Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4042639-20161205153203/@comment-9605025-20170131085217

reply to #32 Perhaps this is getting a bit off topic but I don't entirely agree with your comment. First, lets address the particular instance you used as an example. Yes, I agree the admin(s) could have handled it better. If the only issue was that Poco013 didn't use italics, they could have easily just added that instead of reverting all of his/her changes. That being said, I do not agree with your generalization of local styling policies. Similar to why Fandom has a standard global navigation and overall layout, having a standard layout and styling on a local level provides structure to the wiki. This, in theory, makes it easier both for readers to understand the content editors to ensure the content remains up-to-date. Furthermore, this allows the wiki to present the data in a format relevant to the specific topic. If you have a small wiki, say less than 100 pages, sure, it isn't too hard for admins to check up on each page. However, when you have wikis such as Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia, it becomes unrealistic for admins to continually monitor each page. Remember, in most cases, admins of the wiki are not employees of Wikia or any company associated with the topic. Their role is voluntary and unpaid. Therefore, when the admins catch a user repeatedly ignoring local policies despite being explicitly warned, they can block that user.

Here is another way of looking at it. I have noticed that a common form of vandalism is for the vandal to just march through a bunch of pages and mess up the formatting. In order to try and get away with hitting as many pages as possible, they typically do the same thing on each page. When confronted by admins, vandals will typically either not respond or pretend to not understand. If a user is genuinely interested in contributing to the wiki, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that they would make at least some effort to follow the local policies (provided the policies are reasonable to begin with). Therefore, if a user does not initially follow local policies, has been warned, and does not appear to attempt to follow the policies moving forward, admins can reasonably assume that the user may be a vandal. Keep in mind that this is especially true when the user in question is not registered.