A good set of rules helps keep our community positive for everyone. We welcome all kinds of users. That includes beginners, young people, people with disabilities, members of minority groups like LGBTQ+ people, and more.

Reading these rules is your responsibility. Saying, "I didn't read the rules!" is NOT an excuse for harmful behavior.

General

Coding Help Wiki
Overview
Rules Mentorship program Sandbox Staff
Community
Barnstars Blog Community page Forum Userboxes WikiNode
Help us
Candidates for deletion Pages needing attention Pages without images Patrol changes Short pages and stubs Wanted pages

• Create a kind and friendly environment.
  • Do not harass or bully any other user. If someone asks to be left alone, leave them alone.
  • Discrimination of any kind is not allowed. Treat everyone with respect and equality.
  • Please do not fuel or start drama purposely.
• Do not plagiarize, or take as your own, anyone's personal code. We are here to help you, but if you didn't code the piece, please credit or ask permission to use it first.
  • Non-personal code, like code in articles or our general templates, is okay to use. You don't need to ask permission.
  • Personal code involves things like profile page and message wall code. It may be in a template with the user's name in it. You need permission for that.
• Do not give out or ask for any personal information. (Address, Last Name, etc.) First names and social media such as Discord or Snapchat are fine.
  • Additionally, exercise internet safety. Don't meet up with strangers or click on mysterious links.

Strong language

Keep it clean. We've got kids here!

• Swearing is not allowed on this wiki.
  • We allow near-swears like crap, frick, heck, and dang.
  • Less-than-minor swears should be asterisked or slashed out with at least two asterisks or slashes. For example, if Pizza was a swear word; 'P*zz*' or 'P/zz/' is OK, while 'P*zza', 'P/zza', or 'Pizza' is not.
  • The use of curse words with negative intent directed at other users is strictly prohibited.
  • Keep music mostly clean. If in a Spotify/SoundCloud feature, or other linked items/songs, swearing will be tolerated--to an extent. If you post a song/link containing many or mostly swears, it will be removed.
• Slurs (even if asterisked or hyphenated) will not be tolerated and will result in an immediate 2+ week block. No exceptions.
  • If for some unlikely reason you ever need to discuss a slur, you'd refer to it by its first letter. For example, "the R word is harmful to people with intellectual disability."

Accessibility

Main article: Accessibility

This is applicable across articles, blogs, and discussions.

Neurodivergent users and people who use screen readers are welcome here. Our rules help ensure they can enjoy the wiki too.

Writing well

To write well:^[1][2]

• Use good punctuation. This helps everyone, especially neurodivergent people and screen reader users, understand you.
  • Avoid text walls and long sentences. Break them up.
  • Separate phrases with commas. End sentences with periods.
• End sentences clearly. Make it clear when sentences begin and end.
  • Screen readers treat line breaks like periods. So periods before a line break are optional.
  • It's okay to end sentences with emojis or "lol" sometimes. But if you're doing it multiple times, consider periods or line breaks for readability.
• Limit shorthand and abbreviations. A little is fine, but excessive shorthand is hard to understand. Always remember to use punctuation, even with shorthand.
• Use emojis well. Standard emojis are okay. It's best to put them at the end of a message, especially if you're using more than one.
  • Don't put spaces between repeated emojis (e.g. 💮💮💮). Screen readers read this better.^[1]
  • Avoid alternating words and emojis (e.g., this 👏🏻 is 👏🏻 an 👏🏻 example 👏🏻). This is a mess for screen reader users.
• Avoid weird or artsy lettering. This is can be incomprehensible for screen readers. Use normal letters.^[1]
  • Alternating case: Don't alternate capital and lowercase letters. Screen readers can't read that properly. Example: hArD tO rEaD
  • Letter spacing: Don't add extra spaces between letters. Example: h a r d t o r e a d
• Key smashes: Keep them short, not long.

These rules are relaxed on message walls. Personal messages can be more silly and casual. However, don't overdo it. If another user is neurodivergent/disabled, make sure your personal messages to them are readable.

Imagery and Design

• Style text well, if at all. Text styling should be legible. Don't make text tiny or enormous. Make sure color contrast is readable.
• Use alt text well. Put alt text on any non-decorative images. If it doesn't let you use alt text, you can try putting an image description in a caption underneath.
  • Small icons or other decorative images often don't need alt text. For example, you don't need to tell a screen reader about a "cute heart with a pink and purple gradient and a soft floating animation." That isn't useful to them.
  • Be specific and clear. Don't assume people will get your media or meme references. For example, "pointing Spiderman meme" won't help someone who doesn't know the meme. But "Two people in identical Spiderman costumes point at each other in surprise" makes sense.
• Limit visual clutter and overwhelm: Glaring colors, flashing images, and surprises cause problems for some neurodivergent users.^[2]
  • Avoid flashy and attention-grabbing animations and images.
  • Limit or skip intense, neon colors. These hurt some people's eyes.

