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.