User:Sakaratte/Using tools

User rights come with an array of tools to allow users to carry out more sensitive actions when working on a project. Many of these tools are seem benign, such as protecting and deleting pages but can be used in a way that prevents others from joining in or allow a culture of ownership. It is important that users understand their use and when to use them.

Although Fandom leaves who has and how these tools are used, they reserve the right to remove the tools from users in extreme cases without appeal. Any attempt by another user to restore these tools to that user may also find themselves having their rights revoked by Fandom.

Rollback
Rollback is effective in undoing a chain of changes made by a user to those of the last user who updated the content. Ideally this should be used in the case of changes where no good faith (e.g. clear vandalism) can be applied and every change needs removing. Although this is no different to undoing a chain of changes from the revision history, it does speed up the process of clearing multipage vandalism by removing the requirement to select the changes manually first.

It should not be used in the case of general editing disputes as a reason for rolling back cannot be given, which in the case of reverting changes made in good faith should always be done.

Patrol
Patrol is a flag set against the contributions or general users, be it casual or otherwise. This allows patrollers to see what has and hasn't been checked from the general user base and allows for the prioritisation of checks to be made. This should only be used once the changes have been thoroughly vetted and confirmed accurate or corrected. If in doubt about the changes, do not patrol the content and seek another opinion.

Although this does create a split heirarchy of who needs patrolling, all contributors changes should be checked and verified, because a patroller or admin doesn't get flagged does not mean they should not be checked.

Protect
Page protection is an anti-vandalism tool first and foremost. If a page is a constant target it can be protected for a duration of time by restricting it to logged in users or administrators and content moderators. It is also useful as a method of directing disputes to a talk page by preventing users from directly making changes to the content and counter changing (more commonly known as edit warring.)

The minimum necessary protection should be applied when setting p as he protection and relevant steps to mitigate the issue should be taken alongside this to resolve the problem; do not lock and walk away.

Protection can also be used in scenarios where a non-mainspace page should never be used again, such as a forum discussion that is closed.

Delete
The delete tool allows for the deletion of a page and is used for both general maintenance and anti-vandalism. Outside of vandalism, deletion should generally only be used with community consensus, when it comes to general maintenance the community will have an agreement on what is acceptable to delete. If there is no existing consensus, discussion should always take place before the content is deleted.

Block
Block is another anti-vandalism tool that is also a tool of last resort for user management. The community will have rules around acceptable behaviour and the first instance should be to discuss and rehabilitate rather than punish. Blocks should only be applied when all attempts to engage the user have failed or if there is a compelling reason to not engage.

The person issuing the block should be prepared to fully justify their block to the community if asked or challenged and must also accept that if the community has compelling reasons related to the reasons behind the block only for the block to be overturned it can be overturned.

It is also worth noting that if Fandom believe a user is blocking people in a way that does not fit with the community rules they have the right to overturn the block without way of appeal.