User:Epicgenius/Terms and Conditions

If you were going to ask "Why did you revert my edit" or "Why did you place a speedy deletion tag on my page" - Read this page first.



Please use the table of content box below to navigate easily through this page. Not a lot of the content on this page was written by me (actually, a version of this page was originally written by User:EuroCarGT). However many things were copied from Wikipedia help pages. That does not mean that I plagiarized this page; on the contrary, this is just a set of rules that I will enforce based on Wikipedia policy.

Why did you revert my edit?
I reverted your edit because it may have contained the following:

Vandalism
"Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. Examples of typical vandalism are adding irrelevant obscenities and crude humor to a page, illegitimately blanking pages, inserting obvious nonsense into a page."

The official Wikipedia policy defines "vandalism" as follows: Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. This policy is intentionally vague to enable vandal-fighters to deal with any unconstructive edits they find.

Below is an non-exclusive, open-ended list of things that I regard to be irrevocably unconstructive.

If your edit follows the pattern of any of the things listed below, I can assure you I will revert.

The below is typically considered vandalism:
 * Adding gibberish or patent nonsense – such as "I LIKE TO POOP IN TOILETS" (this example is a variation—blanking a section title and replacing it with nonsense)
 * Adding content not related to the article or talk page (e.g. adding content about The Bronx into an article about the Moon)
 * Tag bombing (e.g. placing all over the place)
 * Removal of speedy deletion tags
 * Removal of Articles for Deletion tags before the community has made a consensus to either keep, delete, move or redirect
 * Removal of content - Any content that is sourced, written in a neutral way that is removed without explanation is considered vandalism
 * Repeating adding copyrighted materials, introducing copyrighted content several times after being warned is vandalism
 * Hidden vandalism (e.g. taking an article such as Classroom and turning it into "assroom")
 * Image vandalism - Adding inappropriate images not related to the article or talk page
 * Link vandalism - Altering a reference or external link to direct to a site not related to the article's subject
 * Adding repeating characters - Such as "YO YO YO YO YO YO YO"
 * Adding nonsense characters - Such as "Skulllzzzzz is a bony structure in the head of most vertebrates"
 * Moving the page several times without a proper explanation in either a Edit Summary or a Talk page consensus
 * Adding notes in a page that is not related or is unnecessary (e.g. "Warning! Roller coasters are scary, don't ride them!")
 * Altering templates and directing it to pages not related to the subject (Many templates are protected due to persistent vandalism and high-risk vandalism)
 * Creating a unauthorized script or bot to vandalize Wikipedia, all bots or scripts should be written by trusted members of the community, all bots must be presented and requested to the Wikipedia Permission page to get the Bot user right and be authorized to make automated edits on Wikipedia after successfully passing a test run and approval by the Wikipedia 'bot approval group'
 * Adding crude humor to an article (e.g. _____ slipped in his bathtub today, HA HA! or the ____ baseball team is the worst team ever!)
 * Placing negative content to an article (See below: Negative unsourced content)
 * Putting hoax information onto an article
 * Blanking the page or an entire section without consensus (this does not apply if the page or section itself is complete vandalism)
 * Adding large blocks of non-English text onto a page
 * Adding inappropriate text (the seven dirty words and stuff relating to sex or bodily functions) to a page not relating to sex or bodily functions

Examples

 * Anything listed on Wikipedia:Vandalism as a common type of vandalism.
 * Any edit to an article that consists of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
 * Almost any edit that consists of, or has an edit summary with, ALL CAPITAL LETTERS in any namespace (not including short abbreviations or acronyms such as G10, CE, RVV, etc).
 * Any edit that consists completely or primarily of swear words.
 * Any edit that compares someone or something to a body part below the waist, or to the chest (especially in females).
 * Any edit that says "Bush is teh gay." or something similar.
 * Any edit that includes a broad generalization about an elected official. (e.g. XXXXX is the best/worst/most incompetent/whatever)
 * Any edit whose edit summary lies. (e.g. saying you corrected a typo when you actually deleted half of the article.)
 * Any edit that personally attacks someone or something.
 * Any edit that involves a person, place, or thing that is not especially important, or that does not provide enough information to positively identify the subject of the sentence or phrase.
 * Any edit, not on a talk page, that apologizes for vandalizing. If you are really sorry, please, just stop.
 * Any edit that consists solely of text generated by clicking on the buttons above the editing window.
 * Any edits that add external links pointing to the same domain to more than one page in quick succession.
 * Any edit that adds defamatory content to a page without including a citation.
 * Any edit that uses variants of the word "legend" as a direct object, an adjective, or an adverb.

