SmashWiki:Probation
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This page documents an official SmashWiki policy, a widely accepted standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page. |
Probation is a state that users may be placed into should it be decided that they are spending too much of their time in editing their user pages and/or forums without making constructive edits. While under probation, users cannot edit pages in the User: or Forum: namespaces.
Any administrator can request probation of a user once the following criteria are met:
- The user has significantly more user and/or forum edits than other edits (mainspace, template, image, etc).
- The user's constructive edits are not major or significant enough to justify a higher tolerance for user/forum edits.
- The administrator has suitably warned the user to no appreciable improvement.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for determining these thresholds and are considered on a strictly case-by-case basis. During times where the wiki status is a Yellow or Red, the probation criteria are more sensitive, and both warnings and probation applications should be provided earlier.
To request probation of a user, an administrator simply lists the user's name on SmashWiki:Requests for probation in addition to a short description of the user's behaviour and suggested probation duration. If a bureaucrat deems the request valid, the user should be placed into the probation usergroup as soon as possible. Otherwise, the request is tossed out. A rejected RfP does not grant any sort of protection against future RfPs to the user (e.g. there is no delay before another can be submitted), but admins should have a very good reason to bring up a particular user without a suitable delay.
The length of a probation is dependant on the user's history and the current status of the wiki, and is again entirely determined on a case-by-case basis. In many cases, users deemed to have made no effort to contribute will remain on probation indefinitely until they have made a reasonable effort to do so. In a similar way, users with outstanding contributions have more leeway during times of lower status. When the wiki's status is high, users that are being useful contributors may receive a time-limited probation if they are also spending a lot of time in their userspace, with repeat offenders having successive probations of increased lengths.
