Style Guide

2D Boy is always written "2D Boy" per their official name, not "2dboy".

"World of Goo" is always capitalised as such, and "World of Goo Corporation" is always capitalised as such (with the Corporation capitalised). "World of Goo Corp" is also acceptable (example). "World of Goo Corp(oration) 2.0" is not canon, and is only used to refer to the MOM April Fool gag.

The abbreviations "WoG" and "WOG" should never be used, partly because this is a racial slur in some cultures, and partly because it looks lazy and sounds wrong.

The balls should always be referred to as "Goo Balls" and not "goo balls" or "gooballs". This aligns with both the Sign Painter and the 2D Boy posts. Using the lower-case word "balls" alone is also fine.

Feel free to edit addin authors and other editors to correct grammar or spelling.

The official language of the site is British English. American spelling is also acceptable. It is not necessary to edit pages simply to change from one to the other, but it is appropriate to edit spelling that is incorrect.

Policy

Do not war with other contributors. Do not revert edits of other contributors unless there is evidence of vandalism. In that case, immediately contact davidc.

This does not apply to those who are not site contributors. Feel free to mercilessly edit their contributions to fit site guidelines.

In the event of a dispute with another editor, do not fight over changes to the page. Refer the dispute to the Contributors Forum. We are working toward a common goal and so conflict will not be tolerated. Two or more conflicting edits to the same page will be grounds for dismissal of both contributors.

The decision of davidc is final in all matters.

Editing Balls - IMPORTANT

There's currently a bug in Drupal. If you edit a ball, make sure after you've edited it, you go back to Outline and put it back into the "World of Goo" book under "Balls".

Moderating

Forums

To delete a forum thread, click the Edit link at the top and then, at the bottom, use the Delete button. Generally this should only be used for really inappropriate content. If you don't have the privileges for this option, you can instead edit it, open "Publishing options", and uncheck "Published".

To lock a forum thread, click the Edit link and then change "Comment settings" to "Read only". (Don't use "Disabled", because that will delete all existing replies).

To move a thread to another forum, click the Edit link and then change the "Forum" to something else. You can enable "Leave shadow copy" to leave a link in the old forum, but this generally isn't necessary.

To delete or edit a reply to a thread, you will find Edit and Delete links below the reply. (Note that these options don't appear if the thread itself is already locked).

Content

The tracker is the most useful tool at your disposal. It lists all new or updated pages, and highlights in red those that you have not yet read.

For most content types, you can see the changes made by using the "Revisions" tab at the top. It will show who edited each version and the date the change was made. You can use the radio buttons and the "Show diff" button to show the changes in each version. In the unlikely event you need to revert vandalism, you can use the "revert" link on a previous revision.

Leaderboards

When moderating the leaderboards, bear in mind:

- Each Player corresponds to a unique Player Key - one of their 3 profiles in the game. It generally never changes unless they delete their profile.
- Each Player can have multiple Profiles, one for each time it was uploaded. So a player may have multiple profiles going back several months.
- A Player may or may not be a GooFans.com User. Particularly, players who were imported from Soultaker's site are not linked to a GooFans.com user until they next upload their profile.
- A GooFans.com User can have multiple Players, e.g. if they upload 3 different profiles from the game, they would have 3 Players.

The moderator panel shows you the public key of a player, which you can click to see the other profiles. It also shows any other players that are linked to this GooFans.com user, if any.

You can mark a player as a cheat. This removes all of their current profiles from the leaderboards automatically, and any new ones they upload will also be blocked. Use this when the player is clearly cheating and all or most of their profiles are hacked.

You can also hide a profile. You can use this to exclude a single profile upload from the leaderboards. For example if the user generally had normal profiles but accidentally uploaded one bad one, you should hide that bad profile rather than mark their whole player as a cheat.

Cheaters get marked with the red Cheater badge. People with hidden profiles do not.

It is not yet possible to mark an entire GooFans.com User as a cheat. This feature will be added later if it becomes necessary.

Addins

When publication is requested for a new addin, you'll get an e-mail requesting approval.

Check the comments at the bottom to see if another moderator has already checked the addin. This is the place to put comments for the author and other moderators in case you find problems preventing publication.

Make sure that the addin has a useful description and screenshot. Check the goomod installs and works correctly. In particular, it is useful to look into the zip to make sure:

  • No 'overrides' or 'compiles' of existing ball or level XML files - if there is a legitimate reason for them to modify an existing ball, they should use a 'merge' so that we can clearly see that the change is not physics-affecting.
  • No XML files in 'override' directory - they should go in 'compile' so that the goomod is cross-platform.
  • All non-standard resources (e.g. new balls) are either included in the goomod, or in an addin referenced by 'depends'.