If after reading this page, you still think that I should not have reverted your edit, feel free to leave me a note on my talk page.

When writing, please remember that, as I am a human being, I am not infallible, and I do make mistakes. For best results, write a clear, concise, and civil note. If possible, include the name of the article you are concerned with. Also, please remember to sign your post with four tildes (~).

Swearing, cursing, and/or attacks will simply be reverted and ignored, and they could even get you blocked from editing.

Addition of unsourced content
Most edits should be properly cited, sourced and referenced. This goes especially if it is a biography of a living person.

Editing tests
All editing test should be done at your sandbox - If you are a registered user you may use this link

Examples:
 * Randomly adding your Wiki-signature on a Wikipedia page
 * Test editing or adding other Wikipedia functions to a page that is not related to the subject

Spamming
All external links must be in par with the external links policy and should be related to the article's subject and is on topic.

Examples: See WP:ELNO and WP:ELYES for a more descriptive inforamtion
 * Any link that is used for the sale and promotion of a product or service
 * Any link that will direct readers/users to a malicious page that could contain codes that could damage your computer's hardware or files
 * Any link that uses a URL shortener, please use full links
 * Linking to pages not related to the subject
 * Fansites (some exceptions apply; e.g. the New York City Subway allows the fansites www.joekorner.com and www.nycsubway.org, as well as other fan sites, as references
 * Any link that is not related, or tangentially related, to the article (for example, the article List of social networking websites should not contain links to a non-notable website that you created)

Personal attacks
''Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks do not help make a point; they only hurt the Wikipedia community and deter users from helping to create a good encyclopedia. Derogatory comments about other contributors may be removed by any editor. Repeated or egregious personal attacks may lead to blocks''

If you have an issue use the user's talk page to discuss the issue in a civil way.

Examples:


 * Any racial, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, national, sexual, disability or bullying (e.g. using racial slurs in articles or talk pages)
 * Slang words to harass a user
 * Using historical violence towards a user
 * Threats of legal action (or actually carrying out legal action)
 * Stalking
 * Threatening bodily harm OR self harm (This will result in you being reported to the Wikimedia Foundation and local authorities)

Biased content
Examples:
 * Saying your thoughts, opinions in articles (e.g. The Pontiac Aztek is the most ugliest, piece of crap car ever made")
 * Positive thoughts are also opinions (e.g. "The Tesla Model S is better than the Porsche 911")
 * Stating opposing views (e,g, In government, the ____ party is much better than the ____ party)

Factual errors
Verifiability means that people reading and editing the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source.

It's quite simple to understand about verifiabilty, but biased content is something you can't prove. It's called an opinion.

Negative unsourced content
All BLP's (Biographies of Living People) should contain:
 * Neutral point of view
 * Verifiability
 * No original research

It's quite simple - if your adding something negative about a person or a thing, make sure you got the facts.

Examples of negative unsourced content:
 * Claiming a person did something wrong without having sources and references to back the claim up (e.g. _____ was arrested for DUI in 2008)

Why did you place a Speedy Deletion tag/template on my page?
The criteria for speedy deletion specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion, at their discretion, and immediately delete Wikipedia pages or media

There are currently 42 Criterias for Speedy Deletion. (Note: I'm not sure, I was just counting). The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag however could click the on the tag to contest, the speedy deletion. Then after a member of the community could decline the speedy deletion OR a administrator could delete the article. Other options would be a move or redirect to another page.

NOTE: Most CSD's happens on New Pages

G1
Pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history. This excludes poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, implausible theories, vandalism and hoaxes, fictional material, coherent non-English material, and poorly translated material. This excludes the sandbox and pages in the user namespace. In short, if you can understand it, G1 does not apply.

G2
A page created to test editing or other Wikipedia functions. Subpages of the Wikipedia Sandbox created as tests are included, but not the Sandbox itself. This criterion does not apply to pages in the user namespace, nor does it apply to valid but unused or duplicate templates (although criterion T3 may apply).

G3
This includes blatant and obvious misinformation, blatant hoaxes (including images intended to misinform), and redirects created by cleanup from page-move vandalism.

G4
A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion. This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content moved to user space for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply).

G5
Pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and which have no substantial edits by others.

G6
Uncontroversial maintenance - A very light CSD, used for unnecessary disambiguation pages, page moves and etc.

G7
If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content to the page and to the associated talk page was added by its author. (For redirects created as a result of a pagemove, the mover must also have been the only substantive contributor to the pages prior to the move.) If the sole author blanks a page other than a userspace page or category page, this can be taken as a deletion request.

