Wiki Rules

## General Wiki Rules

1. **Keep it civil**: Do not make personal attacks on other people. If you need to criticize another user’s argument, do so without attacking them as a person. Do not use bigoted language, including slurs which degrade another person or group of people based on gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, etc.
2. **Be a productive member of the wiki**: Contribute to the wiki in line with the established processes and conventions. Need help? Ask an administrator! Disrupting the wiki with “edit warring” over differing opinions of a topic with another user or group of users is not productive.
3. **Do not engage in excessive self-promotion**: The wiki is a collaborative community resource for the topic at hand. It is NOT a free place to advertise your related website, YouTube channel, blog, social media account, etc. Have a question about whether your link would be welcome? Ask an administrator!
4. **Do not harass other users**: If somebody asks you to stop posting certain content on their wall, respect their wishes. It is their wall.
5. **Do follow community guidelines for formatting**: When a community has established formatting, it’s important to adhere to that, especially when spoiler content is involved.

## Wiki-Specific Policies

1. Do NOT add a character without permission. There is a process to adding characters, found on the page Character Suggestions. Do NOT contact a Moderator or Admin without following the procedure found on that page. Characters created without following this process will be deleted as soon as possible by an Admin or Moderator.
2. Once a character has been accepted, you have upwards of 2 weeks to finish it. If the page is unfinished by that time, it will be deleted.
3. Do NOT use the blogging feature to create content unrelated to the wiki.
4. You will be considered an AFU (A Fandom User) if you are not logged in, or if you have not made 1 edit, comment, or message related to meaningfully interacting with or growing the BEF community. Suggesting a character does not count towards this.
5. If you are an AFU, then the following will occur:
	* Your vote on any Admin or Moderator-created poll will be discounted when the results are announced.
	* Your approval for a character (see Wiki-Specific Policy #1) will not be counted.
6. Once you have met the requirements listed in Wiki-Specific Policy #4, your votes will only count for polls and suggestions made afterwards.
7. Characters violating the BEF Worthy Rules will be removed as soon as possible. Please report a character to an Admin or Moderator if you think they violate these rules.
	* If these rules update, then every previous character on the wiki must be evaluated for worthiness. YES, it is possible for a character to lose BEF status even after being accepted.
8. The only official lore for characters is their origin. This allows a lot of flexibility for authors and artists, as they don’t have to adhere to a single story.
	* Backstories are not origins, and therefore not official lore. It is important to know the difference between the two. Origins are the creation of the character, which cannot be changed. Backstories are details about their world and history, and are only there to give inspiration, or be an outline if you need one.
	* If you choose to create stories or backstories for characters, it does not become official lore. This includes any backstories written on the character pages.
	* In the event that a character comes from an AU created by one person, and the AU only has a small following, then that AU's timeline can be counted as a fanon (fan canon) for that character.

## Blocking Policy

Blocking will only occur after you have been warned by an Admin. You are at risk of being blocked if you are responsible for any of the following:

* Repeated vandalism.
* Breaking policies.
* Adding pages that are copyright violations
* Harassing other community members
* General wiki disruption

**If you feel you have been unfairly blocked, please contact the Admin who blocked you.**