Alternative History:Rules

Rules of The Chat

The Purpose of Chat

The ultimate goal of the chat application is to provide a quick communication tool between the members of AltHistory Wiki, primarily for the purpose of exchanging ideas on timelines and other forms of collaborations. However, as long unrelated topics remain civilized, they are permitted.

To this end, the chat is a place for safe, civil discussions that show both mutual respect and intelligent arguments. In the process of progressing these discussions, various forms of language can work to stimulate, amuse, or encourage other users by use of hyperboles, metaphors, similes, wit, emoticons, and other uses of the English language.

Forbidden Actions

Spamming

Spam is the incessant repetition of words, characters, or concepts that have no place in the discussion, or the posting of large paragraphs of text that are not reasonably digested in the chat or completely unwanted. Spamming a concept can manifest as a single idea, such as an ideology, repeated over and over using different wording, even after that concept has been addressed. Any form of spamming will result in kicking and, if continues, will result in banning.

Uncivil Behavior

Uncivil behavior is characterized by discussion that is clearly offensive and/or disturbing to most normal human beings, such as graphical descriptions of gore, violence, or very explicit sexual activity. These can also be clearly distinguished from historical, scientific, or casual observations as having obviously deliberate intentions to instigate emotional reactions from the chat for the sake of personal pride. Such behavior is immediately punished with kicking and, if persisted, a ban.

Quarreling

There is a clear distinction between a civilized argument and a heated debate. Many arguments usually evolve from debates, but instead turn into a series of ad hominem and emotional epithets. These actions are not acceptable in chat and perpetrators will be faced with banishment from chat. Saying something to intentionally provoke or annoy a user will also lead to punishment. When an argument carries over to the wiki, more longer, serious bans may be taken into place, but this is taken into consideration in the Rules of the Wiki section.

Slurs

There are certain words that, in certain context, are overtly reflective of an ad hominem behavior and a general perpetuation of hatred towards the groups of people that make up the community. These can take the form of jeering slurs towards a person’s race, sexual orientation, gender, or religion. The context in which these slurs become directly hateful are when they apply to the receiver in the discussion, and are intended as a kind of offense against them. Such action should be responded first with a warning, then kicking and eventually ban. However, even without a targeted person in chat, a punishment is allowed.

1. Kostdanila; or any sockpuppets assosicated with Kostdanila may not say the n word.

Personal Threats

A personal threat is a declaration that one user may either physically, psychologically, or personally hurt another user out of sheer spite. This could either be off the site, such as going to them personally or pressing legal action, or could manifest online, such as posting unscrupulous images or other media as blackmail. When used as a hyperbole, it is completely harmless, but if the user feels genuinely threatened by the action, the perpetrator could face immediate long-term or permanent banishment from chat.

Rules of the Wiki

This is the main portal to the rules governing content on the wiki, as opposed to chat, but they share similar purposes and ends.

Content Spam

Similar to the definition of spam found in the Rules for Chat, content uploaded to the wiki cannot be incessant repetition of the same media which could be accessed in ways consuming less resources. This spam is also defined by frequency of identical content added over a very short period of time. As such actions are usually done by bots, the action against this is a suspension from adding content for a very short period of time, just enough to break the automation. Further offenses results in slowly increasing lengths of time. Duplication of relatively few pieces of media, such as less than five, or over a period of time greater than a week does not count under this category.

Map Games

Guidelines for map games and the procedure to create them can be found at the Map Games Oversight Committee page. Deliberation of this committee for a map game to be created or removed takes one week, in which anyone can vote. Violation of the rules set out by the Committee results in first being suspended from the particular map game, then after later offenses suspension from all map games.

Timelines

Timelines are governed by the Timeline Ratings. The deliberation of this system is to organize timelines in a meaningful way, and to show and exhibit good, well-constructed timelines in front of the community. All timelines can be put up for promotion, or demotion on the Timeline Ratings talk page. These timelines rankings can range from Stone to Golden. The best of the best timelines can be then prompted further, onto featured, but these timelines are guaranteed to be few and far between. If you need criticism or feedback on how to improve a timeline, the best place is usually chat, where communication is instant and easy.

Talk Pages

Discussion on talk pages follow the same rules as the rules for chat, and any violation of these rules for civil discussion results in suspension from the wiki. However, violations of these rules on the wiki directly may result in even longer bans compared to those on chat.

Multiple Accounts

Users may changed the name of their account according to Wikia rules. However, no user may have multiple accounts at the same time. Any violation of this “altaccounts” or “sockpuppeting” results in immediate permanent banning from the wiki for one of the accounts, and suspension for the original. This is enforced by IP address, regardless if the accounts actually belong to different human beings IRL (multiple people using sockpuppet accounts on the same device is colloquially known as meatpuppeting, although this also takes other forms).

EoGuy99 is the ONLY account I'm using. All the rest - EoGuy90-95, etc. are NOT me.

Bil Mesa AZ EoGuy99 (talk) 16:11, November 19, 2018 (UTC)