Assassin's Creed Wiki:Blocking Policy

Blocking is the technical means by which a user account is prevented from editing on the Assassin's Creed Wiki or posting on the Discussions board. A block on a user account in standard cases equates to a ban on the individual's continued contribution to the wiki and participation in the community. The removal of a block likewise signifies the lifting of a ban. The two concepts are thus intertwined and generally synonymous. For the sake of consistency, an indefinite block on the wiki also corresponds to a ban on the wiki's Discord server and vice versa.

Blocks are enacted as a preventative measure against disruption of the wiki and as a protective measure of its community members from bullying, harassment, and violence. As such, the blocking of an account is intended as the banning of its user, and any subsequent account created by the user carries the track record of behaviours, offences, and interactions with the community under their previous account. It is typically enacted at the discretion of administrators in accordance with the community guidelines and the rules spelled out below, but the community may also decide by consensus that a sufficiently disruptive user should be blocked.

The standard process of blocking follows a moderation track of increasing levels of severity designed to accommodate honest mistakes and give users chances to improve. Administrators and moderators should be guided by the principle of assuming good faith and remember that contributors undergo a learning process in wiki editing and norms, and individuals with a conflictual history still have the potential to grow as people and may very well do so given time and patience.

At the same time, trolls and malicious actors do exist, and it is in the rights of administrators and moderators to evaluate users with a persistent or exclusive record of disruption or attempts to exploit the system as acting in bad faith and in extreme cases, a danger to others. Consequently, certain categories of offences warrant immediate bans without warning, skipping over the moderation track.

Moderation track

The four stages of the moderation track are:

1. First official warning – a 1-week block and a {{Warn1}} notice.
2. Second official warning – a 1-month block and a {{Warn2}} notice.
3. Final warning – a 3-month block and a {{Warn3}} notice.
4. Ban – an infinite block and a {{Blocked}} notice.

A user who has received an official warning is moved up the track with repeated offences or resistance to the warning. Resistance may be failure to correct the behaviour, but replying to the warning and block notice with defiance, a non-apology apology, or by personally attacking the issuer or other users is grounds for an immediate escalation to the next level block, with the duration added cumulatively. Replying with intimidation, a slur, or a threat is grounds for an immediate indefinite block.

Time-outs

In addition to these four stages, shorter duration blocks of either 1 day to 3 days on the wiki, or time-outs ranging from 1 hour to 1 week on Discord, may be issued at administrator or moderator discretion as ad hoc responses to a minor, instantial case of disruption, such as when a user is venting out of anger, needs a reminder on basic etiquette and decorum, or is overloading the system with too many editing mistakes for present editors to correct in a timely manner.

Grounds for blocking: Minor infractions

In general, blocks issued along the moderation track are for violations of content policies or minor violations of community policies which do not warrant immediate, permanent bans. They also include posts which violate the rules of the Discussions board and the Discord server.

A selection of examples includes:

• Not abiding by the Manual of Style
• Formatting errors
• Plagiarism or the use of generative AI
• Low-effort posts in Discussions
• Non-sensical posts in the wrong channels on Discord
• The removal of talk page history without administrative approval
• Rudeness that does not ascend to egregious levels

For more examples of basic rules, please refer to the Manual of Style, the Guidelines of the Discussions board, and the Rules channel of the Assassin's Creed Wiki Discord server.

Although users are expected to have read the Manual of Style and community guidelines on all platforms, we at the Assassin's Creed Wiki understand that users are everyday people who can be forgetful, have a bad day, or are not yet habituated to the norms. In addition, there are many un-codified writing and formatting practices that has evolved out of community consensus which new editors cannot be expected to have a comprehensive knowledge about.

This is why we recommend our administrators and moderators to be lenient when mistakes appear, first ensuring that the user is well-informed of the rules and expectations, guiding them towards best practices, and then later reminding them when needed. This process that precedes the moderation track is informal, and for most minor infractions, there is no rule specifying when they have accumulated enough for the user to be deserving of their first official warning and block. That decision is the onus of any administrator, who determines it based on the degree of disruption on the wiki's day-to-day function. Once a user has received a block and it has elapsed, the same procedure repeats where it is at the discretion of any administrator to apply the next official warning and block upon further minor infractions, only that should they choose to do so, the block must be the next stage in the moderation track.

