User:Pathoschild/Editing policy

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Editing policy

This is a highly speculative draft of a comprehensive editing policy, and is neither policy nor guideline.

Policies
Guidelines

This policy describes rules for editing Wikisource, generally derived from common sense or good practice for the avoidance of disputes and encouraging collaboration. Note that some rules in practice are unwritten, and these should be equally considered (although new editors should not be expected to be familiar with unwritten rules).

Application of this policy[edit]

Administrators are tasked with preventing harm to the project with the ability to block editing access, lock a page from edits, or delete content. The appropriate response is left to the judgment of the individual administrator and that of the entire administrator community. Deliberately violating this policy (or doing so repeatedly after being notified of the violation) is sufficient reason to have editing access revoked.

Actions outside Wikisource may also lead to administrator intervention on Wikisource; for example, you cannot circumvent this policy by sending threatening emails to editors instead of making threatening edits.

Unacceptable behaviour[edit]

In general, editors' behaviour is left to their own judgment and that of the community. However, there are certain behaviours which are specifically prohibited:

All editors[edit]

  • Vandalism is a deliberate attempt to reduce the quality of the project or a text, as by inserting obscenities or inaccuracies, or blanking pages.
  • Disruption is any edit that deliberately or persistently harms the collaborative nature of the project (or attempts to). This includes...
    • deliberately or repeatedly violating policy;
    • creating user names that are obscene, confusingly similar to an existing editor's name, or that implies a connection to or representation of an organization or project;
    • misleadingly changing users' signatures, harassment, or impersonation.
  • Copyright violation, plagiarism, and fair use (regulated by the Copyright policy).
  • The use of unauthorized scripts to automate rapid or numerous edits (regulated by the Bot policy).
  • The use of open or anonymizing proxies (regulated by the Open proxy policy).
  • Revert warring is the repeated, deliberate removal of another user's good-faith edits with no consideration for dispute resolution. While it is acceptable to revert an edit if there is good reason to (such as violating policy or guidelines), users should be ready to provide an explanation.

    An administrator may halt continuous revert warring by locking the page from edits or blocking the users' edit access. There is no specific threshold— for example, a single revert may be revert warring if done aggressively, while reverting a dozen vandal edits is not. Individual cases are up to the consideration of the intervening administrator and the community.

  • Personal attacks are any edit or action intended to endanger, intimidate, threaten, insult, denigrate, or coerce another user. No excuse is acceptable for doing so, as this seriously harms the collaborative nature of the project.
  • Posting private information about other users without their consent is a violation of their privacy. Such information may be deleted and the posting user blocked if necessary. (This does not apply to the use of the restricted checkuser tool to deal with abuse.)
  • Creating secondary accounts for the purpose of circumventing a legitimate block or skewing discussion by assuming multiple identities.

Administrators[edit]

  • The use of administrator tools to gain advantage in a dispute over valid content or behaviour is prohibited. Extreme caution should be exercised before blocking users who may be acting in good faith.
  • Admin warring is the contradictory use of restricted tools by multiple administrator in a dispute or contest, such as repeatedly deleting and undeleting a page. This is strictly prohibited, and may result in immediate removal of administrator access until such behaviour has been corrected.