Bans and Vandalism

[Antvasima]

Hmm. I will likely have to go through and somewhat reword your draft later, but I unfortunately do not have the available time and energy right now.

Please remind me about this later, unless GarrixianXD is willing to reword their draft on their own, so it makes it visibly clearer that edits that are evidently malicious rather than clueless result in permanent bans unless they are very harmless.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Please remind me about this later, unless GarrixianXD is willing to reword their draft on their own, so it makes it visibly clearer that edits that are evidently malicious rather than clueless result in permanent bans unless they are very harmless.

Bump.

 

[Antvasima]

Sorry for the delay. As to why it happened, I won't delve into it.

This is what I have to say about the matter:

Spoiler

When users make sweeping changes to our pages without approval, the staff team will generally issue a warning message and guide them on how to become constructive members. After receiving a warning for such unsolicited sweeping edits, users are expected to adhere to our wiki guidelines going forward. It is important to note that these unauthorized sweeping changes are considered vandalism on this wiki.

For reference, we have general guidelines on how we give punishments for actions of vandalism. Below is a chart outlining the general guidelines for the severity of punishments for users who commit vandalism, based on prior warnings and the severity of the violations:

First Vandalism Offense with No Prior Warnings: A warning is usually issued if the user has no previous vandalism record. If the vandalism is exceptionally severe, such as a major structural alteration or drastically changing a character’s tier, the user may face a ban ranging from 2 weeks to 1 month for their first offence.

Second Vandalism Offense with 1 Warning: Typically results in a 2-week to 1-month ban, depending on the severity of the offence. If the user has two instances of significant vandalism, with the first offence already resulting in a temporary ban, they may be considered malicious by the staff team and face more severe penalties.

Third Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: Usually results in a ban of 3 to 6 months, depending on the severity of the offences.

Fourth Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: Typically results in a ban of 1 year or a permanent ban, depending on the severity of the offences.

Fifth Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: Results in a permanent ban.

All of this is rather applicative for clueless violations and we initially assume the user does not have malicious intentions, if we’re giving penalties according to the general guidelines.

There are undoubtedly exceptions to these general guidelines if the user is shown to have malicious intents and the initial assumption of them being clueless is disregarded:

Extreme cases:

• New or unknown users making irrational changes, such as assigning tier 1 to 0 ratings to characters that do not belong in those tiers, or altering a notably powerful character to an excessively low tier like tier 11.
• Page blanking or deletion upon all the page's content.
• Adding illegal or disturbing imagery that is highly unsettling.
• Inserting, embedding, or uploading malicious files and links.
• Edits that include threats or information that may endanger the safety of other users.
• Uploading or inserting coarse or obscene content, examples being any form of pornography.
• Actions that strictly violate Fandom's terms of service and consequently result in a global ban.
• Any edit that is conspicuously malicious/shown to be harmful in nature.

All of these aforementioned severe acts of vandalism will lead to a straight indefinite ban from the site without any warning set.

Other less severe cases:

• Persistent vandalism requires immediate staff intervention, especially after warnings, which may indicate malicious intent.
• Continuous major vandalism necessitates immediate staff action, especially after warnings, potentially revealing malicious behaviour.
• Inserting or replacing existing content with complete nonsense or gibberish to pages.
• Any edit that shows a user’s malicious intention but is rather mostly harmless in nature itself.

These listed cases are less severe compared to the former but will be given harsher punishment than the general guideline for penalties against rather clueless vandalism. This guideline should not be interpreted that users who commit violations that fall in these cases will be free from a permanent ban, as depending on the severity, the user may be permanently banned nonetheless if their actions are deemed as too detrimental for them to be kept on the wiki.

Hmm. I will likely have to go through and somewhat reword your draft later, but I unfortunately do not have the available time and energy right now.

Please remind me about this later, unless GarrixianXD is willing to reword their draft on their own, so it makes it visibly clearer that edits that are evidently malicious rather than clueless result in permanent bans unless they are very harmless.

Or are you willing to initially modify your draft on your own, @GarrixianXD ? This is an extremely important topic that requires considerable attention from me, and I currently do not have much time at all available.

 

[GarrixianXD]

Or are you willing to initially modify your draft on your own, @GarrixianXD ? This is an extremely important topic that requires considerable attention from me, and I currently do not have much time at all available.

Sorry. Had been busy with University and had only been visiting the forums occasionally. How do you want me to modify my draft? Add new points, reword or both?

 

[Antvasima]

Sorry. Had been busy with University and had only been visiting the forums occasionally. How do you want me to modify my draft? Add new points, reword or both?

No problem.

