User:EDFan12345/Policy Rewrite

'''This page is just rewriting the policy pages into a more streamlined form. While some policies may receive minor tweaks, NO POLICIES ARE BEING REWRITTEN!

Feedback on this page's talk page is appreciated.'''

The wishes to have a database that is helpful to visitors and safe & easy for editing. In case there is any inappropriate behavior, we will have to take action and enforce it. This policy (also referred to as the COC) lists all the rules of editing on this wiki and the consequences of breaking these rules. If you have any questions, take it to the talk page. In order to keep count of all offenses, we have an administrators' wiki (only admins can read it).

Notice
The policy has total control over everything that goes on, including votes, nominations, editing, and even promotions. If a user is blocked or has a long blocking history, admins could stop the user from doing certain things such as nominations or being promoted due to not following the policy. Admins can also decide for a user not to be promoted if they are not trustworthy.

The 9 NO Policies (Policy Category I: Code of Conduct)
These are the 9 NOs. Please click on them to view them in detail.
 * 1) No swearing. (Section 1)
 * 2) No bullying. (Section 2)
 * 3) No spamming or negatively changing articles. (Section 3)
 * 4) No links to inappropriate sites. (Section 4)
 * 5) No abusing your available powers. (Section 5)
 * 6) No advertising sub pages, products, or websites. (Section 6)
 * 7) No making fun of other people's race, nationality or gender. (Section 7)
 * 8) No abusing multiple accounts. (Section 8)
 * 9) No fights. (Section 9)

Article Guideline (Policy Category II)

 * OOC Policy < MOST IMPORTANT POLICY ON THIS WIKI. MANDATORY TO READ.
 * Mary Sue Policy - Also important; please read to understand our limits on character abilities and such.


 * Articles of Articles Policy - our rules about editing and articles.


 * Manual of Style
 * That's Death! Code
 * Country Policy
 * Adoption Policy

Privacy Policy
REVEALING YOUR PERSONAL INFO IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 13 IS AGAINST COPPA - THIS MAY LEAD TO YOUR CLUB PENGUIN WIKI NETWORK ACCOUNT BEING DISABLED.

The Privacy Policy requires you to follow a few simple rules, and these are:
 * Do not reveal your full name. Only your first name is acceptable, and it can only be revealed privately.
 * It is highly recommended that you do not share your age, unless you wish to and it is privately to a user you trust.
 * ABSOLUTELY do NOT reveal your address!
 * Do not reveal your phone number and/or cellular number.
 * Do not upload images of yourself (if you are under 13) or any other people, including avatars.
 * Do not reveal your Credit card number or banking information.
 * Do not reveal any other information that you would not want others to know about.

These rules are not here to bug you, they are here for your own safety, and are probably good to follow on any website of the internet.

Punishment
Most of the time, this information will be removed from the history of pages by staff. This may even lead to a block to show you that these are not good choices to make.

Imagery Policy
Our wiki follows a strict policy on images. Images can be very useful, but also inappropriate and unnecessary. Uploading pointless images can result in deletion of an image and a possible block of the user who uploaded the image depending on the content of the image. This policy contains four basic rules:


 * The image should not contain any offensive content, such as swear words or sexual references.
 * The image should not contain any pornographic content.
 * It should not contain anything that is meant to harass other users.
 * The image should not contain any pictures of yourself or others.

You may upload unrelated pictures for your user page, as long as they are appropriate. Please do not upload too many though.

These guidelines are meant to protect the safety of our users and the rights of our users and other people. Some rules are meant to keep the wiki clean and organized.

Account Responsibility Policy
If someone gains access your account and has done something, You are responsible for your account, and will face all blocks and consequences, unless we can prove your account was compromised using CheckUser.

Tips on Keeping Your Account Secure

 * Have numbers and letters in your password.
 * Make your password long.
 * Do not make your username your password.
 * Do not ever give away your password, not even to an administrator.
 * Change your password every few weeks.
 * Make sure your password is too hard for someone to guess, but easy for you to remember.
 * Do not make your password have to do about something everyone knows about you.

Userpage Policy
As this is a wiki, we would highly appreciate if you could regularly contribute to the website. You can also chat and talk with your friends here, but overuse of a userpage or talk page will result in your userpage and any other associated pages being protected.

Remember, we are not removing the aspect of having fun. You can still have fun and be social, but this ability should not be overused. Please not that editting your user page also doesn't count as a constructive edit.