Grounds for blocking: Major offences

Major offences automatically warrant at least a first-level block:

1. Personal attacks: A single instance of personal attacks levelled at another user compels at minimum a 1-week block. Note that a factual description of a user's past actions as evidence of wrongdoing, even if delivered in a stern and critical way, does not constitute a personal attack.
2. Edit-warring: An edit-warring offence is objectively determined as a violation of the three-revert rule (3RR), which stipulates that a user must not perform more than three reverts on a page within 24 hours. An attempt to game this rule is also liable to be regarded as an edit-warring offence. Exemptions as listed in Wikipedia's guide on the rule apply.
3. Contempt of community guidelines: It is inappropriate to openly belittle and disparage community guidelines, thereby demonstrating a depravity of care and respect for the community and its members.
4. Spamming: Spamming ranges from a major offence to a severe offence depending on the content of the spam. By default, it is considered to warrant a 1-week block. If the spam is of an obscene or offensive nature, it may warrant an immediate infinite block. Otherwise, violating board rules on frequency of posts, posting off-topic comments in the wrong channels on Discord, or repeating similar but valid posts may be regarded as "spammy" by moderators and visitors alike but will generally fall under minor infractions.
5. Lying about an offence: If a user has committed an offence, and they distort the truth of it—particularly when there is documentary proof of it—this is in and of itself an offence.

A first offence is not excused simply because it was missed by administrators or was not sanctioned at the time. If an administrator uncovers it while investigating a later offence, it can still be taken into account and be registered alongside the latest offence on the moderation track.

Example: A user violates the 3RR, but an administrator looked the other way. Later, that user violates the 3RR again. Any administrator may then skip to the second warning and issue an immediate 3-month block.

Grounds for permanent bans

Severe offences pose such a risk of harm to other users or are so disruptive to the operations of the wiki that it is vital that they be liable for an immediate, infinite block without warning. To otherwise grant a violator the procedural leniency afforded under minor infractions or major offences could subject the wiki to a protracted period of damage.

Block or ban evasion

There are legitimate avenues to appeal a ban, and any attempt to circumvent an active block outside the appeal process is contempt of the wiki's integrity. It is an additional offence on top of the current block and reinforces its validity. If the block was temporary, it upgrades it to a permanent ban that cannot be appealed. A common method of committing ban evasion is to resort to sockpuppetry. While they can coincide, note that ban evasion and sockpuppetry are two offences counted separately.

For example, if a banned user admits to using an alternative account to try to continue participating in the wiki, it does not count as sockpuppetry, but it still counts as ban evasion.

Cyberbullying & harassment

Harassment is a wilful course of conduct directed at a specific individual that a reasonable person knows or ought to have known would cause substantial emotional and psychological distress, offence, or harm and serves no legitimate purpose. It is typically characterized by intentionality and repetition. Rather than a single instance of attack, it is generally a pervasive pattern of behaviour that is driven by the intent to alarm, intimidate, torment, or terrorize. However, a single hostile and aggressive act that inflicts severe and lasting impact on an individual can also constitute harassment, as is an act that the agent may claim was not intended to harm but for which they had already been warned would violate boundaries. Cyberbullying is related behaviour which often has the added element of anonymity due to being conducted over the Internet.

Specific examples of behaviour that amount to harassment include but are not limited to:

• Hounding – tracking and monitoring an individual's every edit, activity, and movement through the wiki and associated platforms with the intent to repeatedly disrupt and impede their work, annoy or intimidate them, pressure them into giving into demands, or incite confrontations with them; also a form of stalking
• Sending repeated messages over an issue that has already been addressed or a request that has already been denied (e.g. a ban appeal)
• Circumventing blocks on messaging platforms like Discord to perpetuate unwanted communications
• Repeated personal attacks against a member of the community
• Making posts designed to elicit negative responses (rage-bait) from specific individuals that can be exploited to incite conflict or to trigger a specific individual's trauma
• Making unwanted sexual or romantic advances towards a specific individual or otherwise sending sexually explicit messages without the recipient's consent
• Sending images of real violence to disturb a specific individual
• Revealing discovery of personal information to alarm a specific individual
• Making threats of violence or the public disclosure of personal information
• Violating boundaries that have been clearly drawn

Note that while repetition is often a criterion of harassment, it still constitutes harassment for another user to pick up a perpetrator's harassment where they left off and perpetuate it. Furthermore, because "harassment can include actions calculated to be noticed by the target and clearly suggestive of targeting them, even when no direct communication takes place", unaffected community members should be mindful of personal historical context they may not understand as third-party observers.

