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Sam & Cat Wiki Policies
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Required

  • Listen to the administrator team (including content/discussion moderators acting within their scope of their authority).
  • Be kind and respectful.
  • Any edit made needs to improve the page.
  • Canon articles are for verified facts only, not opinions. Opinion is allowed in fanon articles.
  • Follow the Layout Guide to keep the article layouts consistent.
  • Include references that follow our Verifiability policy.

Recommendations

  • Ask for help if you need it. You may ask any administrator or moderator for help by leaving a message on their message wall.
  • Preview before publishing. This allows you to pick up on minor errors such as red links and spelling mistakes that you can fix before publishing.
  • Use the preloaded templates when creating pages. It makes the editing guides easier to follow.
  • Use a neutral point of view when editing. For example, instead of writing "Shane is insanely cute and has really nice hair", you can write "Carly finds Shane's hair attractive". Shipping pages don't need to be neutral with regard to shipping.
  • Include an edit summary, especially if you are making an edit where the intent may not be clear (e.g. removing large amounts of information).
  • Use {{cite}} and {{verify}} templates to indicate information that needs citation or verification. Note that these templates should only be used if it is probable that the information is accurate. If not, the information should be removed.
  • Be careful about giving out personal information, such as your like age, location and phone number.
  • Report policy violations. You may do so by leaving a message on an administrator's message wall.
  • Help newbies learn how we do things. Everyone was new once, and friendly advice on how we do things helps them contribute more effectively. Be careful not to mini-mod, however.
  • If you have an editing disagreement with another user and you can't resolve it with them, ask an administrator for help.
  • If you would like to express your opinions, start a conversation or introduce yourself, please do so on comments, messages, or blogs.

Discouraged

  • Use of all caps. Using caps for emphasis or for abbreviations is fine, but an entire sentence in all caps loses its effect and gives the impression that you are shouting.
  • Mini-modding. Friendly advice to newbies about how we do things is fine, provided it's not done in a manner that conveys a false sense of authority or criticizes a user's social (i.e. non article-editing) conduct.

Prohibited

There are 4 categories of behavior that are prohibited:

  • Harming articles or the wiki in general
  • Making contributing to the wiki unpleasant for others
  • Posting explicit content
  • Gaming the system

Any behavior that falls under these categories is prohibited, and may result in a block. Below are examples of prohibited conduct. Note that this list is non exhaustive; any behavior which does any of the 4 things listed above is prohibited. Not being on the following list is not a defense for disruptive behavior.

Harming articles or the wiki in general

  • Failing/refusing to do anything listed in the Required section
  • Vandalism. This includes removing content without a valid reason, deliberately adding false information, inserting nonsense/gibberish into articles, renaming a page to an irrelevant/inappropriate name and spamming.
  • Creating irrelevant articles or mass uploading irrelevant files
  • Spam in comments, messages, discussions or on the wiki Discord server. Spam includes:
    • posting specific words, images or links excessively
    • posting nonsense
    • the promotion of scams
    • posting anything repeatedly or excessively
  • Inserting unsourced/badly sourced content
  • Making mass or automated edits without permission.
    • Note: This does not apply to staff or SOAP.
  • Removing warnings from your message wall.
  • Making unconstructive edits.
  • Using an inappropriate or offensive username on the wiki or the Discord server.
  • Impersonating other users or famous people
  • Editing the profiles of other users. In general, user profiles should be left alone, except for the following scenarios:
    • The user profile contains inappropriate or offensive content.
    • The user profile contains an image or link that has been renamed/deleted.
    • The user profile contains broken code.
    • The user profile contains templates and/or categories that don't belong on profiles. For example, a user profile should not be categorized as a character.
    • You have permission from the user to edit their profile.
    • If you see a profile with relatively minor issues, such as a typo, please discuss this with the user first.

