Commons:Policies

Proposal: The current Commonswiki policy is still being drafted, a complete draft of this policy is on this page in Spanish.

Miraheze Commons policies and conventions are developed to describe best practices, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating free projects.

Miraheze Commons does not have rigid rules, but publishers are expected to abide by the principles set forth in policies and conventions, except when there is good reason not to. If an editor is found to be ignoring these policies, that person risks being blocked or restricted in editing.

Policies and conventions can be edited like any page in the Miraheze Commons, keeping in mind that they are intended to reflect the consensus of the publishing community. Edits that would imply a change to an accepted practice normally require prior discussion to ensure that the community actually accepts the change.

Elementary policies

• Be respectful to others: Miraheze Commons editors or contributors are from a variety of countries and cultures, and thus have different points of view. Treating others with respect is key to collaborating effectively.
• Respect the copyright: Miraheze Commons is an image repository that is under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Uploading material that infringes copyright can get your project into legal trouble.
• Do not promote any particular point of view: Pages should be written from a neutral point of view, representing all points of view fairly and proportionally without focusing on any one.

Licensing

Media files that can be uploaded to Miraheze Commons must be under one of the following licenses:

• Creative Commons licenses
• Public domain
• With the permission of the original author of the media file. For example, the original author of the file File:Rafael Loret de Mola (original).jpg was asked for permission to use it under the CC BY NC license.

Copyrighted and Fair Use media files (taken from Google or a copyrighted website for example) will be deleted unless one of the above licenses is demonstrated.

Policy of inclusion

In general, you can upload multimedia files that do not infringe copyrights and that respect Miraheze's global policies such as the Content Policy and the terms of use.

Deletion policy

The Miraheze Commons deletion policy establishes how content that does not meet the criteria of relevance or encyclopedic quality for Miraheze Commons is identified and removed.

All articles created in Miraheze Commons content or file namespaces are subject to several inexcusable rules about what Miraheze Commons must include (what Miraheze Commons is not). Shortcomings in articles that do not meet these criteria should normally be remedied by editing. But articles that do not meet the inclusion criteria of Miraheze Commons, that violate the copyright policy or that require a complete rewriting to meet the quality policies will be deleted. Similarly, user pages and other content that violate the corresponding policies may be subject to deletion.

Deleting an article removes the current version and all previous versions from the users' view, although not from the database, and can be restored at any time. Unlike page whitening (which is a type of vandalism and can be reversed by any user), deletion can only be performed by administrators. During the normal operation of Miraheze Commons it is normal that there are many articles that are proposed for deletion or in consultation of deletion.

This page describes what to do with items that are believed to be subject to deletion, explains the various options and processes for deletion, summarizes some common issues with deletions, and feasible alternatives to deletion.

Sysops can delete a page that meets one of the following criteria. Always check the history to see if there is a previous version that can be restored, and thus not have to delete the article.

• Nonsense page: (eg random characters);
• Testing (example: "Can I create a page here?");
• Vandalism, falsehoods or stupid things (example: "The watermelon was invented by Jesus");
• An obvious violation of copyright (copyright) that is an exact or nearly exact copy / paste of a copyrighted source. This does not apply to fonts that are public domain or licensed to Miraheze Commons. In any case, the official page must indicate that the content is in a certain license. Even if it is not specified that all rights are reserved, such content cannot be added;
• Articles excessively short and without context (example: "A guy died on the street");
• Temporarily delete to merge histories;
• Hoaxes or hoaxes;
• Anything that violates what Miraheze Commons is not:
  • Advertising, spam, apologies or advertisements,
  • Repositories of links or images that do not have a clear context,
  • Jokes, graffiti, name calling or anything else that could damage the credibility of Miraheze Commons.
  • Any article that does not exceed the threshold of notability established by the content guide
• Author's request without a third person involved in the history;
• Content that was added again with the same text for which they were deleted under this policy or other deletion policies;

Redirects can be deleted immediately if they are unnecessary. Qualifiers of unnecessary redirects are:

• They have no practical use;
• Direct to deleted pages;
• They were created by moving content to another namespace. It can happen that an editor creates its user page in the main namespace. In that case, move the page to its respective site * and delete the redirect (and notify the author);
• They were created as a result of a small typo in the title;
• They are the result of vandalism (example: an article renamed to another meaningless title will leave a redirect when it is renamed to its correct title).

Other pages

• Orphaned talk pages, that is, whose article was deleted;
• Empty categories (without articles or subcategories);
• Personal user subpages after such action is required by its author;
• User pages whose deletion does not mean abuse, and it is not administratively required to retain that page.

