Phineas and Ferb Wiki:Chat behavior and guidelines

On the wiki, pages and discussions are permanent because we can go back through the history and see who did what. Chat is for conversations that do not need to be saved and may cover a variety of topics.

Because what goes on in Chat is typically not recorded, people may come in there that don't participate on the wiki very much or at all. Some of these may be people who are looking to cause problems or find out personal information from you.

The administrators for the wiki may not always be available to be in the Chat, so we have additional people who have been given Chat Moderator status ("chatmod"). Their job is to help make sure things don't get out of hand. When it does, an admin or a chatmod has the ability to "kickban" someone, which removes them from the Chat channel and sets the "bannedfromchat" flag on their account. When this happens, if the user wants to get back into Chat, they must ask an admin to do so.

To help prevent this from happening to you, please follow the guidelines below.

Simplified ruleset
Many of the rules that apply to the wiki apply to Chat, especially our Block policy and the Simplified ruleset. Items listed in the Block policy will get you kicked out of Chat and blocked on the wiki.

In general, play and chat nice. If someone in the Chat asks you to stop, you might be going overboard with what you are doing and it's becoming annoying. Be courteous and reign yourself back in before you have to be kicked out of the channel.

There are two videos that everyone is encouraged to watch. Both of these can be applied to what you do in Chat and on the wiki itself.


 * Cyberspace Rules of the Road
 * Dodgers' Code of Conduct

Don't give out personal information, such as your real name, where you live or go to school/work, or your age or birthdate. You don't know who is going to see that and with the Internet, it's a lot easier to find out details about a person than most people realize.

Likewise, be cautious of anyone asking you for this information, especially if you don't recognize them. You don't know what their reason for asking is, so they may be a spammer, identity thief or a predator. Treat it as if they walked up to you on the street and started asking you these questions in real life. Because these days, what happens on a wiki, a chat channel, game site and the Internet in general  is  a big part of real life.

Behavior guidelines
Rather than list a lot of hard-and-fast rules, these are being presented as guidelines to help avoid being kicked out of Chat and to encourage more free-flowing conversations.


 * Try to make everyone feel welcome and understand that there will be times where nobody's chatting very much. Just wait for the conversation to pick up speed again.


 * Do not give out personal information, for the reasons listed above. In addition, if you are under 13, we may have to block you from Chat as a violation of Wikia's Terms of Use (see the Membership section). If you don't say it, we won't know it and we won't have to act on it.


 * No name-calling, fighting or insulting people. Friendly jabs at other people may be allowed, but as soon as anyone objects, you should stop. Otherwise if you go too far, it becomes the insults and harassment covered under the block policy.


 * No swearing. Profanity is not allowed under our block policy. Even if you think it's minor or doesn't matter, don't use it. It isn't needed here.


 * Don't spam. This includes advertisements as well as repeating the same thing several times.


 * Use basic "netiquette": don't use a lot of ALL CAPS (that's shouting), don't post gibberish, nonsense or incomprehensible off topic messages, and try to be polite whenever you can.


 * Please avoid revealing spoilers about episodes you've seen. Not everyone can see them at the same time and they may be waiting for it to air in their area.


 * Leave discussions of a character's sexual preference or your own out of the Chat. It isn't an appropriate topic of conversation for younger kids and really isn't allowed by our Block policy. Shipping discussions are okay so long as they don't include this or start a fan war.


 * If you want to discuss religion or politics, keep in mind that these tend to get heated very quickly, and name-calling and insults are usually not far behind. In many cases, it's better to avoid them.


 * If you paste a link to a page on the wiki in the Chat, it will show up as a regular link. For links to places outside the wiki, you need to identify where the link will go to and what it's for. Use the full address instead of a "URL shortener" so people can see where the link will take them before they click on it. This helps avoid unpleasant surprises.    Hiding the purpose of a link can be considered vandalism and would be covered under the block policy, especially if the link was to pornography, viruses, spyware, spam, etc.


 * Chatmods and administrators will have to use their judgment to keep things from getting out of hand. If you've been kicked out of the Chat and you feel it wasn't justified or there is other information relevant to the situation, see the "Appealing a kickban" section below.


 * A kickban should be used when people are violating these guidelines, but only after they have been asked to stop or change their behavior at least twice. If more people than just an admin or chatmod is asking you to stop, that's a big hint you're going too far and you really should listen.


 * Administrators will have final say in all matters, except where one admin is directly involved in a dispute. In this case, another admin must serve as a neutral third party to make a decision on how to settle the matter.

Notifying an admin about a kickban
If a person had to be kicked out fo Chat due to a problem listed in the Block policy, leave a message for an administrator so they can set a block on the account. The current list of administrators is:

Duration of kickbans
Currently, a kickban doesn't expire once it becomes active. It is up to a chatmod or an admin to turn it back off. A request has been sent to Wikia to add a feature where a kickback will expire after a certain amount of time.

Because of this, if it's been several days or weeks since you were kicked out of Chat, you may need to send the chatmod or admin a reminder to get it turned off. See the "Appealing a kickban" section for people you can contact to do this.

Durations of the kickbans should be as follows:


 * A few hours for minor problems if they did not respond to requests to stop what they were doing while in the Chat.
 * 1 - 7 days for those who continue to cause problems.
 * 2 weeks or longer for those who are deliberately or repeatedly causing problems. (Items listed in the block policy take priority and usually come into play in these kinds of situations.)

Appealing a kickban
Ideally, a person would only be kicked out of Chat for breaking one of the guidelines above. But since this may happen occasionally due to personal disputes, if a user wants to be let back into the chat, they should leave a message for an admin, requesting the kickban be removed. (Chatmods can also remove kickbans in User Rights, but it may be better to ask a different chatmod that was in the channel at the time so they're aware of the situation where it occurred.)

As listed above, currently there isn't a way to specify a reason or length of time when a kickban is set. In addition, conversations in Chat aren't logged, so unless one of the people in the Chat happens to save the information, the admin will have to go by what you say when you make your request, and determine if it should be removed. The more matter-of-fact and reasonable you are in your request and the less emotional/upset you are, the easier it is to figure out the correct course of action.

Please note that if you have been kickbanned several times, we may have to look closer as to why this keeps happening to see if you are deliberately causing problems or if it's some other reason coming into play.

Requesting chatmod rights
''To be added. Check to see if we have any requirements/procedures like we do with admin or rollback rights.''

Removing chatmod rights
''To be added. Procedure for requesting chatmod rights be removed and how to verify the conditions that led to the request.''