G8
Examples include talk pages with no corresponding subject page; subpages with no parent page; image pages without a corresponding image; redirects to invalid targets, such as nonexistent targets, redirect loops, and bad titles; and categories populated by deleted or retargeted templates.

G10
These "attack pages" may include libel, legal threats, material intended purely to harass or intimidate a person or biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced.

G11
Pages that are exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic. Note: An article about a company or a product which describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. "Promotion" does not necessarily mean commercial promotion: anything can be promoted, including a person, a non-commercial organisation, a point of view, etc.

G12
Text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a compatible free license, where there is no non-infringing content on the page worth saving.

G13
Rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation pages that have not been edited in over six months.

A1
Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Example: "He is a funny man with a red car. He makes people laugh."

A2
Articles having essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project.

A3
Any article (other than disambiguation pages, redirects, or soft redirects to Wikimedia sister projects) consisting only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, a rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks, chat-like comments, template tags, and/or images.

A5
Any article that consists only of a dictionary definition that has already been transwikied (e.g., to Wiktionary), a primary source that has already been transwikied (e.g., to Wikisource), or an article on any subject that has been discussed at articles for deletion with an outcome to move it to another wiki, after it has been properly moved and the author information recorded.

A7
An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant, with the exception of educational institutions.

A9
An article about a musical recording that has no corresponding article about its recording artist and does not indicate why its subject is important or significant (both conditions must be met).

A10
A recently created article with no relevant page history that duplicates an existing English Wikipedia topic, and that does not expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject, and where the title is not a plausible redirect.

A11
An article which plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined/discovered by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant.

R2
Redirects, apart from shortcuts, from the main namespace to any other namespace except the Category:, Template:, Wikipedia:, Help: and Portal: namespaces.
 * If the redirect was the result of a page move, consider waiting a day or two before deleting the redirect. See also Cross-namespace redirects.

R3

 * Recently created redirects from implausible typos or misnomers. However, redirects from common misspellings or misnomers are generally useful, as are sometimes redirects in other languages. This criterion does not apply to redirects created as a result of a page move. It also does not apply to articles and stubs that have been converted into redirects, including redirects created by merges, or to redirects ending with "(disambiguation)" that point to a disambiguation page.

File's CSD
NOTE: Only images that were uploaded in Wikipedia locally NOT Wikimedia Commons

F1
Unused duplicates or lower-quality/resolution copies of another Wikipedia file having the same file format.

F2
Files that are corrupt, empty, or that contain superfluous and blatant non-metadata information. This also includes image description pages for Commons images, except pages containing information not relevant to any other project

F3
Media licensed as "for non-commercial use only" (including non-commercial Creative Commons licenses), "no derivative use", "for Wikipedia use only" or "used with permission" may be deleted, unless they comply with the limited standards for the use of non-free content. Files licensed under versions of the GFDL prior to 1.3, without allowing for later versions, may be deleted.

F4
Media files that lack the necessary licensing information to verify copyright status may be deleted after being identified as such for seven days if the information is not added.

F5
Images and other media that are not under a free license or in the public domain, that are not used in any article, may be deleted after being identified as such for more than seven days, or immediately if the image's only use was on a deleted article and it is very unlikely to have any use on any other valid article. Reasonable exceptions may be made for images uploaded for an upcoming article.

F6
Non-free files claiming fair use but without a use rationale may be deleted after being identified as such for seven days.

F7
Invalid fair-use claim.

F8
Images available as identical copies on the Wikimedia Commons.

F9
Obviously non-free images (or other media files) that are not claimed by the uploader to be fair use. A URL or other indication of where the image originated should be mentioned.

F10
Files uploaded that are neither image, sound, nor video files, are not used in any article, and have no foreseeable encyclopedic use.

F11
If an uploader has specified a license and has named a third party as the source/copyright holder without providing evidence that this third party has in fact agreed, the item may be deleted seven days after notification of the uploader.

U1

 * Personal user pages and subpages (but not user talk pages) upon request by their user. In some rare cases there may be administrative need to retain the page. In exceptional cases user talk pages may be deleted via Miscellany for Deletion (see right to vanish); they are not eligible for speedy deletion under this criterion. Note: The template does not display on certain pages (such as .css and .js pages), but its categorization will work.

U2

 * User pages of users that do not exist (check Special:Listusers), except userpages for anonymous users who have edited, redirects from misspellings of an established user's userpage, and for the previous name of a recently renamed user (which should normally be left as a redirect to the new name for a reasonable time).

U3

 * Galleries in the userspace that consist mostly or entirely of "fair use" or non-free images. Wikipedia's non-free content policy prohibits the use of non-free content in userspace, even content that the user has uploaded; use of content in the public domain or under a free license is acceptable.

