Avatar Roleplay Wiki:Our Policies/General

Announcements and Highlighted Threads
Out of common courtesy, users are to refrain from using profane language on announcements and threads, as they are professional discussions and should be treated seriously. Users are, however, still allowed to curse in chat and during roleplay within reason.

Advertising and Spamming
Advertising wikias outside of the ARPW in chat is not allowed without prior permission from the staff. First violations will usually be dealt with a warning, later offenses will lead to bans. Staff can be contacted in order to arrange affiliation with the ARPW, affiliate websites must be active, have been active for at least a month and contain at least 50 articles. Spamming, and advertising completely irrelevant websites is prohibited, and will be immediately removed by staff. Spamming is when a non-constructive and/or pointless message is being posted on several talk pages or even forums, and the user posting it doesn't comply to stop.
 * First Offense: Warning
 * Second Offense: 24 Hour Ban
 * Third Offense: 1 Week Ban
 * Fourth Offense: 1 Month Ban
 * Fifth Offense: Permanent Ban

Code Theft
While most code and templates, if not all of them, are freely available for users on the ARPW, we ask that users make sure that the code is allowed to be used first. Typically this will include a personal message from the author, or simply its presence as a widely-used template on the site. Some templates may be kept from public use due to it being in an unfinished state, or overly complex and not considered easily usable by regular users.

False Legal Claim
All content on the ARPW is protected by the CC-BY-SA license, as this is Free Content which may be reused and redistributed by anyone. Attempts to copyright, trademark or legally claim original content added to the ARPW will be considered a major breach of policy and an assault on the wiki itself. Failure to withdraw a false claim on original content will result in an immediate permanent ban.
 * First Offense: Permanent Ban

Offensive Username
An offensive username is when a user's screen name includes vulgarity, blatant insults to pages and/or users, or spamming. A user is free to make a replacement account, however, their previous account will be permanent blocked on the ARPW.
 * First Offense: Permanent Ban

Personal Attacks and Disruptive Articles
Users that constantly feel the need to harass other users to can cause heated arguments. This can include angry or harmful messages on walls for any reason, which will be considered a personal attack on the user. Creating articles for the purpose of disruption is when a user creates an article for the purpose of being offensive.
 * First Offense: Warning
 * Second Offense: Warning
 * Third Offense: 24 Hour Ban
 * Fourth Offense: 1 Week Ban
 * Fifth Offense: 1 Month Ban
 * Sixth Offense: Permanent Ban

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the direct copy pasting of another user's work without permission and claiming it as one's own, including articles and images.
 * First Offense: Warning
 * Second Offense: 1 Week Ban
 * Third Offense: Permanent Ban

Approved Templates
To avoid broken coding or theft of templates from other wikis, articles (pages for characters, factions, locations, pets and so on) and word bubbles may only be coded with one of our approved templates.

Sockpuppetry
The term sockpuppet refers to when a person uses one or more accounts with the intent to conceal their true identity or avoid the restrictions placed upon a previous account. There are user levels which determine the amount of characters you may have at one time, which are account-specific. Due to this, sockpuppetry is a major offense as it is unfair to others. There is no lenience on this issue and you well be dealt with if caught. There are only two exceptions to when a sockpuppet account is acceptable; if you cannot gain access to your old account or have chosen to make a new account with a new name. However, you are required inform staff of your previous account with ARPW, so that the relevant ranks and assets can be transferred. Failure to inform staff of account changes will be held considered sockpuppetry. While this exception is tolerated within reason, if you are constantly making new accounts, you will be told to stop.

Staff may have a second account for bot maintenance of the wiki, however, the bot account may not have a user level or take part in normal community actions. Bot accounts must have a "Bot" flag on their page, which can be requested from Wikia.

Using a sockpuppet account to bypass a ban on a primary account is considered especially grievous, and will lead to an immediate permanent ban of the sockpuppet account and a potential revision of the ban facing the primary account.
 * First Offense: Permanent Ban

Vandalism
Vandalism is any kind of deconstructive editing to an article, user page, talk page, forum or template. This includes page blanking (deliberately blanking a page that was not created by them for no good reason) and page moving (deliberately moves a page that is not their own to something else, not in good faith or for their own advantage). Vandalism is not to be confused with mistaken editing and staff must ensure that the edit was made maliciously.
 * First Offense: Warning
 * Second Offense: 1 Week Ban
 * Third Offense: 1 Month Ban
 * Fourth Offense: Permanent Ban

Permanent Bans
Users who are permanently banned lose all characters and assets (location pages, event points, factions and so on). Lost characters may be adopted by current users, or their images reused for new characters. Faction-specific assets may be given to a specific user(s) either through adoption, or by a prearranged agreement. Unclaimed characters and assets will be left in an archived state until claimed or otherwise. Event and probending points are deleted and not redistributed, unless by a prearranged agreement.

Chat Warnings
Upon committing an offense in chat, a user will be given a verbal warning, potentially more depending on the lenience of the chat moderator. If the user does not comply to the warning, further actions will be taken.

Normal Warnings
Upon breaking any policy that doesn't have its own standards, a user will be given a direct warning posted on their message wall. The user will receive three warnings overall, any further transgressions will result in a ban from the wiki. Warnings are permanent and are not to be removed. Removal of a warning will result in an extra warning.

