User blog:Tullis/January News!

Huh. It's slightly less cold now.

Vandalism
Recently we had a massive spate of vandalism over Christmas, and it's been popping up randomly ever since. This is partly due to our heightened profile since Mass Effect 2 is nearly out, and there's a new novel on the horizon. As a result, we've implemented a zero-tolerance policy over vandalism from "IP vandals" - people who just pop up on the wiki, vandalise an article and are never seen again. Those IP addresses are being permanently banned, no warnings. Like I've said elsewhere, wikis are catnip to idiots, and the bigger we get the more tempting we are.

However, we've also been getting stealth vandalism lately; people who vandalise articles, and then immediately edit it out, as if it's some attempt to cover their tracks. This is also grounds for being banned. This kind of vandalism is harder to spot, especially if a page has had a lot of editors in one day -- I know I missed one -- so if you see it, please report the individual to an admin.

Finally: trolls. This has been a big issue recently, so I want to address it now without any equivocation:

'''If you cannot contribute to this wiki without being offensive to other users, despite being asked to tone it down, you are not welcome. You will be warned, and if the behaviour continues, banned.'''

Abusive and combative behaviour, harassment, bad language -- none of that crap belongs here. All of us are busy people: humouring someone who thinks this is funny, or the proper way to behave, is a waste of our time. As the community guide says, if you wouldn't speak that way to a stranger in public, don't do it on the internet, because that's essentially exactly what you're doing. We don't put up with someone standing in an office, say, who's screaming their head off and swearing. So there's no reason whatsoever we should have to put up with it here.

* * *

Now to remind legit editors and contributors, because I don't say it often enough: this is our wiki. It belongs to everyone who makes a contribution towards making it better. It belongs to everyone who spends time checking stats, uploading pictures, fixing spelling, building templates, checking sources, taking screenshots -- everyone who takes a minute of their precious time to add something to a resource that the entire Mass Effect community can use, and that we can be proud of.

If you'll pardon me: this is a bloody good wiki. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because we made it. It's ours. It doesn't belong to the idiots, the vandals or the trolls. So thank you for your continued vigilance and help, and let's kick 'em out.

Screenshot requests
I've done some updating to the races page; in the process I identified some screenshots we could do with.


 * An anonymous krogan. Just looking for a random krogan to be the updated image for the races page; maybe one of the ones from Chora's Den or the Wards. It needs to be a hi-res, well-lit shot of a krogan with his helmet off.
 * The rachni. We're still a bit short of rachni pictures, apart from the Rachni Queen. If anyone has any hi-res rachni pictures (i.e. from Altahe, Nepmos etc) those would be fantastic.
 * As always, articles needing screenshots can be found here.

Reminders
Just bringing up some things people may have missed from previous blogs.


 * How to improve the wiki with just one click.
 * Featured articles! I'm still looking for nominations for featured articles for the front page. If you have a possible nomination, please check the criteria and post it on the same page.

And finally...
Take care of yourselves, and I hope you all had a good [holiday of your choice].

--Tullis.

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