User blog:Veralann/Dealing with disruption on Community Central: Part One

Hey all!

Since this is something I don't see touched upon frequently, I thought I'd write a blog about it. Today I'll be telling you how best to deal with disruption on wikis. Like my previous blog, “mod/moderator” and the like will refer to both mods and admins when it comes to chat.

Disruption in Chat:
So you see someone join chat and start breaking the rules in some way.

You politely inform them that what they're doing is against the rules and they continue anyway. I see a lot of people try to tell said users to "shut up", or "stop it already", but that doesn't help the situation, and more often than not, just causes the user to keep doing what they're doing. What you should do is ignore the user's comments and privately tell a mod about what they're doing (if they aren't already aware of the situation). If you feel like numerous users are disrupting main or things are getting bad, try to get a mod’s attention in main without shedding light on the problem. Usually, mods can be pinged by saying their name.

The moderators are given tools to deal with disruption in chat, so they're best suited to handling the issue at hand. The mod will try to kindly encourage more appropriate behaviour, or act immediately to end serious disruption. In both cases, this restores balance to the chatroom quickly and is usually more effective than intervention from a well-meaning user. If things go badly and they're banned, pretend like they don't exist. While you likely have good intentions when you thank a mod in main chat for banning a troll, if they return on a different account and see that, it will only serve to fuel their trouble-making. When the mod has dealt with things, you can simply get back to chatting with your fellow chatgoers like before!

If you're worried about a user being a sockpuppet, you should voice your concerns to a mod (privately), and not say in main “this user is a sock” or “is this guy an alt?” which usually causes more problems for one reason or another. If it so happens that they’re not a sock or there’s been some misunderstanding, a situation like that can cause confusion or hurt feelings. So please PM those concerns instead.

If the current conversation is simply off-topic, and an attempt to change the subject on your own doesn't work, you should still let a mod (privately) know what's going on, and refrain from making comments such as “Wow, users are being off topic” or anything that might cause further drama.

And if you yourself have a problem with the rules, the mods aren't the ones that make them. If you have feedback regarding the rules, you should send a message to Fandom Staff via Special:Contact/General with such.

DO:

 * Privately let a mod know if there’s disruption in chat.
 * Ignore the problem user’s comments in chat.

DON’T:

 * Feed the troll(s) with accusations or any attention.
 * Make repeated statements about the state of chat in main
 * Try to replace the moderators by telling users what not to do.
 * Ask why a user was banned - you can check the chatban log!
 * Argue over a user’s ban.

Special thanks to Speedit and Sayuri for helping me with this <3