Rules

**TL;DR**: Blocks are handed out after breaking the same rule thrice, or different rules four times, though this standard of blocking will change depending on the severity of the violation. Use common sense. Keep things appropriate. Don't do things people don't want to happen to them. Don't mess up pages and comments.

As long as the rules are well understood by the users, this wiki will remain safe, peaceful and organized. This is the reason we have rules. Any violations will result in punishments depending on the severity of the violation, as well as the user's past accords.

Breaking any rule (either the first or second time) will prompt a staff member to leave a warning on your talk page. Warnings do **not** expire after a prolonged period of time, but if a warning was given erroneously, it can be appealed. Different staff members have different styles of moderation, so don't always expect a second offense to only yield another warning.

While every individual rule has a three-strike system to earning a block (e.g. vandalizing thrice), earning 4 or more warnings *in total* will also yield a block; after which, your warnings will be reset. Second warnings, however, will not be reset.

Block lengths are usually set to a minimum of one week and increase with every subsequent block.

Circumstances exist in which a staff member is prompted to skip warnings and immediately block the user. In most cases, this approach is restricted to troll accounts, vandalism-only accounts, and sockpuppets of blocked users. However, everything works on a case-by-case basis.

Any warning or block can be appealed. While warnings can be confronted on a staff's talk page, blocks can only be appealed on your talk page. Providing an understandable reason or apology will result in a shortened or removed block length most of the time. However, staff members hold the ability to deny and discuss any appeal.

While not a rule, check the manual of style before you edit.

Feel free to discuss about the rules on the talk page.

## All users

### General rules

These rules apply to general account information and case-by-case scenarios.

1. **Don't be a troll.** Creating an account with the sole purpose or effect of either destruction or disruption will result in a block.
	* New accounts that spam the Live! Chat are considered trolls and are blocked on the wiki as well.
2. **Don't lie.** Lying is a *great* way to lose the trust and assumption of good faith from the staff. If you are caught in a lie while trying to evade punishment, your words will no longer be held to good faith, and you may be considered a troll.
	* **Deliberately spreading or creating misinformation is strictly prohibited.** Depending on the situation, this can be violating the rules of vandalism or spam.
		+ Posting and claiming a link leads to a destination where it does not, such as a new episode, is not allowed in public spaces (mainly article comments). These are acceptable in personal spaces.
3. **Don't threaten the wiki.** Threatening to hack or damage the wiki, though an obvious bluff, is an offense of the highest degree and **will result in an immediate ban**. The same applies to threatening to hack users.
4. **Try to comply with staff.** A staff member may tell you directly to stop doing something, even if the rules may fail to mention specific details. For the sake of keeping balance, it's better to comply with instructions. **You can question the staff if you find the instructions erroneous, but still comply with them while doing so.**
5. **Don't reveal any personal information.** Do not reveal your credit card number, social security number, address (where you live), your password, and phone number. In case of an accidental reveal, please contact an administrator to remove it as soon as possible.
	* Revealing another user's personal information is an offense of the highest degree. **This will result in an immediate block.**
6. **Don't abuse multiple accounts (sockpuppets).** Under no circumstance, except in the case of bot accounts, should **any**user operate more than one account.
	* Using a sockpuppet while blocked will result in your block length being extended.
7. **Create an account with an appropriate username.** Referencing sexual messages, hate speech, another contributor, profanity, or otherwise hurtful or distracting usernames is prohibited.
	* Your profile picture must also be appropriate. **Cropped pornography or explicit imagery is not tolerated**, and if you do not change it after being messaged by a staff member, your account will be indefinitely blocked.
8. **Don't severely misbehave in the Live! Chat.**While most of the time, what happens in chat stays in chat, if a user has to be chat banned immediately (in extreme cases of improper language or behavior), repeatedly, or indefinitely, **they can be given a warning on the wiki as well**.

### Destructive rules

These rules apply to editing pages, userpages, and templates.