Restrictions

 * If you have a userpage editcount percentage of 40% or higher, your userpage and any subpages under it, will be protected indefinitely. Once your userpage editcount percentage drops below 40%, you will have to contact an administrator to request it to be unprotected. This rule is only applied once a user reaches 100 edits in total.
 * Even if your userspace editcount drops below 40%, admins may deny userpage unblocks if your have shown no sign of increase in mainspace edits. Admins may refuse to unprotect userpages depending on user's editing habits (for example, their userpage gets protected very often).

Signature Policy
Your signature must follow these rules:


 * You can only have 2 images, limited to 20px or less.
 * The  wikitext code should NOT be used in signatures.
 * Your signature must be a custom signature, as specified in your preferences. If you wish your signature to be a separate template, you must have in your preferences.
 * It may not contain any thick borders.
 * Aliases are allowed, although we recommend that is one that is commonly associated with you or even more so, your actual user name.
 * Only one set of tags are allowed.

Too many images, or images that are too big in signatures mess up the spacing of the page. impacts the sidebar and layout of the page, and sometimes prevents categories from being added. Timestamps are also used for future reference. Thick borders sometimes block text. Following the guidelines on this page you can avoid being blocked. Also, a mixture of these can break the page. Furthermore, we want to keep signatures sensible and tidy. Your name should written clearly as the first thing on the signature, otherwise it can be misleading as to who is behind the signature.

IRC Policy
Our official IRC channel uses our wiki's policy as well.

This policy may be modified after an adequate community discussion.

You may also suffer consequences if any OPs feel you are disturbing channel peace, (such as fighting or not listening to directions given by an op).

Rules of IRC

 * No Swearing - Please try to refrain from posting profanic texts onto the IRC channel, although you will not get banned from it, but will be warned. A censored swear is still a swear.
 * No inappropriate words or links - Does not include profanity. See rule above.
 * No Spamming/Flooding - Copy and pasting long or many messages for is not considered spamming, but try not to do it. Also, please try to refrain from pasting 3 or more lines, and instead use Pastebin. The only time you may flood with a long paste if an op has given you special permission for a specific case.
 * No annoying messages - DONT YOU HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE TALK TO YOU LIKE THIS1?!??!? WELL? DO YA?
 * '''This is not the channel for playing childish games and dramatic soap operas - You will be banned if you want to be immature. Respect the ops' requests and decisions.
 * No spam - Advertising a website or personal channel may be ground for immediate removal from the channel.
 * No impersonating other users - All chatters are encouraged to create an account with freenode (/msg nickserv help register) to help secure their identity. Any user caught impersonating another user may be immediately removed and/or banned along with their socks.
 * Misusing OP rights - If any Operator you feel is misusing their rights, you can report them to another operator. If an OP is kicking or banning someone without reason, or without permission, this is considered misusing rights. Remember, not everybody will be fine if they kicked as a "joke", always ask first and never be aggressive. Doing this may cause people to think that you are aggressive. If you have validly broken the policy, you have no right to attack the person who kicked you, as that will also be considered breaking the misuse policy.
 * No bots unless approved by an operator - Besides SeahorseBot/CPWNBot, every time you bring a bot on the channel, you have to ask an operator for permission.

Voting Policy
This wiki is a consensus democracy, and therefore all our decisions go through a community discussion, followed by a vote. The right to vote is reserved for the users of our wiki. If you edit at this wiki, or have been an active editor before and still visit with a positive attitude you are allowed to vote. So, you need to meet these requirements:


 * You must be an active editor of the Club Penguin Wiki or have been an active editor before and still visit with a positive attitude.
 * Being an active editor of a related wiki of ours is not strong enough merit to vote in our proposals.
 * Being blocked on this wiki prevents you from voting. You can only vote if your block expires. Asking others to vote on your behalf is against this policy.
 * Users who vote for other users because of a block will also be against this policy.
 * You may allow a user to state your opinion on the discussion. This will not count as a vote.
 * Including a reason is not mandatory, but may be on certain forums, when more than a ballot is needed. You will be prompted to on these forums.
 * Most forums will require a reason for an against vote unless stated otherwise.


 * You must have at least 50 mainspace edits to vote.

Consequences
Violations of this policy will result in the nullifcation of the vote(s) in question. Should the vote be cast as a form of block evasion, both the enabler(s) of the evasion and the blocked user(s) will respectively be blocked for three weeks (on the first offense) and have their sentence doubled.