As I was saying earlier, I mainly want to make it clearer that edits that are evidently deliberately malicious rather than clueless should result in permanent bans unless they are very harmless.

I am also uncertain if your current suggested punisment scale for clueless vandalism is appropriate or not.

@DarkGrath @Mr. Bambu @Qawsedf234 @AKM sama @DontTalkDT @Just_a_Random_Butler @Dereck03 @Abstractions @Celestial_Pegasus @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @SamanPatou @GyroNutz @Firestorm808 @Everything12 @Planck69

Do any of you have any constructive input here in the last regard?

 

[GarrixianXD]

No problem.

As I was saying earlier, I mainly want to make it clearer that edits that are evidently deliberately malicious rather than clueless should result in permanent bans unless they are very harmless.

Gotcha.

Spoiler

Preliminary Notes

It is important to emphasize that the general guidelines for punishing harmful edits are based on both the severity of the offence and the intent of the individual responsible. These guidelines should only apply to users whose actions are considered minor enough to warrant punishment under the standard rules or to those who genuinely believe their edits are justified, without harmful intent (an example for the latter: if a user changes Akuto Sai's manga profile to 1-A and provides reasoning for the edit, it may indicate a misunderstanding rather than deliberate vandalism, as Akuto Sai is known to be High 1-A in his Light Novel page on the wiki).

Before outlining the punishment guidelines for harmful edits, it is important to note that any blatant and intentional acts of vandalism will lead to the immediate and permanent ban of the responsible user, without a warning or any hesitation. Examples of such actions include: posting inappropriate, disturbing, or dangerous content, such as pornographic images or files containing malware; completely deleting or almost deleting all content from wiki pages, with this major vandalising act being an example; drastically altering a character's tier beyond the accepted rating, such as changing a Tier 10 character to 1-A, or a Tier 1 character to Tier 11, etc.

More info can be found in the 《extreme cases》 and 《less severe cases》 sections in the parts that explains exceptions from the standard guidelines of punishment against harmful edits.

General Guidelines

When users make sweeping changes to our pages without approval, the staff team will generally issue a warning message and guide them on how to become constructive members. After receiving a warning for such unsolicited sweeping edits, users are expected to adhere to our wiki guidelines going forward. It is important to note that these unauthorized sweeping changes are considered vandalism on this wiki.

For reference, we have general guidelines on how we give punishments for actions of vandalism. Below is a chart outlining the general guidelines for the severity of punishments for users who commit vandalism, based on prior warnings and the severity of the violations:

First Vandalism Offense with No Prior Warnings: A warning is usually issued if the user has no previous vandalism record. If the vandalism is exceptionally severe, such as a major structural alteration or drastically changing a character’s tier, the user may face a ban ranging from 2 weeks to 1 month for their first offence.

Second Vandalism Offense with 1 Warning: Typically results in a 2-week to 1-month ban, depending on the severity of the offence. If the user has two instances of significant vandalism, with the first offence already resulting in a temporary ban, they may be considered malicious by the staff team and face more severe penalties.

Third Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: Usually results in a ban of 3 to 6 months, depending on the severity of the offences.

Fourth Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: Typically results in a ban of 1 year or a permanent ban, depending on the severity of the offences.

Fifth Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: Results in a permanent ban.

All of this is rather applicative for clueless violations and we initially assume the user does not have malicious intentions, if we’re giving penalties according to the general guidelines.

There are undoubtedly exceptions to these general guidelines if the user is shown to have malicious intents and the initial assumption of them being clueless is disregarded:

Extreme cases:

• New or unknown users making irrational changes, such as assigning tier 1 to 0 ratings to characters that do not belong in those tiers, or altering a notably powerful character to an excessively low tier like tier 11.
• Page blanking or deletion upon all the page's content.
• Adding illegal or disturbing imagery that is highly unsettling.
• Inserting, embedding, or uploading malicious files and links.
• Edits that include threats or information that may endanger the safety of other users.
• Uploading or inserting coarse or obscene content, examples being any form of pornography.
• Actions that strictly violate Fandom's terms of service and consequently result in a global ban.
• Any edit that is conspicuously malicious/shown to be harmful in nature.

All of these aforementioned severe acts of vandalism will lead to a straight indefinite ban from the site without any warning set.

Other less severe cases:

• Persistent vandalism requires immediate staff intervention, especially after warnings, which may indicate malicious intent.
• Continuous major vandalism necessitates immediate staff action, especially after warnings, potentially revealing malicious behaviour.
• Inserting or replacing existing content with complete nonsense or gibberish to pages.
• Any edit that shows a user’s malicious intention but is rather mostly harmless in nature itself.

