Statement of principles

The Wikipedia Review is an open forum, and its moderators pledge to avoid the sorts of vindictiveness and subterfuge that characterize the so-called "Wikipedia cabal." All postings on Wikipedia Review are the responsibility of the poster. Notwithstanding the guidelines below, neither Wikipedia Review nor its staff, moderators, or members are responsible for the regular review of postings or the timely removal of those that breach our guidelines.

Deletion policy

No posts will be deleted at the Wikipedia Review save for the following:

Posts which may represent illegal activity are subject to deletion.

Posts which represent hate speech (i.e., comments which denigrate groups of people based on race, creed, gender or comparable criteria, and comments which denigrate individuals because of their membership in such groups) will not be tolerated by the Wikipedia Review, and are subject to deletion.

Posts which make false allegations that other posters have engaged in hate speech, by quoting out of context or similar misrepresentation, are subject to deletion. These are the tactics of slander and propaganda, which will not be tolerated by the Wikipedia Review.

Policy on the posting of personal information

We do not allow posting of the address or phone number of WR members or Wikipedians to public areas of the website. In cases where identifying the employer of such persons would lead to the revelation of such personal information, that also would be considered unacceptable. Defamatory (i.e. both untrue and malicious) statements will be removed; accusations which could be construed as defamatory should not be made without providing compelling evidence. Any Wikipedian who wishes to dispute statements on this site is welcome to become a member and, within the bounds of decorum that operate here, rebut them.

Wikipedia Review does not encourage or permit the direct, on-site original disclosure of personal information about child participants, including information disclosed by the child him/herself. A post indicating that a participant of this forum is a child, made for the purpose of drawing attention to the participant's age, including such information that the poster is him/herself a child, shall be grounds for immediate suspension of the author's posting privileges. Nothing in this rule shall be so construed as to limit discussion of relevant issues involving the participation of children on Wikipedia. If a participant is identified as a child in the course of relevant discussion, the account of the participant shall be suspended and all contact information removed from the profile. This action shall be for the protection of the child and not as a punitive measure. The participant may obtain a new WR account, not linked with the prior account or participant identity, provided the participant is otherwise eligible.

"Child" shall be defined as any person less than 16 years of age.

Transparency policy

Posts which represent illegal activity may be deleted by a moderator, and replaced with a notice, signed by the moderator who deleted them, giving the explanation for deletion.

Posts which represent hate speech or false allegations of hate speech will be moved to a sub-forum, under "Forum Information," called "Deleted posts," where they may be analyzed or debated by the members for one week before being permanently deleted. Moderators will leave a notice to this effect in the original thread.

Blocking policy

Members who persist in posting comments which may be deleted will be both publicly and privately warned before being blocked, and given an opportunity to mend their ways. All blocks shall be presumed to be temporary; blocked members are encouraged to change their behavior and may continue to send personal messages to other members who are not ignoring them -- and those members are free to act as advocates for blocked members. The concept of a "meat puppet," as used at Wikipedia, is foreign to the Wikipedia Review. If there is convincing evidence that a new account is a "sock puppet" for a blocked member, that account may also be blocked, with a suitable public announcement by the moderator who blocks it.

Off-topic

Any member who persistently "hijacks" topics, by posting material meant to divert unrelated subject matter towards issues of interest primarily to himself or herself - irrespective of the legitimacy of the issues in question - may find himself or herself restricted to one topic or subforum only, one which is (or will be) devoted to those specific issues. Alternatively, such member may be placed under moderation, meaning that his posts will require moderator approval before they are visible to the public, or "flood control," limits on the number of posts per hour permitted. Similarly, a member who, in the judgement of the moderators, posts comments deliberately designed to annoy other users (sometimes referred to as "trolling"), may be subjected to a similar remedy. Personal attacks may be deleted by a moderator if they are deemed to be overly distracting.

In-line images

At one time, this site allowed any images to be included in posts. Unfortunately, this policy was exploited by one member who added images intended to "harvest" IP addresses of the staff, so the policy has become somewhat more restrictive. At this time, images may be added only from this list of approved sites:

imageshack.us
wikipediareview.com
wikiphrenia.com
wikimedia.org
wikipedia.org
yimg.com
photobucket.com
flickr.com
xkcd.com

Requests for moderation

Moderators are not expected to put time or effort into divining reasons for acting on complaints. Requests for actions such as 'tar-pitting' threads should be accompanied by a rationale. Moderators are not obliged to act on unspecific requests.

These rules are provisional. For a discussion of the rules, follow this link.