Phineas and Ferb Wiki:Chat behavior and guidelines/chat administration

This page will provide information on how chat moderators and administrators can keep the Chat running smoothly and what resources they have for dealing with problem users.

Warnings
In most cases, users should be given at least one warning that their behavior is disruptive or inappropriate. This will allow them a chance to stop being a nuisance. If they continue, use a kick or a ban to remove them from the chat.

An exception to providing a warning include people who make it obvious that they are here to deliberately cause problems. For example, someone who comes into the chat and immediately starts swearing or begins asking inappropriate personal questions. In situations like this, they can be banned immediately.

Kicks
For a user who needs an encouragement to change their behavior, a "kick" can be used to remove them from the channel. This happens immediately and the channel will display a message to that effect. The window will stay open for the user but they will not see any further messages.

The kick is temporary. The user can rejoin immediately, either by closing the chat window opening it back up, or by refreshing the window.

Bans
A "ban" will lock a person out of the Chat for a period of time. The amount of time can be selected, from one hour to permanent (infinite or indefinite).

Bans should be used when a person is causing more problems than just being a minor nuisance. The shorter ban lengths of a few hours or a few days should be used for most cases. Again, the idea is to provide an encouragement to stop bad behavior.

Longer bans of a week or more should be used when the person is causing severe problems or is repeating behavior that got them kicked or banned in the past.

At the time a ban is set, a reason should be given. The default is "Misbehaving in chat" and will be used if a new reason is not specified. The reason and duration is recorded in the Chat ban log.

Undoing/changing a ban
At the time the ban is set, the message announcing it will include an Undo link. The chatmod or admin can use this to remove the ban if necessary.

A ban can also be changed by going to Chat ban log and clicking on "change ban" for the user.

Adjusting ban durations and default message
Administrators can change the default reason on the MediaWiki:chat-log-reason-banadd page. The ban lengths can be changed in MediaWiki:Chat-ban-option-list. One hour is the minimum time that can be entered in that page.

The old Kickban system
Prior to May 10, 2012, any user that was "kickbanned" was permanently blocked from the Chat until the "bannedfromchat" flag was manually removed from their user rights. This required the user to request being allowed back in and/or a periodic review to see which accounts should be let back in.

Under the new system, bans will expire at the time specified. All previous kickbans have now been set to expire in six months, on approximately November 10, 2012. At that time, they can come back into the Chat. For some of these users, it may be appropriate to change the ban to a shorter or longer amount of time.

Matching blocks with bans
If a person breaks one of the rules in the Block policy, this should be specified when they are banned. A message should be left for an administrator alerting them to the fact that a block may also be warranted. The current list of administrators is:

Please do not send messages to more than one admin. You can either look at the Recent changes list or the "Last Edited" column in the sysop list to see which one has edited most recently.

When you send the message, please be aware that even if they edited fairly close to when the ban happened, they may not see your message right away. Please be patient and give them time to respond.

A block has higher priority over a ban. A user will not be able to enter the Chat if a block is in place. Likewise, a user who is only banned from Chat can still edit the wiki.

Requesting chatmod rights
People who want to apply for Chatmod rights can use the Chatmod requests page.

Removing chatmod rights
Since being granted chatmod rights carries with it a level of trust that they will act properly, we need to make sure that any complaints against them are valid and are not a case of wanting to "get back" at the chatmod for something that happened, like being kicked out of Chat.

If it is believed that a chatmod is acting unfairly or too harshly, leave a message for an administrator. Explain why you think this should happen, and as described above, the less emotional and more factual you are about it, the more weight your request will carry. The administrator will review the complaint and then talk with the chatmod.

The first step is to determine if there was any information left out of the complaint that might support the chatmod's actions. If so, then the complaint can be closed after noting that information. If there is not, then the admin will try to work with the chatmod to help them understand how to handle the situation better.

However, if the chatmod has had to be spoken to three times about changing their behavior, then it may be necessary to set a kickban on the chatmod for a period of time, such as a week.

If a chatmod has had to be kickedbanned twice (with the accompanying discussions about changing behavior in between the first and second), then the next step is removing their chatmod rights. They will then need to wait 60 days before they could reapply in the Chatmod requests forum to have chatmod rights restored.

If chatmod rights have been removed twice, then they will need to wait 6 months before they can reapply.

The third time chatmod rights are removed, the user becomes inelligible to reapply.