These listed cases are less severe compared to the former but will be given harsher punishment than the general guideline for penalties against rather clueless vandalism. This guideline should not be interpreted that users who commit violations that fall in these cases will be free from a permanent ban, as depending on the severity, the user may be permanently banned nonetheless if their actions are deemed as too detrimental for them to be kept on the wiki.

Given your description of your comment, I assume you want to emphasise and highlight that blatant acts of vandalism strictly results in a permanent ban so I pretty much repeated what I said in the exception section, in the new preliminary notes section I've created at the start of my draft. Honestly at this point, we might as well just give our new guideline against vandalism a name since inferring to that can be confusing, since I've repeated that guideline a lot on my draft without a definite name given to it.

I am also uncertain if your current suggested punisment scale for clueless vandalism is appropriate or not.

@DarkGrath @Mr. Bambu @Qawsedf234 @AKM sama @DontTalkDT @Just_a_Random_Butler @Dereck03 @Abstractions @Celestial_Pegasus @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @SamanPatou @GyroNutz @Firestorm808 @Everything12 @Planck69

Do any of you have any constructive input here in the last regard?

Iirc, AKM and DT has approved my draft before I modified it at your request.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you. I personally think that your new draft for a punishment scale seems sufficiently good to apply, but would appreciate further staff input in order to make certain.

@AKM sama @DontTalkDT @DarkDragonMedeus @Mr. Bambu @Just_a_Random_Butler @Agnaa @Celestial_Pegasus @Wokistan @Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou @GyroNutz @Firestorm808 @Everything12 @Maverick_Zero_X @Crabwhale @DarkGrath @Dereck03 @Planck69

 

[Agnaa]

I moderately disagree with it. I don't think there's an express need to standardize, it's rough to draw simple categories like "vandalism" and "malicious/non-malicious", and I prefer site bans over editing bans for these sorts of offences, due to there not needing to be as much monitoring.

 

[Qawsedf234]

. I personally think that your new draft for a punishment scale seems sufficiently good to apply, but would appreciate further staff input in order to make certain.

It looks good to me. Though the amount of warnings before a perma-ban seems excessive. If you're doing the same thing after two warnings I don't see what two additionally warnings would do at that point.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Thought I commented saying the draft seems good; though Agnaa has some good points.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Really thought I'd spoken here before. Regardless...

I will say, now, that this doesn't seem an insane proposal. I think a lot of it is basically in-line with what I'd suggest. However:

I think it's generally a bad play to set up explicit reactions to this stuff, to outline what punishment goes with what offense. There's an endless depth of context that changes from circumstance to circumstance, and just hand-waving it all with The One Reaction isn't what I view as an ideal. Is the vandalism the user's literal first edit, and if so, does it seem to be made with malintent? Did they apologize immediately after, having not understood something? Conversely, do they seem actively antagonistic about it? Have they ignored staff warnings up to this point? What was the edit exactly? Was it just upgrading Peter Griffin to Tier 0 or was it something they feasibly believe, like capping Doomguy to Tier 8/7?

All of those things are vandalism and the list extends onward. I find that the current draft does not appropriately consider all of this, and molding it into something that does will require an amount of rules interpretation at the end that we may as well still rely on of the staff intuition.

TL;DR I approximately agree with Agnaa.

 

[Antvasima]

It looks good to me. Though the amount of warnings before a perma-ban seems excessive. If you're doing the same thing after two warnings I don't see what two additionally warnings would do at that point.

Maybe we can clarify that a permanent ban can be applied considerably earlier if the vandal seems too clueless and unreasonable to be productive in their editing?

 

[Antvasima]

Really thought I'd spoken here before. Regardless...

I will say, now, that this doesn't seem an insane proposal. I think a lot of it is basically in-line with what I'd suggest. However:

I think it's generally a bad play to set up explicit reactions to this stuff, to outline what punishment goes with what offense. There's an endless depth of context that changes from circumstance to circumstance, and just hand-waving it all with The One Reaction isn't what I view as an ideal. Is the vandalism the user's literal first edit, and if so, does it seem to be made with malintent? Did they apologize immediately after, having not understood something? Conversely, do they seem actively antagonistic about it? Have they ignored staff warnings up to this point? What was the edit exactly? Was it just upgrading Peter Griffin to Tier 0 or was it something they feasibly believe, like capping Doomguy to Tier 8/7?

All of those things are vandalism and the list extends onward. I find that the current draft does not appropriately consider all of this, and molding it into something that does will require an amount of rules interpretation at the end that we may as well still rely on of the staff intuition.

TL;DR I approximately agree with Agnaa.

