Blocking is when an administrator stops a user or anonymous editor's IP adress from editing the Flats wiki. The main purpose of blocks are to protect the Flats Wiki, and to stop vandalism and breaking of policy. Administrators are never to exercise their blocking power to resolve a dispute or ban an editor they simply do not like.
The length of a block depends on the severity of the offence, but most blocks will go up to only one month. However, repeated offenders will face longer blocks and even permanent bans if they persist.
Blockable offenses[]
Below is a list of offenses which users can be blocked for. This list is for anyone interested unsure of the grounds for a ban.
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- Vandalism: A very common offence which is intended to lower the quality of pages and the wiki, or to annoy or frustrate editors. Vandalism should be reported to administrators. First time vandalism generally results in a warning for registered users, but can be blockable for anonymous users.
- Blanking: Blanking is deleting large amounts of information from a page. Administrators should be careful when dealing with blanking cases, as users may simply be removing information they believe is unnecessary, or they may think they are deleting a page.
- Creating unnecessary pages: Pages that are unnecessary (i.e already exist under a different title) or are unrelated to the wiki are not allowed to be made and creation of them is a blockable offense. See spam for more information on unrelated pages.
- Adding fanfiction or other untrue information: Any fanfiction or personal stories may not be added to pages, and should instead go on user pages or discussions. Untrue information may not be added to pages, and adding it will result in a small ban.
- Copying and pasting from other websites: All information added to pages must be original and written by the user. Any users who directly copy and paste info from websites (eg. wikipedia) will be blocked.
Personal offenses[]
- Spam: Spamming is repeatedly adding information to pages, discussions or accounts. Examples of spam include: creating unrelated pages (such as advertising), adding redlinks to random words, sending similar or the same message to users over and over again and spamming discussions with useless sentences.
- Inappropriate accounts: Users who have inappropriate usernames or include inappropriate content on their user pages are not accepted on this wiki. Users will be warned to change this or be blocked.
- Disruption/pranking: Users who change comments on talk pages, make useless or misleading edits or change redirects and page names can and will be blocked.
- Personal attacks/bullying: Bullies are users who target other editors with mean or offensive comments relating to their editing or another topic. Bullies will be given one warning and then a ban. Personal attacks made during an edit related argument will be allowed to have a cool down ban of up to one week if the user believes it will help solve the problem. Otherwise, the user will receive a normal ban and will lose trust on the wiki.
- Posting personal information: Users who post personal information will first be asked to remove it before receiving a warning. Repeat offenders will be blocked.
- Editing only user pages: Not a large violation, but repeat offenders will be blocked for a short time.
- Disregarding decisions: The community comes to decisions on new methods of editing and ways of running the wiki. If users violate these decisions they will be blocked.
- Sockepuppetry: The use of multiple accounts to avoid blocks and sway votes.
Punishment[]
Below are several tables of general guidlines for blocking. The final decision, however, lies on the shoulders of an administrator.
General vandalism[]
| User | First Instance |
Second Instance |
Third Instance | Repeated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Registered account | Warning | 1 week | 3 weeks | Infinite |
| Anonymous user | Warning | 48 hours | 1 week | 2 months |
[]
| User | First Instance | Second Instance | Third Instance | Repeated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Registered account | 5 hours | 2 weeks | 2 months | Infinite |
| Anonymous user | Warning | 1 week | 3 weeks | 2 months |
Personal offenses[]
| User | First Instance | Second Instance | Third Instance | Repeated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Registered account |
Warning | 3 days | 2 weeks | 2 months |
| Anonymous user | Warning | 24 hours | 1 week | 1 month |
Note: For the personal guidelines above, administrators can give harsher punishments if they believe the user has committed a particularly bad offense. This will most likely happen for personal attacks.