Googology Wiki:Policy

"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."

- Henry David Thoreau

Ignore all rules
If a rule prevents you from maintaining or improving Googology Wiki, ignore it.

GWiki is an encyclopedia and a community
Like many Wikia wikis, and in contrast to Wikipedia, Googology Wiki is both an encyclopedia and a community. The wiki was originally intended to be an encyclopedia by some kid who had an obsession with collecting and organizing information, but it grew into something much more. Discussion and chit-chat are encouraged among fellow large number hobbyists.

Have fun
While rules and bureaucracy may be useful in other places, a group of nerds talking about math is rarely a source of friction. Don't get bogged down in rules unless you need them.

Don't be a dick
Be nice. Don't attack other users personally.

Be a decent human being. Don't make actions or statements discriminating against anyone based on race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, etc.

Don't bite the newbies
New GWikians may stumble a bit while learning the ropes. Don't bite them! Clean up after them and, if necessary, courteously let them know what was wrong. There's a lesson in every mistake.

Assume good faith
A sufficiently bad mistake is hard to distinguish from malice. Whenever possible, assume good faith.

Chat
There's a chat feature allowing you to talk to other users. Of course, the usual rules of employing common sense and not being an ass apply.

Notability
On wikis, we have to be constantly deciding whether an article should be created or not for each number and concept. The following are some general rules of thumb:


 * Numbers and functions should be mathematically well-defined, or at least an attempt at being mathematically well-defined. A number defined as "infinity plus 42" is probably not acceptable.
 * Numbers:
 * Pretty much any number greater than 100 is fine. We allow integers 0 through 99, but other constants like e or pi are generally not allowed.
 * Named numbers are much preferred over unnamed ones. There are a good number of exceptions to this.
 * Ordinals:
 * Even when they're only tangentially relevant to googology, ordinals and related functions are fine. At the moment, we're holding back many of the large cardinals to avoid duplicating Cantor's Attic.
 * Functions:
 * They should grow fast enough to be related to googology. As a general rule of thumb, things that grow slower than factorial are not acceptable. Addition and multiplication are fine because they form the basis of the hyperoperators.
 * Googologists are mostly concerned with functions mapping counting numbers to counting numbers. Functions like \(e^x\) are not relevant to googology. As usual, exceptions are common; use your own discretion and discuss in case of controversy.
 * Other stuff:
 * Some articles don't directly describe large numbers or functions, but rather systems that give rise to them. Examples include Goodstein sequences and Latin squares.
 * People:
 * There aren't a lot of googologists, so no rules are really necessary here. If someone has made a significant presence in large number-dom, then they're probably worth an article.

Original work (READ THIS!)
Original work is allowed, but as above, it needs to be mirrored from an off-site source. See the relevant bit on the About page.

Probably the single most common mistake made by newcomers to the wiki is to show up and dump their latest invention into the encyclopedia. The point of the encyclopedia is to document published googologisms and ultimately unite the scattered literature of large numbers. It's a mirror, not a publishing platform.

The recommended way to get your work on the wiki is to create a blog post. Blogs offer a free and easy way to broadcast your creations to the community, and you can get feedback from other googologists in the form of comments. The wiki is pretty well-ranked on major search engines, so there's a lot of exposure there as well.

Vandalism
Vandalism is a term used in wikiland to describe a deliberate attempt to harm the integrity of the encyclopedia. Needless to say, vandalism is prohibited. If you encounter vandalism, revert it and leave the owner a polite message. If the vandalism persists, contact an administrator and s/he'll deal with it.

Edit war
An edit war happens when two or more editors have a dispute, and instead of discussing things out, they revert back and forth between the revisions they want. Edit wars are not productive in any way, and generally just make people more angry. Instead of edit warring, talk it over and come to a decision.

In an effort to fight counterproductive edit warring, we will mirror the 3RR rule as found on Wikipedia:


 * Any editor who makes more than three reverts on the same page within a 24-hour period will be blocked for 24 hours. Self-reversion and reversion of obvious vandalism do not count towards this.

The purpose of 3RR blocks &mdash; and any other blocks, for that matter &mdash; are to prevent further disruption, not to punish misbehavior.

Copyright
Blah blah blah don't steal stuff that's copyrighted. We don't need to tell you this.