Consensus Policy

 * ''For a longer explanation of consensus, please see this page

Consensus is part of a range of policies on how editors work with others. Consensus is not what everyone agrees to, nor is it the preference of the majority. Consensus results in the best solution that the group can achieve at the time. Remember, the root of "consensus" is "consent". This means that even if parties disagree, there is still overall consent to move forward in order to settle the issue. This requires co-operation among editors with different interests and opinions.

Quitting Policy
Anyone on the wiki is allowed to stop contributing, and simply to leave the wiki. Some users call this "quitting" or "retiring". However, If you decide to leave, you need to do so in a way which will not aggravate the Wiki. This is a wiki and you should not regard this a high priority for you and your life. If you have establish friends at this wiki, you can still talk to them. We are allowing complete freedom for contributing here, as long as it follows the policy of course. You are allowed to post a long message on your user page. Please note that it must be positive and any negative, flamebaiting comments against users, the wikis, arguments etc are disallowed. Calmly stating why you have decided to leave, without trying to draw users into a flame war and you may add to the top of your page to show you have left. You may not make a big deal of it. You are not allowed type the message in caps. You are also not allowed to do in your message is complain or whine immaturely about something you disagree with on the wiki. A commentary section or a discussion relating to the quit on some kind of Wiki page is not allowed as well.

Just remember that you don't need to make a big deal of it. If you simply think you don't want to edit for whatever reason, but you still want to talk to your friends here, just state that on your userpage. Not only will this make sure that it indicates you longer edit for practicality's sake for other users, you can still enjoy talking to your friends here! Just remember, if you're quitting because of a serious violation of the policy, let the admins handle it. Moaning about it won't make things better. Just ask an admin and they will be able to help you by using their powers to sufficiently punish any users that have done things wrong.

Consequences
By making a big fuss about your leaving, you can't be blocked for obvious reasons (you are leaving). However, other users may get involved into the situation, and if things get heated up blocks may be handed out unfortunately. So please don't make a fuss about it, you are getting other people into trouble for reasons that wouldn't have happened before such a situation.

Early Unblocking Policy
On the Club Penguin Wiki, there was time when users were all asking to be unblocked early. As a result, the Early Unblocks policy was made, a policy which also applies to the Club Penguin Fanon Wiki.

You will not be unblocked early if:

 * Your block is 1 week or under, or if your block is indefinite.
 * You've served at least 75% of your block - just wait out the block.
 * You've had a long block history, either for multiple reasons or for the same reason.
 * You are known to cause trouble on the wiki.
 * You have been blocked at least once in the past month.
 * You have been blocked for the following reasons:
 * COPPA
 * Discrimination
 * Swearing

You may be unblocked early if:

 * Three or more admins have discussed and approved your early unblock, and if 40-50% of your block is finished.
 * Three or more admins approve, and you are wishing to take place in a community discussion or vote.


 * Note: You only have two early unblocks maximum. This is to prevent abuse.
 * Admins: When unblocking someone per this policy, be sure to include "Early Unblock" in the unblock summary to make things easier in the future, as each person is only allowed two early unblocks.

Where can I request an unblock?
At our IRC channel. Note that if you are banned from the IRC channel for a different reason, you can not request an unblock. If you think you meet the criteria to be unblocked and are blocked for IRC but you want to request an unblock, you can leave a message on an admin's talk page.

What happens if I keep asking to be unblocked?
Being annoying by asking admins to unblock you early when they have said no will result in your block being extended by one day each time. A constant annoyance to the admins will result in an even more serious block overall.

Ban Evasion Policy
Something we see quite often are users being blocked, and a fraction of that number are users who create a second account to get out of the ban. It is obvious not to do that, but most users do not know not to evade it when they are blocked. This also goes for evading bans on IRC.

But aren't I allowed two accounts?
Yes, but you cannot create it while you are blocked. That gives the same idea as being block-free. Remember, this isn't to say that you cannot edit, but you have to pay for your actions in the past first. Evading a block doesn't make you look good. The community will keep an eye on you.

Consequences
Evading a block will get your account (the one used to evade the ban) blocked for the time remaining of the original block on your first offense. Depending on the situation, the administrator who blocked the evading account may choose to extend your original block along with the block for breaking this policy. If your block history shows a troubling history, your main account may be blocked for indefinite as well. On second offense, your account used to evade (which may now be a sockpuppet) will be blocked for indefinite, and your main account's block will be extended according to the accounts policy. Any further offenses will follow that policy.

An IRC ban evasion will automatically lead to a one day block on the wiki as well as on IRC.

