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Proposed policy
This blocking policy is intended as a loose codification of how and why blocks are implemented on the Forgotten Realms Wiki. The policy comprises two sections: a deliberately vague set of conduct guidelines, and a set of suggested measures for when these are violated.
Guidelines for Conduct
- Be civil
- Treat your fellow editors with respect. Do not harass, attack, impersonate, make derogatory remarks, or otherwise try to make others have a bad time when contributing to the wiki.
- Do not be disruptive
- Do not engage in vandalism. Do not insert nonsense or gibberish into pages. Do not remove content. Do not implement sweeping changes without prior discussion. Do not deviate from American English spelling and grammar. Do not arbitrarily alter categories. Do not add plagiarized or copyright-infringing content, including rules information (crunch). Do not post spam. Do not evade blocks.
- Respect policy
- Adhere to established policies
unless you have a very good reason not to. Especially important are the plagiarism, no crunch, canon, and citing sources policies.
Measures
Note that these measures are merely guidelines. Administrators may use their own judgement and may choose to implement measures that are, relatively speaking, more or less severe on an individual case basis. Blocks will be applied when malicious intent is suspected, to prevent edit-warring, and to limit disruption to the wiki. Also note that blocks are not intended as punishment, but as a way of protecting the wiki and its contributors.
- Very mild infraction
- User is contacted and informed.
- Mild infraction
- 24-hour block.
- Medium infraction
- Three-day block.
- Severe infraction
- Seven-day block.
- Repeated severe infractions
- 1-year to indefinite block.
Finally, administrators reserve the right to block users for a short amount of time (2 hours to 1 day) to save them unnecessary effort or throttle their activity if there is a problem. This is to give the administrator time to contact them to resolve a issue. The block will be lifted once the user has responded and the issue resolved.
Appealing a Block
Users will not be blocked from editing their own Talk pages, so that they may discuss or resolve an issue or appeal a block. If this is abused (such as erasing messages or continuing harassment or spam on the Talk page), the block may be expanded to include the Talk page.
For "Do not be disruptive", I would add: "Do not add plagiarized or copyright-infringing content, including rules information (crunch). Do not post spam."
What do you mean by "unless you have a very good reason not to"? This seems unnecessary; any exceptions to policies would be handled by individual policies or would require community discussion or changes to policies. Saying this kind of suggests a license to do whatever with "a very good reason".
For the last line, I would expand it to "Finally, administrators reserve the right to block users for a short amount of time (2 hours to 1 day) to save them unnecessary effort or throttle their activity if there is a problem. This is to give the administrator time to contact them to resolve a issue. The block will be lifted once the user has responded and the issue resolved."
I also suggest "Users will not be blocked from editing their own Talk pages, so that they may discuss or resolve an issue or appeal a block. If this is abused (such as erasing messages or continuing harassment or spam on the Talk page), the block may be expanded to include the Talk page."
The "unless you have a very good reason to" was intended to cover cases where policies are outdated (in that they have not been updated to cover current conduct--the canon policy is a (mild) example of this). I agree that we can nix the line, it is unnecessary.
I agree with your revisions to the last line, as well as adding the information regarding talk pages.
Possessed Priest: "what should occur if a user repeatedly breaks the rules via mild infractions, i.e., minor vandalism. Does the ban level get bumped up in severity every time, or is a 24-hour block given out each offence? I think the former works best." Yeah, I'd scale and adapt as necessary; minor vandalism once a week would require a block of several weeks to correct.
"Do not deviate from American English spelling and grammar. Do not arbitrarily alter categories." This I'm not so sure about. I imagine "worshiper" to "worshipper" changes to be over-corrections based on a misunderstanding. Incorrect categories might be added in error (though I don't see how that's possible now). Even the present tense changes seem to be based on a genuine misconception. Trying to assume the best of people, I don't want to block and punish passers-by (who could well become regular editors in future) for making reasonable edits in good faith. We might understand a block as protecting the wiki, but a reader on the receiving end won't feel that way, they'll be aggravated and not edit again. I'd rather just fix and leave them the chance to learn to do otherwise. And a block doesn't even protect the wiki in such cases. Most of these anons don't edit again, and if they do it's weeks or months later or their has IP address recycled, so a block would've expired or not apply. OTOH, I have seen otherwise good-faith edits made maliciously (false labeling of copyright infringement, present tensing), but they're easy to see coming in an edit war.
So, I suggest under Measures "Blocks will be applied when malicious intent is suspected, to prevent edit-warring, and to limit disruption to the wiki."
Under "Do not be disruptive" after "vandalism", I also suggest "Do not harass or make derogatory remarks." to ensure that's also emphasized.