The Owl House Wiki:Staff Guidelines

This page is the list of guidelines for wiki staff members.

General rules

• Admins are not to abuse their powers in any way. Their actions should only be to benefit the wiki and not themselves. Administrators are in no way above normal users on the wiki, and are simply users entrusted with powerful editing tools. If an admin is caught abusing their powers, they will be demoted and potentially blocked depending on the severity of the situation.
• Users may not enforce the rules. Warning users in the stead of an administrator or moderator is considered mini-modding, and is against the rules for any user. If a rule violation is found, users should report the violation to an administrator or moderator so the user can be warned properly.
• Before making changes, consult with other staff members. If you plan to make changes to the wiki interface design, adding CSS or JavaScript codes, change the formatting of articles, or anything else like that, remember to consult with staff members first.

Block Policy

A staff member is within their right as an administrator of this Wiki to block any users being harmful, disruptive, or failure to follow the regulations.

Generally, users are blocked for the following reasons:

• Breaking the rules: Most rule breaks result in a warning thread on a user's message wall to ensure the user should not break the rules again. The admin can send another warning if necessary before proceeding with a limited block.
• Disruptive behavior: Depending on the frequency and the extent of offending behavior, being disruptive on the wiki may range a block duration from a day to weeks with a warning beforehand. Hate speech and any forms of racism and discrimination are not tolerated and will result in an infinite block without warning.
• Being under the legal age: In compliance with COPPA and Fandom's Terms of Use, being under the Internet consent age in your local area will result in a block and report to Fandom Staff; this will last until you are of age.
• Sockpuppetry: Evading a block with another account will result in the extension of that block; continued evasion may result in an infinite block without warning.
• Vandalism, spamming, and trolling: Do not ruin the experience of editors and readers, it will result in an infinite block without warning.

In the event of a misunderstanding or misinterpretation, we allow for the user who received the block to testify their block to the blocking administrator, who will then discuss it with the other admins to see if it truly was a mistake.

Attempting to evade your block by creating alternate accounts will result in its extension.

To testify your block, proof must be shown that the user was being abusive or that it was a misunderstanding. Preferably, a screen shot, a url link, or other form of evidence should be provided. Spreading false information will make your claim null and void, and may even get your account blocked or the ban extended.

Deletion Policy

There are a few, limited, special cases where pages may be deleted speedily or files "on sight". Users can ask for an admin or content moderator to delete such a page (mainspace, user blog, file) simply by adding a {{Delete}} tag. Discussions moderators can only delete comments.

A list of pages to be deleted can be found at Category:Candidates for deletion.

When deleting, check the page history first to see if you can revert to an older version instead of deleting the entire page.

Deleted articles are automatically listed in the deletion log.

Criteria of candidates for speedy deletion

• No meaningful or relevant content or history (e.g. random characters, spam).
• Copyright violation.
• Pure vandalism (see also dealing with vandalism).
• Very short pages with little context (Requires votes from the Move Content discussion).
• Lengthy pages where content was split into multiple pages (Requires votes from the Split Content discussion).
• Reposted content that was already deleted according to policy.
• Inappropriate content.
• Broken redirects or ones caused by typos during a page move.
• Duplicate images, pages, or comments.
• Off-topic or pages that are unrelated to the wiki.
• Housekeeping purposes. (i.e. deleting unused files or redirects, redirected files, empty categories, etc.)
• User blog, sandbox page, or comment on request of the user, where there is no administrative need to retain the page.
• Any reason that breaks from the rules page or article and images guidelines not listed from above.

Protection Policy

Administrators and Content Moderators can protect and unprotect pages, including ones that do not exist. Protection of a page or image usually means that a regular user cannot modify it.

The majority of pages on this Wikia should remain unprotected. All pages and files on this wiki have renaming permissions disabled for non-staff users. Pages that are permanently protected on this wiki are the proper display of the wiki: the Main Page, the Theme Designer and interface images, policy pages, and templates used on the articles. There may also be cases where the page is temporarily or permanently protected for legal reasons (for example, license texts should not be changed) or in cases of extreme vandalism or edit warring or abusive re-creation.

Protection uses

• Protecting highly vandalised pages, such as the Main Page on large wikis.
• Maintaining the integrity of the site's logo and favicon.
• Maintaining the integrity of key copyright and license pages.
• Preventing repeatedly created vandal or spam pages from creation. See Special:Protectedtitles
• Protecting the interface and system messages in the MediaWiki namespace (these are protected automatically)

A temporary protection is used for:

• Enforcing a "cool down" period to stop an "edit war", upon request.
• Protecting a page or image that has been a recent target of persistent vandalism or persistent edits by a banned user.
• Episodes not yet aired or leaked.
• A topic that has had important revelations or events recently in the show. This is done in order to avoid speculation, false information, or comments of any kind.

There is no need to protect personal .css and .js pages like user/monobook.css or user/cologneblue.js. Only the accounts associated with these pages (and admins) are able to edit them. (For more information on using these pages, see Help:User style)

Protection types

Most pages and images are unprotected by default, only the site logo and favicons are automatically protected. You can protect editing, moving, or both by checking or unchecking the Unlock move permissions selection box.

• (default) means any user can edit or move the page.
• Block new and unregistered users, or semi-protected, means new accounts less than 4 days old cannot edit and/or move pages. They have to be autoconfirmed.
• Administrators and Content Moderators only, or fully protected, means only administrators and content moderators may edit and/or move the page.

Pages can also be cascade protected, this will cause all images, pages, or templates transcluded onto the page to be fully protected, even if the main article is only semi-protected.

Protection rules

• Do not make the common mistake of protecting pages unnecessarily.
• Avoid editing a temporarily protected page, except to add a notice explaining that the page is protected or to fix a formatting or grammar error.
• Do not protect a page you are involved in an edit dispute over. Admin and content mod powers are not editor privileges.
• Avoid favoring one version of the article over another, unless one version is vandalism.
• Temporarily protected pages should not be left protected for very long.
• The protection of a page on any particular version is not meant to express support for that version and requests should therefore not be made that the protected version be reverted to a different one.

See also

• Help:Wiki Rules and Blocking Policy