not.) If, on the other hand, you created a language, or a country, or a world, or changed earth’s history from 1644 onwards, you are welcome to add as many wiki-pages about these as you want - provided that they satisfy the guidelines mentioned below - and discuss your creations, and those by others in this website’s forums.
participation and contribution
Everyone who is interested in creative counterfactuality is welcome to contribute to this website, provided that he or she uses common courtesy in participation, and respects other participants / contributors and their contributions. There are some further rules and guidelines for participation (specified below), but common courtesy and respect are by far the most important ones.
Contributors are expected to use correct spelling and grammar and to correct spelling and grammar mistakes in wiki pages when they spot those.
This is not a children’s website - contributors should be at least 15 years old.
other languages
The primary language of this website is English. Contributing in other languages is allowed under certain conditions. (Note that unless explicitly specified otherwise, ‘language’ here refers to real world language spoken by (a substantial number of) real world people; hence, not to constructed languages.)
Wiki pages can only be written in English or in another language for which there is a complete translation of (1) this page specifying aim, purpose, rules, and guidelines of the website; (2) the wiki front page; and (3) the website front page / homepage.
If for a language X, these translated pages do not exist yet, a contributor willing to make those translations, and to function as moderator for content in that language, can contact a site administrator to request (in English) the addition of language X. Such requests will not be granted if there are very few contributors that understand language X. If the request is granted, that contributor is required to make the aforementioned translations and submit these to the site administration for approval. If approved they will be added to the website, a forum in that language will be created, and from that moment on contributions in that language are welcome. (The translation of this page in that language should mention that it is a translation, and that in case of ambiguity or dispute only the English version is authoritative.)
If a wiki page is also available in one or more languages, links to those other language pages should be provided at the top of each of those pages (in the same format as in case of this page - see top of page; see the help page for formatting).
If the English and non-English page for the same content would have the same title (the country name, for example) it is generally preferred that a slash and the two-letter code for the non-English language are added to the page name/title of the non-English page. (Unless that non-English language is by far the most important language for content on that subject matter, in which case it is acceptable to add '/en' to the English version instead.)
Do not link to wiki pages in other languages without explicitly mentioning the language switch by means of the following code: {{lang|en}} (resulting in: (en)) where 'en' should be replaced with the two-letter language code of the language of the page linked to. (For example, if a page about the constructed language ‘Plutonian’ is written in English, and the page about split ergativity in the grammar of that language is only available in German, the main page about Plutonian grammar can only link to that page about split ergativity if the link is marked with (de).) In any case, links to other language wiki pages should be limited as much as possible. This, of course, also applies to categories: all pages within a category should be in the same language.
Contributors are allowed to create a single wiki page (of normal length) in a constructed / fictional language as an example text in that language, but not more than one.
Contributors are encouraged to make (abbreviated) translations of pages and add those translated pages as new pages.
wiki rules
No one owns a wiki page. Even if you create a wiki page for a fictional language, world or country that you created yourself, you do not own that page. Every contributor is allowed, even expected, to improve any wiki page if he/she sees something that is in need of improvement. Effectively disallowing changes to a page by reverting edits made by others can result in termination of your account. On the other hand, vandalism, will almost certainly lead to termination of your account. In case of violation of these guidelines, do not try to deal with the issue yourself; contact a site administrator and explain the issue.
There is no strict limit to the number of wiki pages that a contributor is allowed to create, but very short pages are strongly discouraged (and may be merged or deleted by site administrators), and very long pages should be split up unless there are very good reasons for not splitting up the page. (Very rough guidelines: 300 words or less is generally too short; 3000 words or more is usually too long. The best way to make a long page shorter is to split off details into separate pages. A grammar overview does not need to be complete, for example; details can be in separate pages.)
Any page should have a brief introduction, followed by a table of contents, followed by longer text separated into different sections. (For example, a contributor is allowed to create a page for a fictional country, further pages for the history and/or language of that country, for specific aspects of grammar and/or historical personalities and events, and so forth, as long as all of these pages contain enough information to actually ‘fill’ a page.) All pages should have links to other pages where appropriate. ‘Orphans’ (pages that no or few other pages link to) may be deleted by site administrators.
Abbreviations as page names, and very short or generic page names should be avoided as much as possible.
Contributors are encouraged to improve and correct formatting, editing, linking, spelling and grammar of all wiki pages they visit, and to split up too long pages and/or merge too short pages. Contributors are further encouraged to create index pages and other kinds of ‘meta-content’ pages that improve information access, and/or that compare, classify, or describe various (kinds of) counterfactual creations.
Page names may be altered by site administrators in case different creations share the same name and one of them 'claimed' the page name first, and in other cases where a page name is likely to result in confusion (or conflict). (For example, if there is a page for 'Elysion' the country under that name, and someone want to create a page for 'Elysion' the planet, then an administrator may change the name of the first page to 'Elysion (country)', the second to 'Elysion (planet)', and change the page 'Elysion' into a disambiguation page with references to both pages.) Administrators that change a page name are not responsible for correcting all links to that page in other pages.
forum rules
As mentioned, contributors are expected to use common courtesy in the forums, and to show respect to each other. In addition to those general guidelines, the following is NOT allowed:
- personal attacks;
- misquoting or mis-attributing opinions to other contributors;
- spam;
- trolling;
- flooding;
- racism, sexism, and bigotry;
- excessive profanity;
- discussing religion, sex, and/or politics ('RSP') outside the designated forum (this refers to discussion of real world RSP; there is no objection to discussing aspects of RSP in counterfactual creations in the normal forums, provided that such discussion does not involve judgment and/or discussion of aspects of real world RSP);
- posting in the 'wrong' language (contributors should use English in the general forums; and use the designated languages in the specific language forums);
- violating other users' privacy (posting information about another users that that users did not reveal him- or herself on Geopoeia);
- accusing other contributors of rules violations (in such cases, contact a site administrator, do not attempt to address the issue yourself).
Repeated (serious) violation of these rules may result in termination of a contributor’s account.
images
This website is predominantly text-based. Only Administrators and Editors can upload images. Contributors can submit images for approval by site administrators. See the Image Guidelines and Submission page for further information.
general content rules
Contributors are allowed to add external links to wiki pages or posts if those are appropriate to the subject matter. Links to any kind of illegal content, including illegal downloads, are not allowed. Violation of this rule may result in account termination.
Although this website is targeted at adults, gratuitous sex, nudity, and or violence are not appreciated. If contributors really wish to do so they are allowed to discus sex in the ‘religion, sex, and violence’ forum, but it is not allowed to post pictures of a sexual nature or links to websites featuring such pictures in that forum or anywhere else on this website.
And obviously, copyright violations or any other rights violations will not be tolerated.
corrections and discussion
Any contributor can (and is welcome to) suggest corrections and improvements to the above rules and guidelines in the ‘site policy’ forum.