Wiki Rules and Blocking Policy

In order to ensure that all good intentioned contributors have the opportunity to contribute, effective April 1st, 2021, the following Wiki Rules and Blocking policy will be enacted globally and all wikis will be required to follow it:


 * Rules for your wikis must be defined and easily found. These rules must not violate Fandom’s Terms of Use or be overly restrictive.
 * Blocks may only be issued for violations of your stated rules or Fandom’s Terms of Use.
 * Community members must be treated with respect. Abusing admin status to harass other community members will not be tolerated
 * Violations of this policy may be met with loss of local user rights and, in extreme cases, additional disciplinary action

NOTE: While we intend for this policy to go into effect on April 1st, abuse of admin position made between this announcement and the policy start date may be reviewed and actioned accordingly. It is not retroactive before this announcement.

Some tips for writing a good rules page

 * 1) Use examples: What does “uncivil” mean in the context of your wiki? Is it a personal attack? Is it the use of specific language? Does your wiki not allow curse words? Give your users adequate context to understand the rules.
 * 2) Don’t be afraid to leave some things up to your best judgment: A good rule to have is “Do not be disruptive to the workings of the wiki” and good enforcement of that would be to give warnings to users with education, rather than blocking a user who didn’t know there was a particular procedure for a certain type of page on your wiki.
 * 3) Make it easy to find: Put a link on your main page.
 * 4) Keep the spirit of wikis in mind: Wikis are collaborative community projects. They are not your blog or personal website. Making your rules so restrictive as to discourage anyone else from contributing is not allowed.

Need ideas for rules?
In no particular order, here are some good ones, based on my years of experience running rather large online communities. They have been the default rules on new wikis for several months now:


 * Keep it civil: Do not make personal attacks on other people. If you need to criticize another user’s argument, do so without attacking them as a person. Do not use bigoted language, including slurs which degrade another person or group of people based on gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, etc.
 * Be a productive member of the wiki: Contribute to the wiki in line with the established processes and conventions. Need help? Ask an administrator! Disrupting the wiki with “edit warring” over differing opinions of a topic with another user or group of users is not productive.
 * Do not engage in excessive self-promotion: The wiki is a collaborative community resource for the topic at hand. It is NOT a free place to advertise your related website, YouTube channel, blog, social media account, etc. Have a question about whether your link would be welcome? Ask an administrator!
 * Do not harass other users: If somebody asks you to stop posting certain content on their wall, respect their wishes. It is their wall.
 * Do follow community guidelines for formatting: When a community has established formatting, it’s important to adhere to that, especially when spoiler content is involved.

Admins
We encourage admins to leave blocked users’ walls open on most block instances so that they can appeal their block. There are, of course, exceptions, such as:


 * Spammers
 * Terms of Use violations
 * Major disruption concerns
 * Under-age users

Editors
Have you talked to the admin on your wiki yet? If not, make a good faith effort to have that conversation on wiki or here on Community Central. Good faith means actually giving the admins time to respond. Escalating to staff when you’ve not given the admins a fair amount of time to respond will not be seen as a good faith effort. At least 24 hours is sufficient.

Only send in a support ticket via ZenDesk about a block if you have made a good faith effort to discuss your block with the admins (or can’t) and the block is longer than 2 weeks. If you meet those conditions, we’ll review it. You will be required to submit a link to said discussion.

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