T2

 * Templates that are unambiguous misrepresentations of established policy. This includes speedy deletion templates for issues that are not speedy deletion criteria and disclaimer templates intended to be used in articles.

T3

 * Templates that are not employed in any useful fashion, i.e., orphaned, deprecated, substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template, may be deleted after being tagged for seven days.

P1

 * Any portal that would be subject to speedy deletion as an article.

P2

 * Any portal based on a topic for which there is only a stub header article or fewer than three non-stub articles detailing subject matter that would be appropriate to present under the title of that portal.

Why did you place a Proposing Deletion tag/template on my page?
Proposed deletion (PROD) is a way to suggest an article for uncontroversial deletion. It takes longer than SD (speedy deletion) (usually a week or longer). Users can voice their opinions on PRODs.

Why did you place a Nominated for Deletion tag/template on my page?
Articles for deletion (AfD) is where Wikipedians discuss whether an article/page should be deleted. I will use a XfD (nominated for deletion) tag to have a community discussion and opinion for a page I think should be deleted under the deletion policy. Users of the community will vote to Keep, Delete, Merge, Redirect, or Transclude once the discussion has a vast majority an admin could decide to Keep, Delete, Merge, Redirect and Transclude the article or continue the discussion until more votes come in. Occasionally, nothing is done due to lack of consensus.

What did you do to my Article Feedback? It's not relevant anymore, but I still wanna know
''Article feedback allows anyone to easily make suggestions about a page and help editors improve articles. N.B. The article feedback tool was removed from the Mediawiki software effective March 3rd, 2014; see Article feedback/Version 5.''
 * The feedback form is was a blue box at the bottom of Wikipedia articles, with a simple question: "Did you find what you were looking for?” and a comments box.

Readers

 * Readers (defined as logged out users and non-confirmed users) can post feedback, view feedback, mark feedback as helpful or unhelpful and flag them as abuse.

After an Article Feedback has been submitted
Once an article feedback has been submitted it will be reviewed be users called monitors (reviewers, rollbackers and administrators) it would be reviewed as Useful, Resolved, No Action Needed or Inappropriate
 * If marked as Useful - This will promote that comment to other editors on the 'Featured' filter, which all users see by default when they first visit the feedback page.
 * If marked as Resolved - An editor with some expertise on this topic will go ahead and incorporate the feedback by editing the article themselves.
 * If marked as No Action Needed - those are comments that are unclear, irrelevant, praise, or duplicates.
 * If marked as Inappropriate - those are comments that are nonsense, offensive, spam, or that include private data like phone numbers or email addresses - This would most likely be hidden from the feedback section that I and other monitors find a particularly inappropriate comment, we can permanently remove it from public view using special monitoring tool.

If an article feedback is highly inappropriate should be reported to Oversight (suppression), Oversight should be requested for feedback which contains non-public personal information, such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces, schools or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public.

Why did I remove your talk page comment?
My talk page is a page to get in contact with me regarding: Articles I created; Edits; Contributions; Wikimedia Projects; etc. My talk page is NOT a social network to chat and and message with. My talk page is ONLY for messages regarding actions on Wikipedia and sister websites. For more Information, refer to "How to use Talk pages".

Harass Me
Harassment is defined as a pattern of repeated offensive behavior that appears to a reasonable observer to intentionally target a specific person or persons. ''Although editors are encouraged to ignore or respond politely to isolated incidents, that should not imply that they are acceptable or without consequences. A pattern of hostility reduces the likelihood of the community assuming good faith, and can be considered disruptive editing. Users who insist on a confrontational style marked by harassment and/or personal attacks are likely to become involved in the dispute resolution process, and may face serious consequences such as blocks, arbitration, or being subjected to a community ban.'' I take Harassment very seriously.

Send personal attacks
''Do not make personal attacks anywhere in Wikipedia. Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks harm the Wikipedia community, and the collegial atmosphere needed to create a good encyclopedia. Derogatory comments about other editors may be removed by any editor. Repeated or egregious personal attacks may lead to sanctions including blocks.''

What is a personal attack?

 * Racial, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, national, sexual, or other epithets
 * Using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views
 * Linking to external attacks, harassment, or other material, for the purpose of attacking another editor
 * Comparing editors to Nazis, dictators, or other infamous persons
 * Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence

I respond to personal attacks very seriously

No legal threats
''If you must take legal action, we cannot prevent you from doing so. However, you must not edit Wikipedia until the legal matter has been resolved to ensure that all legal processes happen via proper legal channels. You should instead contact the person or people involved directly, by email or through any other contact methods the user provides. If your issue involves Wikipedia itself, you should contact Wikipedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation. Do not issue legal threats on Wikipedia pages.

