Requirements For Developing Branches

This is intended to summarise the requirements for getting your translation project acknowledged as a "Developing Branch", a precursor to recognition as an Official Branch of the SCP Foundation.

Problem: An “unofficial branch” was not well defined for a long time. The range of projects covered by this term ranged from branches with fully developed community, a growing stock of translations and original content, a chat, social media and a functioning administration to wikis with only the warning on the front page and a single SCP translated.

Anyone can make a wiki and apply the theme within a few minutes. But a wiki that is copied together by following the branch creation guide is not automatically recognised as a branch of the SCP Foundation Community.

Only wikis that have met most of the following criteria will be considered candidates for recognition as Developing Branches.


Assessment: When a translation wiki is at least 1 month old (ideally at least 3 months old), they can request to be checked and assessed. One of INT's staff members will check their wiki and see where it stands. Based on that data, INT staff will vote on whether that wiki should be recognised as a Developing Branch or not.


Requirements: For a prosperous, growing and healthy wiki, you will need to have:

  • Users: There should be at least three active users who talk to each other to keep a community going.
  • Support: The users who are active need to talk to each other, maintain a friendly atmosphere and must not work against, but support one another.
  • Framework: To attract new users, at least everything new users see on their first visit must be inviting. That means the theme must be working, the front page and all menus must be translated and most menu pages must be working and translated or newly created.
  • Content: To show new users more than just an empty husk, there needs to be some basic content. A few translations and maybe one or two original articles.
  • Administration: There needs to be at least one active staff member, who must be fair and competent. Not everybody is suited to be staff. Unqualified staff members will repel both new and old users.
  • Rules: Participation always needs rules and boundaries. Without them, users don’t know what to do.

When a new wiki is founded, it usually lacks all of the above.


Criteria in detail: These criteria have to be met at least approximately, to be recognised as a “Developing Branch”. Note that many of these criteria are a range of values. The first is the minimum, the second is the recommendation. Going beyond the recommendation will reflect well on the project, but none of these criteria should be ignored.

  1. Number of active users
    • Has 3 - 7 active users
    • An active user is, who took part in the wiki by posting/editing articles, posting in the forum or doing administrative jobs 1 - 4 times per month
    • 2 - 4 authors and/or translators
    • Must have shown activity for 2 - 3 months.
  2. Supporting each other
    • An indication are positive remarks on the forum, upvotes, feedback, cheerfulness, a general positive atmosphere and the lack of trolling and dickish behavior.
  3. A solid framework
    • Must have fully translated: Front page, all menus, series hubs, all necessary components and system pages, join page
    • Must have a fully working theme
    • Should have a Sandbox meeting the same requirements
    • Must be under CC BY-SA 3.0 license
  4. Content
    • Must have fully translated 1 - 5 SCPs
    • Should have 0 - 1 Original articles
  5. Administration
    • Must have 1 - 3 active site staff (same criteria for “active” as above)
    • Must have competent site staff
    • A competent staff member meets the criteria for 2. and shows to know what they are doing as well as the will and motivation to do it, and has at least a basic idea of how to manage the branch. This is the most subjective.
  6. Rules
    • Must have rules for behavior and translations in their language
    • Should have rules for creating original articles and publishing translations.
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