Bulbapedia:Userspace policy: Difference between revisions

This article is an official policy on Bulbapedia. Its contents are strongly binding and can be considered law on Bulbapedia.

Bulbapedia's userspace policy is a binding contract on Bulbapedia. By having a Bulbapedia account you are agreeing to follow this policy in your editing. It aims to promote constructive editing of our encyclopedia, and minimize server stress from unnecessary edits.

In a nutshell, it explains that you cannot edit your userpage too often, or include certain prohibited content (listed below). Users who break this rule may find they lose the ability to edit their userpage. New users must have completed a set number of mainspace edits before they can create their userpage.

Currently, the limit on userpage editing is three edits per person per day.

Background

Bulbapedia is primarily an informational encyclopedia. In spite of that, our editors each have their own "userspace" where they may add any kind of content they please (within reason). However, in 2008 more editors were using Bulbapedia as a social site like Facebook, rather than editing the Bulbapedia articles. This resulted in a complete lockdown of the userspace: nobody could edit their userpages.

Later that year, the ability to edit the userspace was returned with the condition that users do not edit excessively. Content was also controlled quite strongly: Bulbapedians are encouraged to use the Bulbagarden Forums for most non-pedia topics. These conditions are still in place to this day; breaking them may result in your account being blocked and the offending pages deleted.

Due to server strain following the English-language release of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, the userspace was limited strictly to one edit, and then later three edits, per person per day.

Warnings

Warnings will be issued to users who edit their userspace excessively. While the definition of "excessive" is up to the person who sees this, a guideline would be seeing multiple edits to the same or multiple userpages within a very short timeframe. If a user has done this, they will be given their first warning, which instructs them to not edit the userspace so much and to use the preview button.

Blatant disregard for the first warning leads to a second, then to a third, and if the user continues despite the repeated warnings, loss of the ability to edit userpages. Rather than do this, Bulbapedia has a social forum, as well as blogs, for the details of its users' everyday lives, found in the Bulbawiki forum link on the sidebar.

Content

This is fairly standard. Obviously, no pornographic material is allowed in any form, as this is a website frequented by children. Additionally, none of the following are tolerated on subpages in any way, shape, or form.

• Games (such as "find the picture with the subheader under it")
• Missions (such as "Go through the 'maze' of subpages to reach the end and find the Shiny Psyduck!")
• Riddles (self-explanatory)
• Fan fiction (this can be submitted on the Bulbagarden forums)
• Friend pages (the Bulbagarden forums have their own friend lists)
• User created awards (can be considered a form of friend listing, as well as a mockery of the official Golden Bulbasaur Award)
• FAQ pages (self-explanatory)
• Spoofing the MediaWiki interface (fake "new messages" boxes or other system-generated messages are disallowed)
• Anything else deemed inappropriate by the Editorial board will be deleted as well. If you feel your material was taken down unreasonably or in error, contact whoever did it for their reasoning. Contact a staff member if you want to know if something not specified here is allowed or not: they are all here to help.

Content deletion

Users at administrator level or above have the authority to delete any content they feel is breaching the userspace policy. Offenders will generally be given a day or two to "rescue" their content and save it somewhere that isn't on Bulbapedia.

If you wish to have your own content deleted (one or two pages), simply tag the page with {{delete}}. If you wish to delete multiple pages (such as a collection of sandbox pages) then contact an active administrator, bureaucrat or Editorial Board member on their talk page. This will reduce edits and save the list of recent changes from temporarily being spammed.

Circumventing the userspace policy

A user breaches the userspace policy when he or she attempts to avoid the restrictions on userspace content by:

• Creating a page in the mainspace;
• Treating their talk page as an area for personal content (a two sentence blurb is fine provided you don't keep editing it excessively; posting teams or usertags on your talk page is not);
• Asking another user to edit for them; or
• Creating additional accounts and editing personal content with that account.

Content in breach of the policy will be deleted.

Other users' pages

Userpages are personal pages, and are not to be edited by other users unless prior permisson has been given. Instances in which this is permitted include, but are not limited to, broken links that appear on the wanted pages, duplicate images on the Archives, uncategorizing a userpage categorized in a category it should clearly not be in, reverting vandalism, etc. Spelling mistakes, however, and other minor things like this that do not affect the overall running of Bulbapedia are to be left untouched. If a change you wish to make to another user's page does not fall under one of the above categories, ask an administrator or that user for permission. Please also note this permission in the edit summary.

In conclusion

Bulbapedia is an encyclopedia, not a social networking site. If you want to chronicle every aspect of your life, get a Facebook. If you'd like to help make Bulbapedia the best Pokémon resource on the internet, leave the userspace alone and help out!

See also

• Bulbapedia:Namespace