If you make legal threats or take legal action over a Wikipedia dispute, you may be blocked from editing so that the matter is not exacerbated through other channels. Users who make legal threats will typically be blocked from editing while legal threats are outstanding.''

What is not a legal threat?

 * A polite, coherent complaint in cases of copyright infringement or attacks is not a "legal threat".

Free Speech on Wikipedia
''The "right to free speech" has been cited on Wikipedia in response to sanctions against editors such as blocks and bans, as well as speedy deletions and editing restrictions imposed by administrators or the Arbitration Committee. Some editors apparently believe that because the Wikimedia Foundation is headquartered (and some Wikipedia servers located) in the United States, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to it. This is mistaken. The First Amendment forbids government censorship of expression; it does not prevent a public charity such as the Wikimedia Foundation from deciding for itself what words and images will be presented on its websites, and how.''

''In short, editing Wikipedia is a privilege granted to you by the permission of the Wikimedia Foundation, and can be revoked at any time for whatever reason that organization sees fit to do so. Your only legal rights on Wikipedia are your right to fork (create another encyclopaedia independent of the Wikimedia Foundation) and your right to leave (stop editing).'' ''Wikipedia is not trying to be jerks. Nor Wikipedia plan on being jerks.''

'''You Do NOT have Free Speech on Wikipedia platforms (and sister websites)

What else could I have done?
I am a regular user, except for two things—I can undo all your recent edits to a given page in a single mouse click, and I am able to review your edit to see if your edit is constructive.

Pending Changes Review
The purpose of reviewing is to catch and filter out obvious vandalism and obviously inappropriate edits on articles under pending changes protection, a special kind of protection that permits anonymous and newly registered editors to submit edits to articles that would otherwise be semi- or fully protected under one or more of the criteria listed in the protection policy.

As a general rule, I should not accept the new revision if in analyzing the diff I find any of the following:
 * 1) it conflicts with the biographies of living persons policy
 * 2) it contains vandalism or patent nonsense
 * 3) it contains obvious copyright violations
 * 4) it contains legal threats, personal attacks or libel.

Furthermore, I will take special consideration of the reason given for protection, and attempt to uphold it. The protection policy reserves pending changes protection to clear cut cases, so interpretation issues should be minimal. For example, if the article is protected because of repeated inappropriate edits by a sockpuppeter, and if the same type of edits are made by a newly registered or anonymous user which I suspect is the same person, I will not accept those edits.

Rollback
I have extra "rollback" links next to revisions on the recent changes page, page histories, diffs, user contribution pages, and my watchlist:
 * 21:49, 2 September 2010 (diff | hist) Epicgenius (talk | contribs) Wikipedia:Rollback feature ( bytes) (this is an example) (top) [­rollback: 1 edit­]

My clicking one of these links restores the page to the most recent revision that is not made by the revision's author. This appears in the page history with a generic summary that looks like this:


 *   ''Reverted edits by User A (talk) to last version by User B

A link to the reverted user's contribution history is provided, so that it may be easily checked for further problematic edits. It does not appear if I am reverting contributions done by a user whose username has been removed, the result being:


 *   ''Reverted edits by (username removed) to last version by User B

Note the following:
 * I cannot choose which revision will be restored. It is always the last revision not made by the author of the most recent revision. This revision may be problematic too, so I will be careful.
 * If there are multiple consecutive edits to the page by the same author, they will all be reverted. To remove only some of them, I must revert the changes manually.
 * I cannot use rollback to restore a revision that has been deleted. Attempting to do so will display an error message.
 * Rollback happens immediately; there is no confirmation or preview (although a page is displayed allowing me to see the changes I have made).

Licensing and Disclaimer
'''All Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.'''

The license is available to read at: Creative Commons.

Did I made a mistake?
Everybody in life makes mistakes no matter in life or online. In case of a mistake, here are some instructions:
 * 1) Ensure that the revert or tagging was a mistake, look it over, if you are a persistent vandal then it ain't no mistake
 * 2) Please click here to  leave a new message on my talk page to report the mistake
 * 3) I will then review the edit and take further action and then come back with a response at my user talk page
 * 4) You'll be notified with a Talkback message on your talk page
 * 5) I'll gain respect for you, for telling me about the mistake

Conclusion
After reading this page, you'll have a full understanding about why I reverted your edit, placed a deletion tag on your page, or left a vandalism notice on your talk page. We are ✅!