Hiya. I want to table two extra ideas for the new Wookieepedia:User conduct policy for discussion: 1) whether admins should tackle usernames and images that violate the policy when Fandom staff may not necessarily interfere in accordance with the Terms of Use, and, the cumbersome part, 2) whether we should establish an anti-discrimination policy that the administration can enforce locally, again without having to resort to citing the Fandom Terms of Use and requesting action from staff.

Wookieepedia does have a {{Usernameban}}, but I haven't seen it used in recent years and, contrary to its claim, we do not have a username policy. We did have some abusefilters against some rather distasteful account creations, but they were deleted long ago and don't really have a basis in policy. Admins have been reporting some inappropriate (sexual humour and personal attacks, specifically) usernames to Fandom staff for global bans across the Fandom platform, and we could make use of a local rule against unacceptable usernames. Of course, such cases don't always have to end in a block; users can rename their account (only once, but exceptions could be allowed by Fandom staff if they're stuck with an unacceptable name) or be allowed to create a new account to continue contributing to the Wook.

One extra thing to consider for usernames and images is that these could include those used on Discord, which are readily visible to those in the Wookieepedia server.

The current Wookieepedia:Fandom anti-discrimination policy page was implemented by the administration as a guide rather than a policy passed by formal community consensus. It refers to the Terms of Use and includes a list of further reading material that is intended to help users, particularly admins, identify specific forms of discrimination that might warrant warnings to the user, redacting the content, and/or blocks. Admins are not responsible for enforcing the Fandom TOU and referring to it in block summaries/explanations can lead to confusion, so it would be good to formalise this as a Wook policy.

My draft (permalink)—it is intended to be inserted immediately following the end of the bulleted list under Wookieepedia:User conduct policy#Unacceptable behavior. As you can see on the draft, I suggest turning the Wookieepedia:Fandom anti-discrimination policy page into a subpage of the User conduct policy and codifying—with respect to the standing Wookieepedia:Talk page policy and the Wookieepedia:Deletion policy on removing site content—forms of discrimination that local admins can handle without needing to go up to the Fandom staff level, with a link to the subpage as a guide.

The table should remain neither a comprehensive list nor an authoritative one endorsing every word of the linked resources, given that they are third-party sources after all, but a resource for users (and especially admins considering potentially policy-breaking behaviour) to get a better understanding of a specific form of discrimination to assist in their judgement. I have reviewed all the links on a rough criteria of accessibility, political impartiality, minimal overlapping, and relevancy. I have replaced a fair few and added their sources for transparency, plus backup links for good measure, but of course nothing's perfect and I do welcome folks to take a look and suggest improvements. For example, though "dog whistles" is listed in Fandom's TOU, I can't really find a good source for it and am not entirely sure whether it needs to be included. I've rambled for long enough here, so please discuss away! OOM 224 (he/him/they) 00:00, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion[]

• "A user with an unacceptable username should" to be turned to "must"; "should" can express an obligation, but also a possibility, so it's better to rephrase to clearer language. I don't know about removing "dog whistle" from the list, it's definitely hard to define, identify, and enforce; but at the same time I fell that we need to put all the legal tolls we can in the hand of the administration to fight abusive language, can't really hurt to keep it? NanoLuuke^{Cloning Facility} 06:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Good point about the word choice. The thing about dog whistles is that I don't think it should be blockable by itself given that it inherently is something elusive and ambiguous. I suppose it's more so a method in which the various forms of discrimination can be manifested. OOM 224 (he/him/they) 14:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
    • So, is this going to be retroactive, at any point? Because, after all,one can't really predict exactly what will be controversial in the future —Unsigned comment by Fraudulent Businessman (talk • contribs).
    • I sympathise with the idea that blocking for dog whistles could be too vague, but I think it's fair to put it in and leave it as something that's blocking justification under administrative discretion. I trust the admin team to figure out what is and isn't genuinely an intentionally offensive username Fan26 (Talk) 17:58, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
• If there isn’t even a clear and solid definition then I’m not sure it should be there. I don’t know that admins need to be given more powers if it isn’t clearly defined what they are supposed to do.SaintSirNicholas (talk) 10:39, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I agree that terms used in any policy should be as clearly defined as possible. We do need a policy we can point to in order to handle cases of discrimination though, and the further reading material are intended as pointers to the relevant concepts to aid rather than dictate decision-making. OOM 224 (he/him/they) 11:16, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
• Chiming in; good measure. We should maintain strong local policies decided by community members (whatever form those take) rather than relying on Fandom's policies, and those ones we vote on can better protect us. The current version of the anti-discriminination policy's flavor text (to couple with Fandom TOU as justification for having it skip CT) was heavily workshopped by now-banned users and I'd feel much more comfortable if we passed some form of it on our own; not because I agree with the content, as many of the things like bigotry obviously are unacceptable, but nevertheless better to CT.—spookywilloww^talk 21:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Okay, I have amended my proposal regarding the discrimination policy following feedback. This is the updated diff between the current WP:UCP paragraph intended to be replaced and the new proposed paragraphs. As part of the proposal, I suggest deleting the Wookieepedia:Fandom anti-discrimination policy and effectively merging its key points into WP:UCP. It would also incorporate the proposal on explicitly mentioning usernames and images as falling under the policy. OOM 224 (he/him/they) 15:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Seems good to me. NanoLuuke^{Cloning Facility} 15:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)