Rights and Inactivity Policy
Sometimes, you may look at the Recent Changes and see someone you may or may not know get demoted. You may notice they are on IRC frequently, but they simply do not edit. You can remember how they got their position, how they saved the wiki from a vandalism attack about 3 months ago, but after that, never bothered to touch the wiki again. This policy goes in depth about when someone is ready to be stripped of their power, be it from rollbacks to B-crats. It'll also give you several answers to age-old questions, like "Am I going to be demoted if I don't do x?" or "Why DID I lose my powers, exactly?" If you're interested enough, read on and let the policy and bold letters do the talking for us.

Inactivity
Since you will see the term inactivity numerous times in this policy, we will describe exactly what it means in this instance.


 * In the case of rollback inactivity, it means not editing the wiki for a certain period of time, it doesn't include the IRC.
 * For administrators and bureaucrats, inactivity is up for discretion. In general it would mean low edits on the wiki as well as not going on the IRC very often. However, if a user mainly goes on IRC, but also patrols the Fanon's recent changes page, that may also be considered as active.
 * For all instances of inactivity without a reason, a user most have below 20 edits each month for the three months, and little-to-no IRC presence to be considered as inactive.
 * Although these are the standards, the administration may also follow the common sense rule when deciding if a user has been inactive or not.

Rollbacks

 * If a user is actively editing, but does not use their rights, they will be revoked from their rollback rights 21 days after you last used the rollback tool.
 * If there is little to no vandalism on the site, a user may not be demoted for lack of using the right, as it is not their fault.


 * If a user is inactive for over a month, with no given reason, the administration may choose to revoke the rollback right.
 * If a user is inactive with a valid reason, but hasn't edited after 3 months, they will lose their rollback rights.

There is no simple way to regain these rights, you must earn them again and pass consensus.

Administrators

 * If an administrator has been inactive without a reason for three months, they shall be demoted.
 * If an administrator is inactive for three months with a valid reason, they may be given leniency depending on the urgency of their reason. Revoking the rights after that point is up to administrative and community discretion.

Regaining Rights
 * If a demoted administrator has returned to the site and wishes to regain their former rights, they must go through a series of steps beforehand.
 * The user must be active on the wiki (not just IRC) for a minimum of three weeks before they can request to regain their rights. This is to test their loyalty, and make sure that the user plans on staying active on the wiki for the foreseeable future.


 * After the user requests to regain their rights back on an administrator's talk page, the current administration can discuss and reach a consensus to either approve or deny their request.
 * Note: The administration must provide a valid reason for denying a request.

Bureaucrats

 * If a bureaucrat has been inactive without a reason for three months, they shall be demoted.
 * If a bureaucrat is inactive for three months with a valid reason, they may be given leniency depending on the urgency of their reason. Revoking the rights after that point is up to administrative and community discretion.

Regaining Rights
 * If a demoted bureaucrat has returned to the site and wishes to regain their former rights, they must go through a series of steps beforehand.
 * The user must be active on the wiki (not just IRC) for a minimum of three weeks before they can request to regain their rights. This is to test their loyalty, and make sure that the user plans on staying active on the wiki for the foreseeable future.


 * After the user requests to regain their rights back on an administrator's talk page, the current administration can discuss and reach a consensus to either approve or deny their request. If approved, the user can only be given administrator rights.
 * Note: The administration must have a valid reason for denying a request.


 * If they wished to regain their full bureaucrat rights, they must be an administrator for one full month before following the standard promotion process and being approved by the community.

Articles Disputes
There are several different types of article disputes that may occur on the wiki. Article Disputes should be held peacefully and in a calm manner. Administrators and Bureaucrats have the right to oversee these debates and keep the peace to prevent Flame Wars. The following are examples of Article Disputes that may occur:


 * OOC Rights Dispute - A dispute between two or more users over the control of an unclaimed or abandoned Article.
 * OOC Content Dispute - A dispute between two or more users over a claimed OOC edit done on an article. Usually, this only occurs on Fair Game Articles, because the User who owns the article has the Final say on OOC Rights.
 * Article Existance Dispute (Deletion Dispute) - A dispute between two or more users over an Article that has been proposed to be deleted.

These are only a few examples of user disputes. Please be aware that there may be more types not mentioned here.

Other Block Policy
The Other Block Policy is a policy that would give a user a temporary block without notice. Before we get into things, the user shall be warned of their behavior before any of this continues. If they ignore the warning...