Posting personal information

The disclosure of private and personally identifiable information of other users, a practice called doxing, can pose serious risks of harm to them and is expressly forbidden.

Impersonation

Pretending to be another member of the community by any means is an unpardonable offence. This includes creating an account and claiming to be an administrator, moderator, or editor who has been inactive for a long time. An attempt at impersonation on the Assassin's Creed Wiki's Discord server is treated as the same offence on-site at the wiki.

Trolling or griefing

Any account used persistently or exclusively to cause disruption, sow discord, provoke sensitive reactions, or instigate arguments and incite conflict is subject to an immediate, infinite block. This behaviour can coincide with targeted harassment and the exploitation of user issues or controversial topics.

Exploitation of user issues

Any user account which engages in or targets issues involving other community members is subject to an immediate, infinite block. This includes conduct such as prying into past conflict that did not involve the user, initiating contact with banned users to discuss their ban, advocating on a banned user's behalf to dispute their ban, and reviving controversial topics known to inflame passions and spark fraught debates that the community has agreed has been settled. This type of behaviour invites suspicion of attempting to instigate drama in the community to be exploited.

Prejudice and discrimination

Prejudice here is defined as a negative bias or sentiment against a particular group of people while discrimination is unequal and unfair treatment of that group of people as a result of that prejudice. The Assassin's Creed Wiki has a no-tolerance policy for discriminatory behaviour on the basis of protected categories, including race, ethnicity, nationality, cultural identity, ancestry, sex, gender, religious affiliation or non-affiliation, age, medical condition, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, and marital status. Using hate speech or slurs is strictly prohibited.

Vandalism

Any edit that is deliberately intended to be disruptive to the operations or quality of the wiki or any post that is deliberately intended to damage the health and integrity of the community constitutes an act of vandalism. Forms of vandalism are myriad but include:

• Blanking a page
• Inserting gibberish or offensive content
• Adding misinformation
• Spamming the Discussions board or Discord server
• Uploading or posting NSFW images like sexually obscene photos or photos of real gore

Editors should be mindful that not all disruptive edits are vandalism. Mistakes in formatting or content creation and expansion can be accidental, especially if a contributor is new. When in doubt, good faith should be assumed and exercised by instructing the contributor about their error. It is only when vandalism is clear and apparent that a block should be issued.

Gaming the system

"Gaming the system" refers to deliberately misusing policies and guidelines for personal interests, to disrupt the wiki, or to harm other community members. It involves exploiting loopholes or technicalities in a policy to defeat the spirit of the policy. Examples can be found in the Wikipedia guide, "Gaming the system", all of which apply here at the Assassin's Creed Wiki. A selection has been listed below for convenience. Note that some of the examples provided are hypothetical or slightly altered from the real cases that inspired them.

• Bad-faith wikilawyering – arguing the word of policy to defeat the principles of policy

Example: The archetypal example is the three reverts rule (3RR) which limits editors to 3 reverts in a 24 hour period. The purpose of 3RR is to quench 'revert wars'. An editor who reverts three times in a 24 hour period and once immediately the next day, or repeatedly reverts twice only in a day, may well still be sanctioned, since the spirit of 3RR, and the issue it is protecting the Assassin's Creed Wiki against, has been breached.

• Playing policies against one another

Example: Simultaneously invoking (a) a particular interpretation of guidelines to prohibit open discussion of user issues on the wiki, where all communications are unavoidably public and (b) a particular interpretation of policy to muddy the legitimacy of off-site correspondence in order to (c) suppress any ability of the community to communicate and deliberate about problems with trolls at all.

• Spuriously or knowingly claiming protection, justification, or support under the words of a policy, for a behaviour, viewpoint, or position that actually contradicts policy

Example: Intertwined with playing policies against one another, a user invokes "assume good faith" as a defence against obvious trolling or harassment behaviour. A more specific example would be to repeatedly pry into issues one was uninvolved in, ignoring multiple warnings about boundaries of other users, then reigniting it to disrupt the community, all while claiming naivety or immunity against any suspicion of malicious intent.