Social rules

Comments

• Keep your comments positive.
  • Don't give critique on someone's work (e.g. a personal template) unless they ask for it.
  • If an article or general (non-personal) template has an issue, don't write a complaint. Just go ahead and fix it! You can fix inaccuracies, spelling/grammar, typos, and whatever else. If you don't know how to fix an issue, ask for help.
• Please do not create spam or meaningless comments. This includes, but is not limited to:
  • Blank comments
  • Nonsense (e.g. strings of letters or numbers)
  • Totally irrelevant comments (e.g. "I love my cat" on a page about HTML)
  • Random images
  • Commenting non-stop in a short amount of time
  • Chain mail
  • Replying to a message by copying a previous comment, or by saying the same thing
  • 1st!, 2nd!, or similar comments
• Don't report comments for no good reason.

Accounts and usernames

Be polite. Don't use usernames/accounts to trick anyone or evade a block.

• Use a clean name. Swears and slurs in your username aren't allowed.
• Accounts cannot be shared. Saying "My sibling/A friend did that!" to get out of a punishment or block is not an excuse. You are responsible for keeping your friends/siblings from abusing your account.
• Don't impersonate anyone. This includes impersonating celebrities (e.g. "I'm Ed Sheeran") and other wiki users (e.g. "I'm admin MissLunaRose's alt account"). If you do this, we'll give you 2 weeks to change your username. If you don't, you'll be blocked.
• Use alternative accounts honestly and fairly.
  • List the name of your alt account on your user page, even if it's inactive.
  • Don't misuse alt accounts to get around blocks/punishments or to pretend to be someone else.

However, using a screen name for online safety is okay. For example, if your name is Jane Johnson and you want to go by Stella Moonbeam online, that's allowed. (In fact, we encourage all users under 18 to do this.) As long as you aren't impersonating a specific person, it's all good!

Discussions

• Please remember that the discussions are still a part of the wiki, and all of the general rules apply.
• Use proper grammar and spelling to the best of your ability.
• Do not advertise other wikis on the discussions. You may, however, advertise your coding commissions if you wish!
  • Additionally, do not provide links to any unsafe or phishing sites.
• Keep the off-topic chatting to a minimum. You can have a few nice polls here and there, but mostly keep it on-topic to coding.
  • If you need help, don't be afraid to ask! Otherwise, you can direct it to the message wall of any of our staff members.
• Use proper categories when making new posts (ex. off-topic posts would go in off-topic, and when you're asking someone to code something for you, that'd go in coding requests).
• No necroposting. Necroposting includes replying in discussions/comments/message walls that are no longer active or recent.
  • Posts inactive for 3 months or more are considered archived, so don't reply to those.

Page rules and guidelines

Pages should be on topic, helpful, and easy to read.

Page creation and titles

• Create relevant pages. Don't make pages irrelevant to coding or wikis.
• Check if a topic already exists. We don't want duplicate pages.
  • Don't create "micro pages." For example, if we have a "Soundcloud" page, we don't need a new "How to change your Soundcloud page color" page. We can just add that as a section to the "Soundcloud" page.
• Put content in a page when you're creating it. Add a few useful paragraphs. Don't leave it blank or with something like "WIP."
  • If you want to start small, just work on it in a sandbox! Your sandbox is at Special:MyPage/Sandbox.
• Do not make mainspace articles of your F2U designs. Instead, put them in a sandbox or the Free Designs page.
• Capitalize titles properly. The first letter should be capitalized. Don't use all caps or all lowercase. Articles should also not contain any characters outside of the English alphabet (A to Z), blank space ( ), and the occasional colon (for official wiki pages) or number.
  • Example: Fonts is okay, while fonts, F0NT$! and FONTS are not.

Page content

• Keep it on-topic. Your content should relate to coding or wikis.
  • Don't add irrelevant images to pages (unless you're using them as example images).
  • Don't add unrelated categories to pages.
• Write in English.
• Keep it PG. Text and images may not have swearing, gore, or NSFW imagery.
• Try to use proper grammar and spelling in your pages. We don't expect perfection, but staff members may reach out if this is becoming a problem.
• Do not edit others' personal pages. Main space articles and general templates are okay to edit. But don't edit someone's profiles page, sandbox, message wall, or personal template without permission.
  • Vandalism leads to blocks.
  • Exception: You may edit someone's page to award them a barnstar.
• Do not use any special characters or letter accents in your pages.
• Do not edit a page and add/delete nothing just to get the edit count.
• Do not share links to any site that may collect personal info, or be unsecured.
• Do not create personal pages with your own coding in the main space.

Additionally, it is best practice to leave a summary for each edit you're doing. It is not enforced, but it helps other editors to see what you changed without looking through the editor.

Handling issues

If you see someone breaking our rules, you can do something about it.

Sometimes, people violate our rules by accident. If it doesn't look like a bad-faith issue, try being helpful. Link to the rules and explain it. Be polite, just like you'd want people to do with you if you made a mistake.

Other times, someone is clearly a troll, spammer, or vandal. Don't talk to them. (They often love the attention.) Instead:

• Revert any bad edits.
• Tell one of our admins. Link to the inappropriate edits/posts. We can ban troublemakers.
• Report them to Fandom's SOAP team. This way, Fandom staff knows what happened. They may ban the troublemaker from all Fandom wikis so they can't cause problems anywhere else.

External links

We encourage you to familiarize yourself with Fandom's policies. These include:

• Community guidelines
• Copyright
• Gender identity guidelines
• Offensive terms policy

References