4.5 KiB
| type | title | author | url | date | domain | secondary_domains | format | status | priority | triage_tag | tags | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| source | SCP Foundation Wiki Governance: Deletion Guide, Site Rules, and Greenlight Process | SCP Foundation Staff | https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/deletions-guide | 2026-03-18 | entertainment |
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essay | unprocessed | high | entity |
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Content
Comprehensive documentation of SCP Foundation's multi-layered quality governance system, synthesized from three official wiki pages (Deletions Guide, Site Rules, Greenlight/Draft Forum Policies).
Layer 1: Pre-Publication Quality Gates (Greenlight System)
- All NEW authors (no successful page yet) must get concepts reviewed and greenlighted by TWO experienced reviewers before requesting full draft feedback
- Greenlighters must meet criteria: Butterfly Squad Roster, Moth Squad, 3+ successful pages, or featured in Reviewers' Spotlight
- Greenlight = "vote of confidence that concept is solid enough to be drafted and will likely succeed on mainsite"
- Authors with 1+ successful page can bypass greenlight
- Drafts below minimum quality threshold receive boilerplate critique requesting author self-correct basic errors first
Layer 2: Post-Publication Community Voting
- Every article has discussion page for evaluation and critique
- Members vote for ANY reason, but reasoning must be based on article content
- Rating system drives quality: articles must maintain community support
Layer 3: Deletion Process
- Pages at -10 or lower become eligible for deletion
- Staff member posts "Staff Post" suggesting deletion with 24-hour timer
- Deletion requires 3 staff votes + timer expiry
- Pages at -20: timer suspended, eligible for immediate deletion with 3 staff votes
- If rating recovers above -10: all prior deletion votes voided, process restarts
- Authors may request deletion stays for rewrites
Layer 4: Summary Deletion (Bypass)
- Staff may immediately delete: malicious content, plagiarism, unfinished placeholders, improperly attributed collaborative works
- Permanent ban for: AI-generated text or images posted to user-facing content, plagiarism, vandalism
Governance Structure
- Staff-based hierarchical system: Disciplinary, Technical, Licensing, Chat, Curation teams
- NO formal community rank system — power concentrated in staff positions
- Staff handle discipline/infrastructure, NOT creative direction
- "Don't be a dick" as foundational principle
- No explicit canon governance — narrative coherence is emergent, not enforced
Key Data Points
- 9,800+ SCP objects, 6,300+ tales as of late 2025
- 2,076 pages uploaded in 2025, +84,329 cumulative votes, average +41 votes per article
- 70 new author pages in 2025
- 16 language branches internationally
- AI-generated content = permanent ban (parallel to fanfiction community norms)
Agent Notes
Triage: [ENTITY] — SCP Foundation as an entity with documented governance mechanisms. Also [CLAIM] material: the multi-layered quality system (greenlight → voting → deletion) is a specific, documented governance architecture. Why this matters: This is the most detailed documentation of how a large-scale collaborative fiction project actually maintains quality. The four-layer system (pre-publication peer review → community voting → staff-initiated deletion → emergency bypass) is structurally analogous to academic peer review but applied to fiction. What surprised me: The AI content ban. SCP Foundation — the most successful open-IP collaborative fiction project — permanently bans AI-generated content. This aligns exactly with the fanfiction community data (92% say "fanfiction is a space for human creativity"). Open IP + human-only authorship is a coherent, deliberate choice. KB connections: GenAI adoption in entertainment will be gated by consumer acceptance not technology capability, consumer definition of quality is fluid and revealed through preference not fixed by production value Extraction hints: The four-layer governance system deserves its own claim. The AI ban is significant evidence for existing authenticity claims. The "no canon governance" finding — that narrative coherence is emergent, not enforced — is the central insight.
Curator Notes
PRIMARY CONNECTION: community IP governance mechanisms (Session 5-6 research thread) WHY ARCHIVED: Primary source documentation of the most successful collaborative fiction governance system. Provides verifiable mechanism details that theory articles lack.