• Selectively cherry-picking either wording from a policy or one policy at the wilful disregard of another to endorse a view that does not align or comply with policy

Example: A user with a history of disruptive and provocative behaviour agitates that administrators and moderators are being negligent in their duties for not replying to their complaints, when the lack of response is due to the practice of another policy: Do not feed the trolls.

• Stonewalling – repeatedly hammering arguments that has already been addressed or discredited to effectively tie down the debate and impede a resolution, also known as filibustering

Example: The wiki decides by consensus that Yasuke can be described as a samurai based on official Assassin's Creed sources and nuanced perspectives offered by historians. A user who disputes this continues to revive the debate with counter-evidence that has already been taken into account or refuted, without offering new rebuttals that develops the discussion.

• Borderlining – habitually treading the edge of policy breach or engaging in low-grade policy breach, in order to make it hard to supposedly "prove" misconduct

Example: A user on the Discussions board regularly re-posts the same topic just outside of the 7-day limit on identical posts or posts similar variations of it within that 7-day window. This goes on for a long time despite moderation so that it's hard to determine if spamming is at play or not.

• Unilaterally changing established editing or formatting conventions on the wiki over time by deliberately making a large number of edits in favour of one's own practice

Example: A contributor editing many articles to "correct" the spelling and punctuation style to American despite current consensus permitting any English standard, so as to normalize American English as the only permissible form on the wiki.

• Transactional politics – attempting to make a deal with administrators and moderators to comply with policy; a "tit-for-tat", treating respect for guidelines as something to be bargained

Example: A user agreeing to cease a pattern of disruptive editing only on the condition that the names of editors who privately raised the concern to administrators were revealed to them.

• Retribution – deliberately reverting an editor's edits in one article in retaliation for a dispute in another

Example: Editor A and Editor B disagree about the way "Tomás de Torquemada" is written in regards to narrative conflicts between Assassin's Creed II: Discovery, the Assassin's Creed film, and Assassin's Creed: Rebellion. Editor A loses the consensus, so they undo Editor B's edits expanding "Piece of Eden" out of bitterness and not because they earnestly find issue with it.

• Brinksmanship with misconduct – "Walking back" a personal attack to make it seem less hostile than it was or making an empty apology as cover to repeat the same misconduct at a later time

Example: A user repeatedly inflames disputes with provocative language but gives superficial signals of cooperation or concession each time just as they are on the verge of being sanctioned, only to reprise the behaviour ceaselessly.

• Mischaracterizing an administrator or moderator's instruction, lecture, constructive criticism, reminder of guidelines, or warning as an act of aggression or personal attack

Example: A sanctioned user claiming that a clear and thorough explanation about how they violated guidelines—as a pre-emptive measure against confusion—was actually aggressive behaviour against them by virtue of the message size, all while disregarding the message's content and purpose.

• Playing victim – violating a rule and at the same time claiming that others are in violation of the same or a closely related rule, also known as hypocrisy

Example: A user attempting to intimidate other editors from continuing to highlight their disruptive and offensive behaviour by claiming that it is harassment to call them out on it.

• Employing gaslighting tactics – such as history re-writing, reality denial, misdirection, baseless contradiction, projection of your own foibles onto others, repetition, or off-topic rambling so as to destabilize a discussion by sowing doubt and discord

Example: A user denies well-documented offences committed on the wiki's affiliated Discord server, then uses the argument that off-site evidence is inadmissible to block that evidence from ever being submitted, in order to present a narrative that community members are lying about their offences.

• Making unconstructive, trivial, or dummy edits to raise one's user access level

Sockpuppetry

The abuse of multiple accounts is known as sockpuppetry. The following information is drawn from Wikipedia's guide on the practice.

Sockpuppetry can take many different forms, including but not limited to:

• Standard sockpuppetry – Creating and using new accounts and presenting them as different individuals.
• Sleeper accounts – Reviving old, unused accounts and presenting them as different individuals.
• Meatpuppetry – Persuading friends or colleagues to create accounts for the purpose of supporting one side of a dispute.
• Piggybacking – Using another person's account.
• IP sockpuppetry – Editing while logged out to deceive others about being a different individual.