User Levels
On the wiki, there are six stages of user levels: Entry Level and Levels 1-5. Information on each user level is listed below.
 * Entry Level: Achieved upon the approval of your first character citizenship application. No rights. One character slot in total.
 * Level 1: Achieved 15 days after the approval of your first character citizenship application. No rights. Three character slots in total.
 * Level 2: Achieved 30 days after the approval of your first character citizenship application. No rights. Five character slots in total.
 * Level 3: Achieved 45 days after the approval of your first character citizenship application. May start and participate in votes. Seven character slots in total.
 * Level 4: Achieved 60 days after the approval of your first character citizenship application. May start and participate in votes. Nine character slots in total.
 * Level 5: Achieved 90 days after the approval of your first character citizenship application. May start and participate in votes. Twelve character slots in total.

User Activity
We also try to keep the activity level of all of our users up to date. There are three levels of activity as used by this wiki: Active, Semi-Active and Inactive. Information on each activity level will be listed below.
 * Active: These users are fully active and may participate in votes.
 * Semi-Active: These users are can only manage an edit a couple times a month but may go inactive at any time. They may not take part in votes until becoming fully active, and will be flagged as Inactive users after 31+ days of inactivity.
 * Inactive: These users are completely inactive and have no made an edit on the wiki in 31+ days. Characters and other assets belonging to inactives users are archived and left unused (unless special provisions were made in case of the owner’s absence). If they should return, their pages can be restored and they can be bumped up to either of the other activity levels.

Wiki “activity” is strictly measured by RP participation: a user who frequently RPs is considered an active users, whereas a user who has not taken part in an RP for over 31+ days is considered inactive. While editing regular articles removes the automatic inactivity tag, users must still RP before being classed as active before the staff re-categorise them as active.

Staff
We have four different types of staff members on the wiki each with different standards and responsibilities. They are known as Moderators, Rollbacks, Administrators, and Bureaucrats. In order to become a staff member, you must be at least an active Level 3 user and apply for a position. Advancement typically goes Moderator, Rollback, Administrator, Bureaucrat, though in some cases some staff may be eligible for double promotion. In order to access certain pages, bots may be granted staff powers by extension of their owner’s rank. Should the staff member lose their power, their bot will be demoted accordingly.
 * Moderators: Moderators are users who have the powers of Chat, Discussion and Content moderators. They have the ability to remove/restore threads and replies from any user, close/reopen threads, manage forum boards, move threads from one board to another, highlight/un-highlight threads, deleting blog comments, edit/delete article comments and moderate chat, as well as delete/move pages, deleting/moving files, re-upload files, protect/un-protect pages, and moderating chat. Moderators are the lowest ranking staff members of the community, and are entrusted with smaller-scale issues, such as commenting on applications, tracking user ranks, and helping users out with low-level problems.
 * Rollback: Rollbacks are users who have worked as Moderators for an extended period of time and have shown a good track record in their work. As such, they have all the powers of a moderator, as well as the rollback ability, which can undo a large number of malicious edits on pages. They have seniority over moderators and are trusted to handle issues that moderators cannot.
 * Administrators: As the second in commands of this wikia, these members of the staff are crucial. Administrators have the ability to ban users who are in breach of policy outside of chat, along with the full suite of powers that the rollbacks and moderators have. They are also tasked with making alterations to restricted pages, including css and javascript pages, modifying wikia features, as well as approving or rejecting applications.
 * Bureaucrats: The highest ranking users of the wiki, bureaucrats are primarily responsible for managing the staff themselves and have the ability to promote and demote other admin-level users. They also carry out regular duties like admins, such as code maintenance, content upkeep and user management.

Staff Inactivity
Staff members who go inactive and do not provide a valid excuse before or after their inactivity will be automatically demoted to normal users. In some cases a user may be reinstated if able to present a valid reason for their inactivity, or agree it with the rest of the staff beforehand.

Specialists
Some admin and bureaucrats may have a “Specialist” tag to denote their personally preferred area of expertise. This may include titles such as “Technical Specialists”, who prefer to work on CSS, JS and template pages, or “Community Specialists”, who focus more on user-created content and running events. These tags are mainly for show, and do not denote rank.

Staff Code of Conduct
Every staff member on the ARPW has the obligation to act responsibly and within the limits of the policy. Abusing power, or breaking policy will not be tolerated for any staff member, regardless of their position. Staff who are found to be in breach of the code of conduct may be subject to a demotion vote, or immediate demotion in severe cases. Other penalties may include a temporary probationary period, during which the staff member may be demoted immediately if found to be in breach of policy again. Users who are found to be subject to unfair penalties are to have their bans or warnings revoked.

Faction Leadership
Users who take part in factions are expected to follow and uphold its values, characters in factions should behave according to the faction’s principles: RCPD members are expected to uphold the law and refrain from illegal activity, Faceless members are expected to keep a low profile and work as a guerilla-style group, and so on. Going against a faction’s core principles (e.g. killing innocent citizens while working for the RCPD) is grounds for immediate removal from the faction.

Each faction can appoint a character to lead them, it is therefore by proxy, down to the user who owns that character to run faction. A faction leader may choose how the faction should act in general, as well as potential other sub-positions within it, and manage their assets. Faction leaders have the right to dismiss characters from their ranks, but this cannot be done lightly. A faction leader must have sufficient reason to dismiss characters, and their decisions can be challenged by a faction-wide vote, involving all users who are listed as active members. The vote follows normal rules and must reach 2/3 for a decision to be made. In the event of a tie, the issue can be taken to staff.

Faction leadership may be given away or traded to another user as they see fit. Typically this may include exchanging leadership for Event Points. 10 EP is a recommended price for a faction that already has the an existing userbase, description page and locations.