Page protection policy

Pages can be protected by an administrator to prevent them from being moved or edited. A page can be semi-protected to prevent it from being edited by users who have not logged in or who have registered for less than four days; or the pages can be fully protected, so that only administrators can edit it. When possible, pages should be protected for a short time and not indefinitely (with exceptions, of course, such as archiving).

Permanent protection is used to

• Protect highly visited pages such as the Main Page from vandalism.
• Archive articles in accordance with the archiving policy.
• Protect legitimately deleted articles from being recreated.
• Protection should be added to templates that have been identified as high risk for Miraheze Commons. This means that they are used on a large amount of pages and that any vandalism to it could compromise many articles.
• Pages that should not be modified, such as legal notices.

Temporary protection is used to

• Force a "ceasefire" in edit wars.
• Protect a page or image that is receiving persistent vandalism.
• Prevent vandalism in case it is done by registered accounts.
• The protection of a page does not necessarily imply endorsement of the current edit, and therefore no request for a protected edit should be made for it to be reverted (unless it is obvious vandalism).

Blocking policy

In some circumstances, it may be necessary for administrators to block a user or IP address. It is up to the administrator to decide how much to block and when to do it, but nonetheless the guidelines are:

Administrators can block users or IP addresses that:

• a) vandalize pages
• b) consistently break site policies. Administrators should first try to educate in the first place, followed by warnings.
• c) are troublesome (or trolls) and do not contribute to our goals

For vandalism and content policy violations, it would be best to block 1-3 days. If they are the first instances of user behavior towards these trends, then you should consider blocking for a short period of time (24 hours-3 days) and blocking more if really necessary.

For serious policy violations and if it is a constant behavior (which could have already led to other blocks), they can be blocked further.

Situations that warrant blocking

• Vandalism
• Personal attacks such as threats, or actions that have been taken (including actions outside of Wikinews) that expose other Miraheze Commons editors to political, religious or other persecution by the government, their bosses or otherwise
• Publication of personal details
• Copyright infringement and plagiarism
• Users that drain the patience of the community
• Impairment of normal wiki functionality
• Inappropriate usernames
• Impersonation
• Open and anonymous proxies

When not to block

Blocking to gain advantage in a content dispute is prohibited. In this way, it is preferable that if it is a possible controversial block, the intervention of another administrator is requested to guarantee objectivity. Of course, that even if one is involved but the other user deserves a lock for obvious situations, a lock by the same administrator can be allowed. In any case, it is recommended to use common sense.

Administrators should not lock themselves (to force a "vacation", for example) as the resulting "self-lock" may affect other users (see Effects of being locked out, below), unless they know what they are doing. (that is, they have a static IP).

To unblock

Special:Ipblocklist contains a list of all blocked users and IPs. Administrators will see a link to unblock next to each user. After clicking this, the reason to unblock the user must be given. Administrators can auto-unlock but shouldn't. If an administrator considers that he or she was blocked for an invalid reason, he can consult the administrator who blocked him/her.

Administrators can unblock if:

• users were blocked in violation of this policy;
• the reason for which they were blocked is no longer valid;
• the blockade has been extended long enough;
• appropriate cases.

There is no "guide to when to unblock", hence the "appropriate cases". Administrators should be objective, have good judgment, and use common sense.

Partial blocks

Partial blocking is the method by which administrators prevent users from editing specific sections of the wiki. Partial blocking is a technical feature of the software used to prevent damage or disruption to the wiki. If the administrator considers that it is possible to obtain the same protection of the project by applying a partial lock, it can be used as an alternative measure to a full block. In the case of continuous harmful contributions, a partial block can be changed into a full block.

A partial block can stop the ability to change:

• Pages or individual posts;
• all pages in one or more namespaces.

The lock can be applied to:

• Registered users;
• anonymous IP addresses;
• anonymous proxies;
• Groups of IP addresses.

A partial lock can be imposed for a specified time, indefinitely or permanently.

When partial blocks can be used

The partial block, like the full block, is a tool to protect the wiki, its basic principles are to safeguard the serenity of the collaborative work environment. Therefore, they do not represent a form of punishment for personal opinions or matters that are outside the scope of the policies and guidelines.

If the administrator considers that it is possible to obtain the same protection of the project by applying a partial block, it can be used as an alternative measure to a full block.

The use of partial block is delegated to administrators according to the rules established by the community.

• An administrator can decide to set a partial block after reviewing a report made about a user not following the policies.
• Or instead of doing a full site-wide block, an administrator can set a short-term partial block of a user who is engaging in edit wars or other non-constructive edits one or more wiki pages.