If a user is not violating any other policy, but the admins feel like a block is necessary to calm things down on the wiki, they will discuss with other admins to see if a block is necessary. The block will need approval from at least one Bureaucrat. Because this policy states that the user is not violating any other policy, the maximum allowed block at a time will be 2 months, unless it is something very serious.

Plagiarism Policy
This Policy deals with how our wiki treats plagiarism.

Copycat Articles/Image/Policies from this Wiki to an Off-Site Website
I. A registered user is able to create create a wiki that revolves around Club Penguin Fan Fiction, '''so long as they do not steal anything from the Club Penguin Wiki Network. This includes images, policies, articles, etc'''. They will not advertise it on the wiki, and they may keep it, so long as they follow the bold text above. The namesake of their wiki, if related to Fan Fiction/Fanon in anyway, shape, or form, is allowed to be kept. IF they have copied ANYTHING from this Wiki, they shall be subject to this procedure:
 * a. The user will be given seven days notice to take down the copyrighted content, following a warning PRIOR.
 * b. If such namesake user refuses, then they will be warned again, and their copyrighted content will be subject to deletion, be that legal matters or not. The punishment of the user will be decided by the network as a whole, due to the network policies.

Plagiarized Material on this Wiki
I. Users should refrain from recklessly copying other user's articles as a sign of respect for their work. Any violation of this law will result in the removal of the plagiarized material.

II. Any copyrighted work such as an image, book, book quote, or audio file that is uploaded onto the Fanon must be properly cited. Any violation of this law will result in the removal of the plagiarized material or will be requested to be cited.
 * A. Images with watermarks are not allowed. The only exceptions are images that are from image generator websites (in which case, is considered original work).

Children on the Wiki Policy
"Twelve year olds shouldn't focus on romance. They should focus on "Pokemon" and Pop Tarts."

- Alex Hirsch (employed by Walt Disney Co.)

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES will ANY user bring up the topic, discussion, or conversation of sexual-wise topics, items, or behavior ON THIS WIKI, as we have children on here, either among us or visiting us that don't need to know what all of this mature topics are for a good 8-10 years, depending on who.

Any blatant depiction of sex and sexuality, in any form or fashion, as well as any reference to it, are prohibited. Any graphic use, depiction, or discussion of sexual themes and topics is prohibited (see also our policies on pornography).

Any user/article/discussion found in violation will be subject to any of these punishments, depending on what it is.

Sexuality
As defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary:

"Capacity for sexual feelings: "she began to understand the power of her sexuality". A person's sexual orientation or preference."

This policy does not forbid the mention of marriage and relationships in articles. Any character is allowed to have a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, spouse, or another marital partner.

However, the specific mention of sexuality (see above) in an article is prohibited. For example: "Joe is straight", or "Alan is gay". Implicit and suggestive references to controversial subjects regarding all sexual behavior is forbidden. In order to prevent ideological wars between users, we prefer to keep things safe.

Official Viewpoint
The Club Penguin Fanon Wiki as an organization will make no statement on sexuality, regarding the differences in our user-base. Each user will have their own opinion on the topic of sex and sexuality, but these opinions are in no way representative of the Club Penguin Fanon Wiki as a website or of the Club Penguin Wiki Network.

Unofficial/Incomplete Policies
Policies that still require revision or community support, but are nonetheless worth reading and some are extensions of existing policy.


 * Wikia Policy- We still hold jurisdiction over Wikia Fanon and welcome new users from there
 * All editors are equal- An editor's status, popularity, or in-game experience does not affect how they are treated and how their opinion is "weighed" in a discussion.
 * Assume good faith- Unless there is conclusive evidence to the contrary, always assume that an editor's actions were an attempt to improve the wiki.
 * Don't delete discussions- Don't delete previous discussions. These include user talk pages.
 * Don't feed the trolls- Do not antagonise trolls under any circumstances. It may worsen the situation.
 * Gaming the system- Use common sense. Don't interpret policies and editors word-for-word.
 * User block policy- Blocking is how administrators prevent a user account or IP address from editing the Club Penguin Fanon Wiki. Blocked users and IP addresses can read all the articles, but cannot edit any pages other than their own talk page. Blocked users are also prevented from moving pages or uploading files.
 * User treatment policy- Be nice and don't try to cause unnecessary strife.

Exemptions
Admins and users are expected to use common sense in a situation where a rule hinders wiki/user productivity and/or is not suited for the situation at hand.
 * This does NOT mean, however, that the rule is nullified.

Finally...

 * Have fun editing here!