Making contributing to the wiki unpleasant for others

  • Insulting or belittling other users. This includes rudeness, insults, name-calling, gross profanity or indecent suggestions.
  • Discriminating against others for any reason. Examples of violations include, but are not limited to:
    • Slurs, personal attacks and language that mocks, disparages, or incites hatred or violence toward a person or a group of people based on gender, race, orientation, nationality, religion, ability, mental health, etc.
  • Intimidation or harassment. This includes
    • Threats of violence or other off-wiki action (particularly death threats).
    • Threats or actions which deliberately expose other users to persecution by their employer, their school or any others parties.
    • Attempts to intimidate
    • Breach of privacy by sharing personal information about another user such as their real name, age, residence, etc without their explicit consent.
    • Repeatedly messaging users and ignoring their request to be left alone (does not apply to warnings)
    • Aggressive behavior
  • Using sexually suggestive or obscene language that is directed towards another person
  • Disruptive behavior. Disruption includes:
    • Trolling
    • Making comments or sending messages with the intent of angering or offending other users
    • Feigning severe health issues and/or death
    • Engaging in heated arguments or being intentionally mean spirited
    • Making comments likely to start fights, especially if done repeatedly
    • Engaging in drama, especially repeatedly
    • Low intensity rudeness that dances on the line of being actionable. Minor instances that are one off may be overlooked, but a pattern of such behavior will be dealt with.
  • Soliciting or spreading the personal information of users. Personal information that may arise in a friendly discussion is fine. Directly asking someone, especially a user that you are not familiar with, for their personal information in not allowed.
  • Bashing any character, cast, crew member or ship.
  • Edit warring, particularly after being told to stop by an administrator or content moderator. Reverting policy violations is NOT considered edit warring.
  • Non administrators interfering with administrator business. Reporting policy violations is fine, but getting involved in administrative matters one has nothing to do with is not.
  • Mini-modding to the extent it causes (or has a reasonable likelihood of causing) drama and arguments, particularly if it conveys a false sense of authority or criticizes a user's social (i.e. non article editing) conduct. Problematic behavior should be reported to an administrator.
  • Toxic behavior. A good rule of thumb is that behavior is toxic if it makes a reasonable person less inclined to participate on the wiki because they don't want to deal the behavior in question. Examples include but are not limited to:
    • Treating someone poorly, targeting them, or trying to silence them because of perceived social status
    • Stalking a user's contributions with the intention of "tripping them up", even if they turn out to be guilty of policy violations. Excessive focus on a certain user, particularly a user one has a history with, will be treated as evidence of this.
    • False accusations against any user, administrator, or moderator
    • Attempting to bait a user into misbehavior, successful or not
    • Constantly bringing up an argument or complaint after being told to drop it
    • Gaming the system to pursue a vendetta against another user (see Gaming the system below for more details on gaming the system in general)

Posting explicit content

  • Posting or linking to mature, explicit, shocking or hateful content. Examples include, but are not limited to:
    • Posting images, audio clips, videos or graphic textual descriptions of shocking or inappropriate sexual content.
    • Posting images, audio clips, videos or graphic textual descriptions of violence or gore.

Gaming the system

  • Trying to use the letter of a policy to violate its spirit
  • Bad faith and/or intellectually dishonest arguments to push a personal agenda at odds with fairness, community health, and good content. Examples include:
    • Cherry picking certain parts of an incident with the intention avoiding consequences and/or getting an opponent blocked
    • Selectively invoking policy, facts, or principles to push a desired outcome
    • Trying to get a user one dislikes blocked, particularly if it's persistent and/or the requester has unclean hands
  • Rules lawyering to attempt to justify disruptive behavior
  • Sock/meat puppetry. This includes using alternative accounts to evade bans, troll, or sway a vote. Sock and meat puppets may be blocked permanently and the master will be held responsible for any policy violations the puppet accounts engage in, as well the sock/meat violation itself.
    • Alternative accounts for the purposes of testing or making bot edits (with administrator permission) are allowed, however, this intent should be made clear.

Administrator discretion

  • Blogs can be created for a variety of purposes, such as sharing news, making announcements, starting discussions, sharing fanfiction or screenplays and hosting community activities. Blogs that are insubstantial, incomprehensible, offend users, or single out individual users may be deleted.
  • Personal images of users, or unused images may be deleted.
  • Vandalism and unconstructive edits are subject to reversion. Pages that are the target of vandalism and/or unconstructive edits may be protected at the discretion of an administrator or moderator.
  • Unconstructive and/or forked message threads may be locked at the discretion of an administrator or moderator.
    • Unconstructive message threads are message threads where the primary purpose is for users to bicker, harass, spam and/or engage in disruptive behavior.
    • Forked message threads refers to situations where one conversation has been split into multiple message threads. For the sake of clarity, additional message threads may be locked so that the conversation can continue in one message thread.
  • Basic principles of fairness will be applied to any conflicts that arise.
  • Warnings will be used if there's reason to believe the user is operating in good faith, but they're not a prerequisite for blocking.
  • The whole of a user's contributions will be taken into account when deciding how to handle policy violations.
  • Policy violations will handled with a view toward stopping the problem and maintaining the health of the community, rather than imposing a one size fits all solution.
  • Accounts that exist primarily or solely to disrupt the site, break policy, attack the community, or push content that's been rejected may be permanently blocked with or without warning.
  • While off wiki behavior generally isn't actionable on wiki, it may be used as context for behavior on wiki. In extreme cases including but not limited to cross wiki vandalism and raids it maybe be directly blockable. Discord is an exception to this, as the iCarly Wiki Discord will be treated as part of the wiki.
  • The spirit of the policies will be emphasized over the letter. Trying to find loopholes will be treated as gaming the system. General disruption is blockable, regardless of whether the particular method of disruption is listed as prohibited.
  • Block lengths are decided by the blocking administrator.

Use common sense. Not every situation may be covered by these rules. The spirit of this policy will be followed. Atypical situations will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Attempting to circumvent these policies with loopholes will not be tolerated.

These rules are necessary to protect everyone and to make sure this wiki is a friendly environment.
If you have any questions or concerns about these policies feel free to leave a message on an administrator's message wall.

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