Well, how about if we simply write up some guidelines that do not have to be slavishly adhered to, and with ban times that can be modified depending on the circumstances, just so we are not too inconsistent in our punishment severities depending on the staff members involved?

 

[Agnaa]

Yeah that could work.

Obviously un-serious vandalism with no extenuating factors leading to a permanent ban, with unauthorized edits initially facing just a warning, before eventually working up to bans of increasing length.

 

[Antvasima]

Really thought I'd spoken here before. Regardless...

I will say, now, that this doesn't seem an insane proposal. I think a lot of it is basically in-line with what I'd suggest. However:

I think it's generally a bad play to set up explicit reactions to this stuff, to outline what punishment goes with what offense. There's an endless depth of context that changes from circumstance to circumstance, and just hand-waving it all with The One Reaction isn't what I view as an ideal. Is the vandalism the user's literal first edit, and if so, does it seem to be made with malintent? Did they apologize immediately after, having not understood something? Conversely, do they seem actively antagonistic about it? Have they ignored staff warnings up to this point? What was the edit exactly? Was it just upgrading Peter Griffin to Tier 0 or was it something they feasibly believe, like capping Doomguy to Tier 8/7?

All of those things are vandalism and the list extends onward. I find that the current draft does not appropriately consider all of this, and molding it into something that does will require an amount of rules interpretation at the end that we may as well still rely on of the staff intuition.

TL;DR I approximately agree with Agnaa.

Well, how about if we simply write up some guidelines that do not have to be slavishly adhered to, and with ban times that can be modified depending on the circumstances, just so we are not too inconsistent in our punishment severities depending on the staff members involved?

Yeah that could work.

Obviously un-serious vandalism with no extenuating factors leading to a permanent ban, with unauthorized edits initially facing just a warning, before eventually working up to bans of increasing length.

@GarrixianXD

Would you be willing to further modify your draft text based on this?

@AKM sama @DontTalkDT @Mr. Bambu @Qawsedf234 @DarkDragonMedeus @IdiosyncraticLawyer @Catzlaflame @Dereck03 @FinePoint @Just_a_Random_Butler @Planck69 @Dark-Carioca @Firestorm808 @Theglassman12 @Flashlight237

Does this seem acceptable to you?

 

[Planck69]

Yeah, this resolution seems fine to me.

 

[Elizhaa]

I would be fine with updated proposals.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for your replies.

@GarrixianXD

I am afraid that we need your further help here.

 

[GarrixianXD]

@GarrixianXD

I am afraid that we need your further help here.

Is it okay if you or anyone else here can clarify what I need to do?

 

[Antvasima]

@GarrixianXD

Please read from the following post and downwards.

Bans and Vandalism

Hmm. I will likely have to go through and somewhat reword your draft later, but I unfortunately do not have the available time and energy right now. 🙏 Please remind me about this later, unless GarrixianXD is willing to reword their draft on their own, so it makes it visibly clearer that edits...

vsbattles.com

 

[GarrixianXD]

I've taken in Agnaa's, Bambu's and Qawsedf's suggestions and concerns. The red text is the newly added information. You said something about listing certain guidelines that do not need to be slavishly adhered to; I am not sure if you meant admins don't mandatorily need to follow the general guidelines upon banning or members of the wiki don't have to obediently follow certain guidelines, but I'll assume the former.

Spoiler

Preliminary Notes

It is important to emphasize that the general guidelines for punishing harmful edits are based on both the severity of the offence and the intent of the individual responsible. These guidelines should only apply to users whose actions are considered minor enough to warrant punishment under the standard rules or to those who genuinely believe their edits are justified, without harmful intent (an example for the latter: if a user changes Akuto Sai's manga profile to 1-A and provides reasoning for the edit, it may indicate a misunderstanding rather than deliberate vandalism, as Akuto Sai is known to be High 1-A in his Light Novel page on the wiki).

Before outlining the punishment guidelines for harmful edits, it is important to note that any blatant and intentional acts of vandalism will lead to the immediate and permanent ban of the responsible user, without a warning or any hesitation. Examples of such actions include: posting inappropriate, disturbing, or dangerous content, such as pornographic images or files containing malware; completely deleting or almost deleting all content from wiki pages, with this major vandalising act being an example; drastically altering a character's tier beyond the accepted rating, such as changing a Tier 10 character to 1-A, or a Tier 1 character to Tier 11, etc.

More info can be found in the 《extreme cases》 and 《less severe cases》subsections in the parts that explain exceptions from the standard guidelines of punishment against harmful edits. Further notable information and details can be seen in the 《Additional Information》section.