1. **Don't vandalize.** Vandalism can be inserting nonsense, misinformation, or broken code, as well as removing adequate information, images, and categories. Vandalism greatly damages pages' developments, and we are more than welcome to revert any vandalism and take actions against anyone that vandalizes or encourages it.
	* **Don't add fanon material to articles.** Fanon material is defined as anything not produced by the creators or the show itself, such as fan art. You can, however, add fanon content on the fan page, your blog posts, user pages, or the articles' comment sections.
2. **Don't edit other people's userpages.** Unless given public and clear consent by the user themselves, userpages may not be altered by any other user (except in cases of staff removing expletives or faulty templates).
	* **You may not alter or remove messages on someone else's talk page**, either. You are allowed, however, to remove messages on your own talk page.
3. **Don't post adult content into this wiki**. This wiki is meant to be read by people of all ages. Bomb threats, drug use, gore, and pornography will not be tolerated.
	* Any imagery or artwork whose main purpose is to sexually arouse will be treated as pornography. Under these conditions, **fetish art is not allowed.**
4. **Don't start or be involved in edit wars.** We want the community to get along with each other. Edit warring is when two or more users are undoing each other's edits. To prevent one, just simply report the situation to an active administrator and wait for them to sort it out. Pages suffering from edit wars may end up being locked for a short period of time.
	* Edit warring to undo objectively destructive edits, such as vandalism or spoilers, though not preferable, is somewhat justified and will most likely not land one a warning.
5. **Don't misuse article or user templates.** {{Banned}}, {{Stub}}, {{Delete}}, etc. should be reserved for users who are banned, pages that are stubs, legitimate candidates for deletion, etc. These will be removed if not used properly.
	* Creating duplicates of templates or restoring removed templates is also prohibited.
	* Misusing templates on articles is **vandalism**.
6. **Restrict spoilers to where they belong.** Several methods have allowed us to calculate votes in advance. While we allow information and discussion about the spoilers to surface on future event pages, they are prohibited from being published on any other page, even behind spoiler text, such as contestants or teams. This rule does not extend to blogs or userpages.
	* Blatant spoilers for recent, non-BFDI-related content, while not a punishable offense, will still be removed.

### Disruptive rules

These rules apply to the media spaces, comments, blogs, and Discussions.

1. **Upload files with appropriate names.** The rules against profanity apply to any images and videos uploaded to the wiki.
2. **Don't spam.** Spam is defined here as flooding wiki activity by either editing unnecessarily/commenting many times within a short time span or posting large chunks of text/media in comments or chat. Spamming makes it hard to view other contributions made on the wiki, making it harmful.
	* **Polls are not allowed on upcoming episode pages' comments.**
3. **Don't use profanity.** Profanity is rather disrespectful on this wiki, and you may be blocked as a consequence.
	* **EXCEPTIONS:** Light swear words (piss, hell, bastard, damn, ass, and dammit) are allowed when not directed at or toward another user. "Retard" is not considered a light swear and is disallowed, nor is "asshole".
		+ Any word that can be considered profanity that is not in the above list is, by default, not allowed.
	* **Profanity can't be censored**, by neither omission (sh\*t, b\*\*\*\*, etc.) nor the use of the spoiler text template. These will still be treated as profanity.
		+ However, **completely** censoring a word, such that no letters are visible (e.g. \*\*\*\*\*) is acceptable.
		+ Profanity also **can't be spoken in a different language**.
	* Using **racial and other derogatory slurs** is an offense of highest degree and **will result in an immediate block**.
	* The **middle-finger emoji**, or representing the middle-finger gesture in any other manner, is also not allowed.
	* While not necessarily profanity, sexually *implicit* (alluding to racy topics) and *explicit* (vivid descriptions of racy topics) language is not allowed. Simply mentioning the act of sex in an appropriate context may be passable, but going into unnecessary, uncomfortable, and shocking details is not.
4. **Don't harass or be disrespectful to other users or other people.** Single instances of insulting, belittling, or attacking a user is considered disrespect. Consistently and repeatedly targeting, messaging, berating, or insulting another user(s) is considered harassment. **Harassment and disrespect doesn't need to be seen by the target in order to be punished.**
	* **Don't harass, pester, or message any of the BFDI cast about the episodes or series.** This can be counted as harassment. Let these people be in peace.
	* **Telling people to kill themselves**, especially if your known interaction with them is limited, is an offense of the highest degree, and **will result in an immediate block**. If you're new or not very well-known, it becomes harder to discern between sincere insults and banter.
	* Being disrespectful in regards to identity of people not on the wiki is also disallowed under this rule.
	* **Don't discriminate or belittle people based on race, creed, color, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, identity, disability, or plight.**This hurts the contributors and creates social conflicts. Racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, ableist, etc. remarks, even if not directed towards any user on the wiki, will not be tolerated.
		+ This extends to making fun of another person's mental or physical well-being.
		+ **Don't make offensive jokes.** Some users may take these jokes personally, and they may be upset by them. If you do joke, specify before a social conflict is created over it.
			- **Triggered jokes are counted as offensive jokes.**Don't use them.
5. **Don't excessively backseat moderate people (mini-modding)**. Telling vandals to stop is allowed. However, bossing other users around and acting as if you hold power over them is not. This will be ignored regardless of acting in good faith.
	* Though here not a rule, it is advised to **not feet the troll**—don't interact or react to them.
6. **Don't impersonate other users.** Attempting to use a username or make edits attempting to mock the targeted user is prohibited, and your account may be blocked indefinitely depending on the case.
	* **Impersonating a staff member**, especially in the pursuit of giving another user a **false warning**, is an offense of the highest degree and may result in an **immediate block**.
7. **Don't go off-topic on a page's comments.** The comments of a page should be about the page. General discussion can either go in Discussions or in a blog post.
8. **Don't spread rumors or gossip about you or other users.** Also known as drama, this may flood the wiki activity and may humiliate the targeted user(s).
	* This extends to **deliberately lying about your own or another user's status whether in real life or on the wiki.** This refers to lying about leaving the wiki, or lying about more sensitive topics (such as claiming another user has died). Such fabrication will cause disruption within the community, and jokes relating to this issue should have a clear disclaimer.
9. **Try to use English-language content.** This wiki uses the English language, native or learned, at almost all times, day and night. Spamming or using other language content or characters is prohibited in comments, chat, or page edits.
	* **However...** there are BFDI wikis in other languages (a list of them can be found on the main page) so if you speak one of those languages you can go to the corresponding wiki.
10. **Don't advertise.**Advertising most commonly occurs in the comments of an article or on someone else's talk page or blog post. Same with spamming, advertising is forbidden. Advertising can be linking to a personal **blog post**, **YouTube channel**, or **website**. Simply attempting to persuade other users to visit these targets is also advertising, even in the absence of an actual link.
	* **However...** uploading a video/image to the site and displaying it while staying on-topic is not advertising.
	* **Also...** you can advertise on your own blog posts. Someone asking for a link and you providing that link is also not advertising.
		+ If someone signs up for a camp or any kind of user-participated event, the event holder is allowed to message and update those who signed up.
11. **Don't incite misbehavior.** Provoking or attempting to rally other users into breaking the rules is not allowed. The same goes for **threatening to break the rules.**
12. **Don't continually request for moderator rights**. After making a request for a certain moderator right, your earnest implore is noted by staff and other members of the community, so don't ask for it again after a short spell if you've failed to gain the right. Such behavior will only express your impatience and will result in general disruption within the wiki.