It can be used in a variety of ways for a variety purposes, including but not limited to:

• Ban evasion – The simple act of circumventing blocks.
• Perpetuating harassment – Ceaselessly using new accounts to circumvent blocks and to continue attacking particular individuals who has banned them from the community.
• Creating an illusion of support – Using multiple accounts to give the impression that more support for a position exists than there actually is.
• "Good hand" and "bad hand" accounts – Using two accounts in tandem, one for vandalism or disruption, the other for superficially constructive edits or posts.
• Strawman accounts – Using a separate account to argue for one's opposing side of a debate in a deliberately irrational or offensive manner, so as to sway opinion towards one's own position.
• Deceptively seeking positions of community trust – Applying to become a moderator or an administrator by pretending to not be an individual who is distrusted by the community.

The Assassin's Creed Wiki respects the same principles and practices to deal with sockpuppets as Wikipedia, which treats "behavioural analysis as the most important tool of determination". Among these are the DUH principle and the duck test, as well as the validity of off-site evidence. For instance, if a user is banned for harassment and then a new account displays identical behaviour to resume the same harassment against the same individual, it is reasonable to suspect that it is a sockpuppet and act on it to protect the health of our community members.

However, our community must take care to observe that unlike Wikipedia, where technical evidence follows behavioural evidence, Fandom admits only technical evidence (e.g. an IP address match between two accounts) to determine that sockpuppetry is at play and also reserves the sole right to judge on sockpuppet cases. In deference to Fandom policy, our wiki therefore currently treats sockpuppetry as a moribund reason for enacting blocks.

Community consensus

If the community believes that a user has been too disruptive to the wiki or even harmful to individual members, they have the right to bring forth their concerns to administrators and moderators and request a block to be enacted. Community here refers to administrators, moderators, established editors, and peer reviewers or consultants. Established editors are defined as contributors with at least 50 valid mainspace edits. Contributors with less than 50 mainspace edits can still be included if they are recognized for their participation in the community as peer reviewers or consultants of certain subject areas (e.g. political philosophy, ancient Egypt, feudal Japan, historical weapons).

This provision ensures that the rest of the community also has a voice regarding problems in the wiki. Although our wiki believes that transparency is integral, Fandom policy does not permit public discussions about banning individual users, and there is no private space on-site. As a result, discussions over bans can only be held on the wiki's Discord server.

Block appeals

The Assassin's Creed Wiki does not normally consider block appeals which have duration less than infinite unless the user can readily clarify and demonstrate that the block owed to a misunderstanding or error. We believe that users should wait out finite blocks which were validly issued for violation of our policies and guidelines.

An appeal for a permanent ban will be heard and considered only once. A decision on it cannot be made unilaterally by any administrator; it must be put to a plurality vote before all administrators and moderators. The possible outcomes are: removal of the block, reduction of the block to 1 year since the day it was applied, or the infinite block stands.

In considering the repeal of a permanent ban, our administrators and moderators look for signs of personal growth, sincerity, maturity, responsibility, contrition, and a low possibility of repeating past offences.

As a result, certain offences committed while under a block mean that any appeal will be automatically denied. These are:

• Block evasion – An attempt to circumvent a block, whether temporary or indefinite, demonstrates a flagrant disrespect for our community and its guidelines. The block becomes a permanent ban with no possibility of repeal.
• Doxing – A blocked user who publicly discloses personal information about any community members in retaliation for a ban demonstrates that they are a danger to the community.
• Impersonation – A blocked user who tries to impersonate a member of the community demonstrates that they cannot be trusted to treat their colleagues with honesty, respect, and camaraderie.
• Harassment – A blocked user who reacts by hounding administrators to remove their block or threatening them guarantees that their appeal will not be heard.

Integrity is one of our core values. We believe that it is important that a temporarily blocked user is willing to be patient and take the time to reflect on their mistakes. We believe that it is vital that a permanently banned user is able to let go and accept that the community is no longer comfortable with their interactions with us. In fact, that acceptance is the first step towards the possibility of forgiveness. Remember that a permanent ban is not an everlasting indictment of the user as a person. It is a protective measure to ensure that our wiki is a safe space for its members. It is a fair consequence of misconduct, but this lasting consequence ends at not being welcome in our particular community anymore. It is not equivalent to incarceration for a real-world crime. An individual blocked from our community still has the freedom to participate in others.

Therefore, if a ban appeal fails, no more appeals will be permitted by the wiki. Any further requests or pressure to entertain another appeal will be viewed as a violation of boundaries.

Simultaneously, we believe that people always have the potential to change. Hence, administrators and moderators may at any time initiate a re-evaluation of a block on their own initiative—in the absence of an appeal—and bring it forth to a plurality vote.