General Guidelines

When users make sweeping changes to our pages without approval, the staff team will generally issue a warning message and guide them on how to become constructive members. After receiving a warning for such unsolicited sweeping edits, users are expected to adhere to our wiki guidelines going forward. It is important to note that these unauthorized sweeping changes are considered vandalism on this wiki.

For reference, we have general guidelines on how we give punishments for actions of vandalism. Below is a chart outlining the general guidelines for the severity of punishments for users who commit vandalism, based on prior warnings and the severity of the violations:

First Vandalism Offense with No Prior Warnings: A warning is usually issued if the user has no previous vandalism record. If the vandalism is exceptionally severe, such as a major structural alteration or drastically changing a character’s tier, the user may face a site ban ranging from 2 weeks to 1 month for their first offence.

Second Vandalism Offense with 1 Warning: Typically results in a site ban of 1 to 3 months, depending on the severity of the offence. If the user has two instances of significant vandalism, with the first offence already resulting in a temporary site ban, they may be considered malicious by the staff team and face more severe penalties.

Third Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: This usually results in a site ban of 6 months to a year, depending on the severity of the offence.

Fourth Vandalism Offense with Prior Warnings: Typically results in a site ban of 1 year or a permanent ban, depending on the severity of the offence.

All of this is rather applicative for clueless violations of unauthorised edits and we initially assume the user does not have malicious intentions, if we’re giving penalties according to the general guidelines.

There are undoubtedly exceptions to these general guidelines if the user is shown to have malicious intents and the initial assumption of them being clueless is disregarded:

Extreme cases:

• New or unknown users make irrational changes, such as assigning tier 1 to 0 ratings to characters that do not belong in those tiers or altering a notably powerful character to an excessively low tier like tier 11.
• Page blanking or deletion upon all the page's content.
• Adding illegal or disturbing imagery that is highly unsettling.
• Inserting, embedding, or uploading malicious files and links.
• Edits that include threats or information that may endanger the safety of other users.
• Uploading or inserting coarse or obscene content, examples being any form of pornography.
• Actions that strictly violate Fandom's terms of service and consequently result in a global ban.
• Unserious vandalising acts without any extenuating factors (for example: adding ridiculous/irrational messages and inappropriate media files onto articles)
• Any edit that is conspicuously malicious/shown to be harmful in nature.

All of these aforementioned severe acts of vandalism will lead to a straight indefinite ban from the site without any warning set.

Other less severe cases:

• Persistent vandalism requires immediate staff intervention, especially after warnings, which may indicate malicious intent.
• Continuous major vandalism necessitates immediate staff action, especially after warnings, potentially revealing malicious behaviour.
• Inserting or replacing existing content with complete nonsense or gibberish to pages.
• Any edit that shows a user’s malicious intention but is rather mostly harmless in nature itself.

These listed cases are less severe compared to the former but will be given harsher punishment than the general guideline for penalties against rather clueless vandalism. This guideline should not be interpreted that users who commit violations that fall in these cases will be free from a permanent ban, as depending on the severity, the user may be permanently banned nonetheless if their actions are deemed as too detrimental for them to be kept on the wiki.

Additional Information

The official set of General Guidelines to impose site bans against perpetrators of unauthorised edits/vandalism is not mandatorily needed to be adhered to by the staff team. It should be noted that issued site bans can be altered, according to the following:

The site ban period imposed upon the perpetrators can be modified based on the circumstances involved in their case. A message could be sent to the blocked user's wall by the responsible admin or another staff member, telling them they've been banned from the site, the period and the reason for their site ban -- of course, it would be the decision of the staff to whether send a message or not. The blocked user can still comment on their own message wall, and be given a chance to explain why they performed such an act -- the ban could be modified or even lifted, depending on the decision favoured by the majority of the staff team; it obviously should not be taken as a guarantee that the perpetrator will be unbanned merely because they explained themselves.

A discussion about a ban modification could also be held without the perpetrator needing to explain their case -- mostly in cases if their lines of action were seen as negligible enough to be given second chances, or the imposed ban was deemed rather lenient. The conclusion of the potential ban modification is determined by the resolution favoured by the majority of the staff.

 

[Agnaa]

Yeah seems good. Wording might be a little clunky in the additional information section, but whateva.

 

[GarrixianXD]

I believe we forgot something. I think it'd be good if we added something about deleting warning messages from admins off message walls. Personally, I'd be willing to give harsher treatment for actions like that -- for example, some guy who got a 1 month ban from an unauthorised edit, and deleted off a warning, should get their ban escalated to the next level which is a 3 months ban.

 

[Agnaa]

I feel like that's a bit more of a general thing, that doesn't belong there.