## Chat

Warnings and blocks work differently in the chat than elsewhere in the wiki. Warnings are almost always verbal, with no messages being left on the offender's talk page. Misbehavior can either be met with a warning, a kick, or a block. Simply due to the nature of the chat, any of the aforementioned three responses can be done, regardless of severity or repetition.

1. Unlike warnings and blocks in chat, the same rules stated above apply. **This means that rules on spam, profanity, and other rules not mentioned in this section are applied to chat.**
	* However, the rule against on-wiki **advertising does not apply in chat**. Links to blog posts are acceptable, but external links to funding websites are not.
2. **Roleplaying is allowed, but everyone in the chat that is active/not AFK must consent that a roleplay will be happening**.
3. **Avoid typing excessive amounts of texts in large font sizes, or hard-to-see colors**.
4. **Don't reveal or discuss spoilers for future episodes.** This includes vote counts, elimination statuses, etc.
5. **Emoticon and colored text usage should be kept to a limit.**

## Users with given powers

**Be aware that even though you have been user-righted, the regular rules still apply to your account.**

1. **Use the powers correctly, and act in good faith.** Blocking is meant to be preventive, not punitive.
2. **Be a good example.** As an administrator, not only protecting your wiki, you need to be a good example for other users to learn and might become a skilled and responsible administrators like you.
3. **Be humble and calm towards users' opinions.** Try not to be aggressive when a user complains about your attitude or actions they see as wrong.
4. **Try to be serious in wiki conflicts.** Administrators, bureaucrats, content & discussion moderators should be serious in social conflicts, vandalism, and other wiki conflicts. Creating, participating, or otherwise encouraging or kicking up a serious issue is highly unacceptable for a user with given powers.
5. **Don't abuse privileges or powers.** Blocking users for no reason or adding unnecessary protection to pages is frowned upon and may lead to privileges being revoked, and it may lead straight to a block, as well.
6. **Block with reason.** Blocking is a serious thing to do to a user to prevent harm to the wiki. Try to leave a given reason that is detailed for the block, especially if the block duration is over 1 month or indefinite.
7. **Make clear statements.**Don't say things which are confusing or have ambiguous meanings. Your statements need to be understood easily by all users, so don't make it harder for them.

These rules belong to BFDI Wiki because I don't know how to make rules.