Board Thread:Administration/@comment-4832646-20140424192419

Whilst I was browsing around (it's been a lazy day) here and a couple other places (Community Central and Tardis Data Core) I noticed something. We lack a proper Vandalism Policy. Vandalism, being as broad as it is, I feel needs a more specific definition than the wiki-broad definition given by Help:Vandalism, so I wrote up a ruleset draft for a Vandalism policy.

So here it is.

Vandalism is the conspicuous defacement or destruction of an unprotected article. On this wiki, it will not be tolerated and will be met with swift – and severe – action. On this wiki, Vandalism is considered doing the following, including but not limited to:

Articles
'Note: Making edits to correct awkward phrasing, spelling, grammar, etc. IS NOT vandalism. Quite the opposite; it is helpful. Vandalism is destructive editing.'
 * Adding unconstructive words/pictures/objects to an article.
 * Blanking content from an article.
 * Replacing a story/article with your own.
 * Spamming an article.
 * Replacing content in an article without author permission.
 * Replacing content in an article with something that violates Wikia’s Terms of Use..

Heavily Vandalized Pages

 * After a page has been vandalized a minimum of five (5) times, it is to be protected for a temporary time of two (2) weeks.


 * If the vandalism continues, the page may be permanently protected.

User Pages

 * If you are not that user, you cannot edit their page without permission or they have broken a form of rule (example; posting NSFW content, a story, etc.) Then you may remove it.
 * The same general rules on articles are also applied.

User talk Pages

 * Just because it has your name on it doesn’t make it your talk page. Blanking a message from your talk page can be considered vandalous. It’s still a record, not your own public messaging system.
 * Changing someone else’s message or altering it can most definitely be considered malicious. You could turn someone from a reasonable person into an attack dog. Also, removing offensive comments can cause it to be harder for an admin to intervene.
 * You can archive your talk page using a subpage to your User Talk space, but you may not simply blank it. It can be a useable record in the future.
 * This being said, you may alter your own comments.

Forums

 * Removing replies that are legitimate to the post is considered vandalous as it disrupts the flow of the discussion.
 * Removing in-session forum threads is considered vandalous as well.
 * Altering a quote box in your own reply is not only vandalous, it’s stupid. The original reply will still be there. Correcting things like spelling is excusable, but changing the wording to take the quote from context is not.

Administrative Response
As stated, this is considered a very severe offense. If you vandalize, you will be blocked for:
 * 2 weeks, first offense.
 * 1 month, second offense.
 * 2 months, third offense.
 * 6 months, fourth offense.
 * Since it’s obvious you won’t learn anything, indefinitely on the fifth offense.

Note that the times are dynamic and can depend strongly on the severity of the vandalism. These are only the general block lines for a medium case of vandalism.

'Note: Vandalism on User/Talk/forums is a broad range for block guidelines. A user who blanks because they said something silly hardly deserves the same punishment as someone who replaces the entirety of someone else’s user page with the word “poop”. For this reason, the administrator should fully investigate the situation in the event of extremely minor vandalism and distribute the punishment they deem appropriate.'

'Nevertheless, User/talk page/forum vandalism should be considered “less significant” than that of an article’s. Minimum punishments can be a simple warning to keep things civil. On the other hand, users can be blocked as per the guidelines. Example, the user replacing the user page with “poop” can be blocked for two weeks.'

So, how does this sound? 