Elite Dangerous Wiki:Discussion and archiving

Community governance · Administrators · Bureaucrats · Admin elections · Bureaucrat elections · Permissions · Protection · Bots · Village pump · Help desk

Use the Village pump for wiki-wide proposals, the Help desk for editing help and Bot requests for bot tasks and trials.

Starting and joining a discussion

Use the hub's add-topic link and a descriptive subject. Each topic belongs under its own level-two heading (==Subject==), with any subsections below it. Explain the practical issue, link relevant wiki pages or public diffs and say what action you want. Keep replies in that topic and indent replies with colons where useful.

Sign your own contributions by typing ~~~~. Preload prompts do not sign for you or establish a role. Discuss the reasons and evidence, rather than treating a count of comments as an automatic result. This guide introduces no fixed voting threshold, automatic promotion or new election rule.

Do not publish private evidence, personal information, credentials or private correspondence. Email support@mistflux.co.uk about privacy or sensitive operator concerns. A public discussion may note that a matter was referred privately without exposing that material.

Decisions and closure

An uninvolved, authorised human must explicitly close a discussion, explain the outcome and sign the closure. Authority depends on the decision and the wiki's applicable policy and configured permissions. If authority or the outcome is unclear, leave the topic open and seek an appropriate human decision. A closure records a decision. It does not itself change permissions.

Put the closure marker directly under the topic's level-two heading, followed by the closing explanation and the closer's signature:

{{Governance closed|date=YYYY-MM-DD|outcome=...}}

Replace YYYY-MM-DD with the actual closure date and ... with a concise outcome. Type ~~~~ after your closing explanation. Do not add the marker merely because a discussion is quiet or an expected date has passed.

Bot task approval, trial approval and the technical bot flag are separate decisions. A bureaucrat or operator can grant bot rights under the configured permissions. Administrator rights alone do not permit that grant. Record the approved scope and any trial conditions explicitly. A bot must not infer wider approval from silence or a completed trial.

An overdue election requires a manual decision by an uninvolved, authorised human. A bot may report that it is overdue and link the discussion for review. It must not automatically close the election, declare a result, promote anyone or grant rights.

Archiving

Archive only complete level-two topics with a valid {{Governance closed|date=YYYY-MM-DD|outcome=...}} marker, once at least 30 days have elapsed since the recorded closure date. Open discussions must remain on the hub even when stale. A missing or invalid closure date, unclear outcome or reopened topic needs human review and must not be archived automatically.

Use a subpage of the original hub named /Archive YYYY-MM, using the month of archiving. For example, Village pump topics archived in November 2026 go to Elite Dangerous Wiki:Village pump/Archive 2026-11. Help desk and Bot requests use the same naming pattern beneath their own hub.

Move the entire topic, including its heading, closure, signatures and all subsections, without changing its text. Check that the complete topic is present in the archive before removing it from the hub. Preserve existing archive content and check for duplicates. Keep archive pages readable and link back to the original hub. The hub's archive index lists these subpages.

Archiving records a closed discussion. It must not be used to close an open one. An approved archiving bot may carry out only the mechanical move within its agreed task scope. Uncertain cases and overdue elections belong in its report for human review.