Tim's message

**Tim's Message** is an ultimatum sent to Real Life Villains Wiki (Historic Villains Wiki's predecessor) by FANDOM staff member TimmyQuivy. It was archived on the RLVW on Miraheze, and one of its contributors, RegalHyperus18 (known as Hyperus18 on FANDOM), luckily had a slightly modified copy of the message stored on one of his grade/high school assignments, and he pasted it before the school district cut off his access to his grade/high school account.

## The Message (slightly modified)

My name is Tim and I’m one of the directors of Fandom’s Community Growth team. I’m reaching out to you today because our support team has recently received a number of complaints about this wiki’s contents, which has led me to spending today reviewing this wiki as a whole. To be blunt, this wiki has content that is problematic and violates our Terms of Use. We will need you and your admin team to take action to remove the problematic pages or we will have to close this wiki.

Let me start by first talking about what our Terms of Use and Wiki Creation Policy state. Our Terms of Use state that users agree to not ‘Post or transmit any content that is obscene, pornographic, abusive, offensive, profane, or otherwise violates any law or right of any third party, or content that contains homophobia, ethnic slurs, religious intolerance, or encourages criminal conduct;“ - I will note that the two words key here are “offensive” and “abusive”. Those terms receive a bit more clarity through our Wiki Creation Policy. That states that “Communities which consist only of offensive material or personal attacks will be closed.” It also states that communities should be “cautious about creating communities or pages (even humorous ones) about living people who aren’t publicly notable, including classmates and teachers, gaming clans, forum communities, and more.”

The premise of this community on its face does not violate these clauses. We have plenty of wikis about famous criminals or historical atrocities - we believe those belong in our network in so long as the tone of those wikis is educational and avoids glorifying illegal acts.

Where I first run into concerns is the use of the term “Villain”. Villain is less defined than say “war criminal” or “convicted murderer”. It implies a social element, in which society has deemed someone a villain, versus a clearly established legal classification. For example, Ted Kaczynski is a convicted murderer legally but his classification as a villain is something that has happened in society. Now, Ted Kaczynski is not a controversial example, but let’s instead look at Tony Perkins. Some people may view him as a villain, others may not. And while I personally find Mr. Perkins’ views reprehensible and inconsistent with what I believe my faith says, I would not be comfortable using the word “villain” on him, much less featuring him alongside Adolf Hitler. In short, your community is using a very loose term to define who qualifies for a page in your community.

Furthermore, that term is not defined anywhere on the wiki. There is no guidance for users on any policy page, in a welcome message, or a community portal, for who is a “villain” nor is there any clear statement about who is not a villain.

This gets more problematic when we move to internet personalities and other individuals with limited claims to fame. Let’s take Nora as an example. Nora is “an art Instagram user”. That is not what I would term a widely-recognizable public figure. The article then says he is a rapist, a serious claim that is not verifiable nor backed by any reputable news source. Most of the rest of the article lists crimes, serious and less so, but without evidence nor neutral tone. Mostly this seems to be written on rumor and innuendo. This page is not acceptable. It is going to be one of the pages that must go.

It is also a rather jarring and problematic issue to have every infobox start with “Evil-doer”. This seems generally extreme, especially in cases where the subject has not been convicted of a crime.

Let me be clear, I am going to give your community a chance to make some changes, but if changes are not made and stuck to, this community will be closed for violations of our Terms of Use.

Here is what needs to have happen within less than four days:

* Clear policies written explaining what qualifies as a “villain”.
	+ Villains must have some concrete definition [based] on verifiable facts.
	+ It must have a stricter rigor than “supposedly has done” or “disliked online personality”.
	+ It must be a definition that would be agreeable to people across the primary political and societal spectrum (For instance, Breitbart News being labeled as a “villain” is dependent on [the readers' political opinions.])
	+ It must be particularly strict regarding living persons and those who may have done regrettable or heinous acts while under the act of 18.
* Removal of the “evil doer” infobox heading.
* When I approve the villain definition, then the admin team must go through all the articles and delete those that do not meet that guideline. I will also be reviewing pages against those guidelines.

Again, I hate to brandish this, but it must be said - I am very serious about cleaning up this wiki to fit within our Terms of Use. If I do not sense this community is making a good-faith effort to tighten its content policies and police them, I will close this wiki without further warning. I understand this is a process - I do not expect this to be solved within even a week’s time. But we must begin making steps to tone this wiki down if it is to remain on the Fandom network.