Uncyclopedia:Ten Commandments

This page is considered a policy on Uncyclopedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow, unless they don't want to, in which case they are free to ignore it so long as they're not being a dick. Please make use of the standing on one knee position to propose to this policy.

Moses delivering the Ten Tagging Commandments.

1. Thou shalt be helpful to authors!

If a page has any potential, be nice to the author. Perhaps you can suggest an improvement, perhaps you can add something explaining that this giant pink tag isn't personal. Just remember that we are hoping to motivate people, not subject them to public humiliation. For this purpose, we recommend using {{ICU}} with a comment instead of {{NRV}} for most NRV-able pages.

2. Thou shalt not ICU, NRV or maintenance tag an article that is still being written!

It sickens me to see articles where there is a long line of edits close in time with one another, all by the original author except for one edit by someone adding NRV. When I first came here I wrote articles in many edits; had I been interrupted in that by an NRV tag I would have been furious. In practical terms, new articles should not be tagged until they have gone unedited for at least one hour.

3. Thou shalt not ICU, NRV or maintenance tag an article that is marked as being under construction!

If a page is marked with a {{Construction}} or {{WIP}} tag, hands off! If the text of the article says that it is under construction, delete that text and add one of these tags. NRV and the maintenance tags are meant to make sure that an unfinished article gets finished. Authors who list their pages as under construction already know they have work to do and they already have the seven day time limit.

4. Thou shalt not ICU or NRV any page that is more than a week old!

(unless you are an admin AND have a good reason) It is long standing policy that NRV is only to be used as a filter for the inflow of new crap. Older stuff should be given a tag with a longer expiration period. If the page needs work but has hope, use {{fix}} on old pages instead of NRV. If you really want it gone, use VFD.

5. Thou shalt attempt to save those Condemned to Eternal Suffering!

Whenever you patrol for pages to ICU, NRV or maintenance tag, please devote a bit of time to foraging through one of these categories to find a page worth saving, then spend some time making that article better. If you actually do this, it will help you learn to use the tags in a way that is more useful for people trying to improve the site's quality.

6. Thou shalt not ICU, NRV or maintenance tag a page without reading it!

Yes, the page may look like crap, but maybe the text is actually funny when you read it. If an article is really long and bad, you don't have to sit there reading it for 20 minutes, but still read the first two paragraphs.

7. Thou shalt not tag a page as Ugly because you were too lazy to read it!

This is the converse of the last rule. Sometimes it may look like an article would be fine if it were formatted correctly, but then when you try to do so, you realize that the text is utter crap too. These sorts of pages aren't worth trying to save by formatting alone. If the text of an article is beyond saving, NRV, VFD or Fix tag it.

8. Thou shalt not tag a page if you could fix up the page yourself in under five minutes!

If you see the problem and could correct it easily yourself, then don't pass it along to someone else. Give it your best shot, and then if you can't fix the problem, you are allowed to tag it.

9. Thou shalt use Vanity templates for dealing with vanity!

If your mum hasn't heard of the page's subject, it doesn't have a wikipedia article, or the page just doesn't pass the sniff test, follow one of our vanity tag procedures, rather than NRVing it. {{fix|vanity}} works like NRV, {{vanity3}} works like VFD, and {{vanity}} is for permissible vanity.

10. Thou shalt ignore the fact that this last commandment exists only to bring the number of commandments up to 10!

Just because the Admins are too lazy to produce 10 commandments does not mean you may mock them for it! If you do not value your life highly, you could put a {{fix}} tag on this page to make the point...