Guidelines/Vandal Policy

Vandalism is the act of incorrectly changing a page, causing the article or page to be incorrect, unpresentable, or both.

## Types of Vandalism

There are a few types of vandalism, depending on which page it appears on. Vandalizing can be anything from putting incorrect or outdated information on a page, to deleting text.

### Vandalism on Article Pages

Types generally include:

* Deleting Text

* Deleting all of the text.

* Adding gibberish, unrelated content, or speculation.
* Changing the article's name.
* Changing text to a language other than English, or when present, Japanese.

* Changing the entire article's language into any language except for English.

More types may crop up due to creative vandals, but these are the most common issues that may come up.

### Vandalism on Article Talk Pages

Generally, Talk Pages are the easiest targets to cause problems with. Most types of Vandalism include:

* Deleting text.
* Changing someone's statement.
* Changing the author of the statement to another user or IP Address.
* Editing of any sort other than adding your own statement, or signing your own statement.

Nobody wants to check the Page History to find out if the page has been vandalized, but if anything suspicious appears, it will be checked and action taken.

### Vandalism on User Pages and User Talk Pages

Many times, unhappy users or users in an argument vandalize another user's personal page or talk page. This is very cruel, and is one of the worst things you can do in some cases. Another user must revert your edits out, and feelings may get hurt. Keep in mind that if you ever end up on the Users to be Banned page, Vandalism of another's user page, especially severely damaging edits, will be held against you.

#### User Page Vandalism

* Deleting text.
* Adding text the user does not want.
* Editing text.

* Editing text to make the person look as if they are bad at spelling, adding in grammatical errors and horrible spelling on purpose, or re-writing things in all caps.

* Replacing text to damaging statements. These include things such statements, possibly in all capital letters (considered yelling), such as "HOTDOGS ARE LONG", "I THINK THIS SITE SUCKS" or "I'm only 5 year old, help me please?" and other such statements that make the user look stupid or immature, that can destroy their reputation.
* Adding categories to user pages.

#### User Talk Page Vandalism

The most common vandalism to User Talk Pages are:

* Deleting all text.
* Changing signatures.
* Deleting statements.
* Editing text.
* Adding a picture that is unsightly, disgusting, or otherwise unsuitable for the page in any way, and can be considered disrespectful.
* Users may not remove messages from their own talk page, except in cases of vandalism. It should be noted, however, that users may archive these messages.

Please note, being disrespectful and leaving rude comments is not vandalism, but it does not look good, and rude statements or statements implying one user should consider another user "superior" to them will generally be treated in the same class as vandalism.

## Punishments

* If anyone who edits *blatantly vandalizes* the wiki, they will likely be banned by an administrator.
* Edits that are harmful, or in violation of the wiki's rules, will result in a warning from an administrator or veteran user. The decision is then up to the administrators if they will ban the user or if they will give them another chance.
* If a new user has broken some rules but their edits appear to be in good faith, they will likely not be marked for a ban. Instead, a user must put the {{Vandalism}} template, or a post on the user's talk page and explain to them why what they was doing was wrong. However, if they refuse to change their attitude after being warned, they will be banned.
* Creating a new account to circumvent an existing ban will result in the banned account(s) being banned for an increased period and the new account being permanently banned.

## Block's Length

A registered user can be banned up to an infinite amount of time, but IP accounts tend to only be blocked up to a year, because they tend to reset before that time. The length of the ban will be decided by the administrators, unless there was a forum about that specific user as mentioned previously; then they will be banned for the time period the community agreed on.

An important point to keep in mind is that if a user come back from a block and continues to misbehave, his new block will be longer than the last one, and will continue to increase for each offense. Admins may make minor alterations to this if they feel a case warrants it, but generally, ban lengths will be these lengths:

* 1 Day.
* 3 Days.
* 1 Week.
* 2 Weeks.
* 1 Month.
* 3 Months.
* 6 Months
* 1 Year.
* Infinite.

## Punishment and Rule Disputes

If any user feels the rules, guidelines, and ideas are unfair, please discuss them on a talk page or in a forum. We all recommend signing up, and comments from random IP addresses are generally ignored. It is quick and easy to sign up, and suggestions from much better received than random edits and suggestions from someone who is not an active part of the community.

guideline copied from one piece