Conservapedia:Blocking policy
Conservapedia is an open wiki that does not allow liberal censorship, or trolling. Although we assume good faith as a matter of principle, some people would abuse this trust. For those editors who violate its rules, sysops have the ability to issue temporary or longer term blocks on their accounts to protect the integrity of the site.
Vandals and parodists are blocked immediately, but other blocks are given for a period of reflection and with the hope that the user being blocked may be able to return and edit in a positive way once the time has passed.
Conservapedia has come up with a key wiki metric - the edits to blocked editor accounts ratio which measures the close-mindedness/intolerance and groupthink of a wiki.
Conservapedia has come up with a key wiki metric - the edits to blocked editor accounts ratio at a wiki which measures the close-mindedness/intolerance and groupthink of a wiki.
Mathematically, the edits to blocked editor accounts ratio at a wiki can be expressed as: Edits to blocked editor accounts ratio at a wiki = E % BE, where E is the number of edits to the wiki and BE equals the number of blocked editor accounts of the wiki.
The edits to blocked editor accounts ratio was partly inspired by Andrew Schlafly's essay Quantifying Openmindedness.
There is a politically left leaning wiki website that skews towards atheism/agnosticism in terms of its worldview that does very poorly on the edits to blocked editor accounts ratio (see: RationalWiki: The wiki with the world's lowest edits to blocked editors ratio (which measures intolerance). Unlike Conservapedia, RationalWiki does not have a policy where members of the public are free to set up debate pages and engage in vigorous debate where the debate pages are lightly moderated (see: Conservapedia debates pages).
Topic bans and main page talk bans
If an editor has a problem with the quality edits in a particular area(s), he may incur a topic ban. Please see: Conservapedia:Topic bans.
Blockable offenses
Here are the actions which can get one's account blocked. The block comment should state clearly what the reason was.
- Vandalism. True vandalism is easy to spot and is utterly unmistakable. A glance at "recent changes" will often show someone creating an account and then going through as many pages as possible (until someone stops them) doing things like blanking the page, changing it to 100 repetitions of some crude anatomical reference, etc. The tolerance for this is absolutely zero. Such a person will be blocked with no possibility of appeal.
- Parody. This is often easy to spot, but sometimes not. Obvious cases involve altering an article in such a way as to make the article an object of ridicule. It is sometimes done for ideological reasons, and sometimes for one's "15 minutes of fame"—there is an allure to the idea of typing something at one's computer that the whole world will see, an allure that sometimes affects people totally lacking in common sense. Vandalism and parody are problems for all wikis. Clear parody is treated the same as vandalism. Other cases are harder to judge, and may require serious editorial intervention.
- Trolling. Disruptive activity.
- Edit warring. When people disagree on content, they should try to work out their differences on the talk page. Just reverting each other's changes repeatedly does no good, and can lead to a temporary block if it distracts people from doing real work.
- Incivility. We do not look kindly on personal insults directed at other contributors. You should be able to disagree on content without being personally insulting.
- Intimidating behaviour/harassment. Personal remarks can sometime get very serious. When they do, the consequences can also get serious.
- Removing content from article pages without discussion. We take a dim view of the plain removal of information; it smacks of censorship. Try to find a way of incorporating the other person's viewpoint into the article. When necessary, discuss on the talk page.
- Inserting false information. 'Nuff said.
- Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages. 'Nuff said.
- Spam. Spamming links to external sites is a problem on many wikis. Some people view a wiki as just a vehicle for self promotion and increasing the visibility of their own external web site, whether it be hawking crackpot scientific theories, herbal supplements, or whatever. It is strictly forbidden. Wholesale cutting and pasting mainspace and talk pages within Conservapedia that include category links and other users' electronic signatures can also be considered spamming. Reposting another user's electronic signature is a blockable offense.
- Sockpuppetry. We do not allow use of multiple accounts for the purpose of evading blocks or making one's point of view appear to be more widely held than it is. There are mechanisms for appealing blocks, involving email or requests on the blocking sysop's talk page.
- Inappropriate user name. Profane, vile, and disgusting usernames, or other types of offensive, objectionable, or nonsensical usernames will be blocked.
- 90/10 rule violation. This rule is unique to Conservapedia. The objective is to avoid repetitive arguments. While an actual numerical check could be used, the usual application of the rule at present is a more subjective analysis of whether one is here just for engaging in combat. Remember, Conservapedia is a meritocracy, and an editor's contributions to mainspace weigh in the balance more in granting user rights than occuping other editors time in fruitless talk page discussion.