The BIONICLE Wiki:Site Rules

These are the Site Rules and Policies of Bioniclepedia. You are expected to have read them before beginning to edit. Following them will not be hard; this is just to warn you what will happen if these rules are violated.

Rating System
On Bioniclepedia we use a Rating System, where you must copy a rating template onto your userpage. An administrator (Daiku) will give or take points given on your behavior; you start at 1 and can go up to 10. Punishments will rarely involve rating deductions, and more often, blocking. Gaining points is much more difficult, but also much more rewarding: the more points you have, the more respected and trusted you will be in the community. To find out more about ratings, click here.

Rules and Punishments
Below are things that are not tolerated on Bioniclepedia, and what the consequences are for going against these rules.

Vandalism
Vandalism (using offensive language or being hostile in general, replacing or renaming pages, removing or rewriting pages with false information, etc.) is obviously prohibited on Bioniclepedia. Minor vandalism, such as adding false information (it will be easy to tell if you are just misinformed, and if so you will not be punished), will result in a warning, and if necessary, point reduction. Major vandalism will result in an immediate 3-day block, and repeated offenses of minor or major vandalism will result in increasing magnitude of block time.

Spoiler Policy
Whenever new story material is released, there is a certain period of time in which you cannot submit spoilers without spoiler tags (place this: on the top of any page containing spoilers), and in special cases, spoilers will not be allowed untill an official LEGO rep says otherwise. Penalty for failing to use a spoiler tag may result in a 1-week block.

Below are the guidelines for when spoilers must use spoiler tags:

In the case of comics: Spoiler tags must be used for two weeks.

As for books and movies: Spoiler tags must be used for one month after official release.

Spoiler tags are not required for the following:

Story Serials; any information dicovered through a Story Serial may be added to any article at any time without the use of any spoiler tags.

"Ask Greg"; users who ask Greg Farshtey any questions through BZPower or MaskofDestiny may be added at any time without Spoiler tags.

BIONICLE.com; any information released directly from BIONICLE.com or BIONICLEstory.com is allowed into any article immediately without Spoiler tags.

Also, leaked names and images are never allowed at all. Submitting leaked information to this site will result in an immediate block, ranging from one week to one year, depending on the severity and amount of the leaked info.

Images
You may only upload images that have to do with Bionicle to this website. Personal images, such as pictures of MOCs or something not related to Bionicle at all, are not allowed. However, as long as they are appropriate, these images can be allowed given that they have a Personal Image Stamp. Without a Personal Image Stamp, an image will be deleted no sooner than 72 hours after the user is warned that it needs one. Also, if a personal image is not linked to on any pages, it will be deleted anyway.

Tense
All articles on Bioniclepedia except those about "real things" (Bionicle books, movies, etc.) should be written in past tense ("The Toa were heroes", not "The Toa are heroes"), from the point of view that the Bionicle storyline happened a long time ago. Disobeying the tense policy, unless done so intentionally (in which case the offense would be counted as minor vandalism), will not result in a punishment, only a warning.

Deceased Characters
Sometimes in the BIONICLE storyline a character dies; all this means regarding articles is the character will be listed as deceased on their article only. Please do not add "Deceased" to templates or any other lists regarding that character, as due to our tense policy, all of these beings existed in the past and all eventually died anyway.

Fan Fiction, False Info, and Theories
Fan fiction is not allowed on Bioniclepedia--the Custom Bionicle Wiki is where fan fiction belongs. Punishment for submitting fan fiction is a warning, and for repeated offenses will result in minor banning. If you want to post a story on your userpage, this is allowed (within reason; don't try to post a million-word story on your userpage); but do not treat your own fan fiction as Bionicle canon.

And theories, popular or not, are not permitted either. If something is widely believed, it may be worth a mention in the Trivia section, but it should never be stated as truth unless Greg or another official source supports it.

Adminship
Main article: Lego Bionicle:Administrators

Adminstrators like the "Toa" of Bioniclepedia: They use their powers to keep Bioniclepedia a clean and safe site to visit. But if an administrator should abuse their power for personal gain, or vandalise, they will be demoted ASAP, and shall be banned. The duration of the ban will vary, depending on how much damage the admin had done.

Also, all Bioniclepedia members are expected to show respect to any and all administrators. Intentionally insulting an admin (or anyone else, but admins tend to be insulted more than other users since they enforce rules that others may not be happy with, give punishments, etc.) will result in a one-day block at least, and will increase depending on the seriousness of the insult.

Banned or Blocked Members
Banishment, or blocking, happens when a member causes intentional harm to the wiki. And the length of the block will vary, depending on the degree of that member's violation of the rules. Banned members are usually still allowed to edit their own talk page, as long as they don't use profane words, or insult any users.

And when a user is blocked, please do not post thing like "I'm glad he's gone" or "I hated him". When a user is banned, they have received just punishnment for breaking the rules, and don't need to see other users insult them while they're banned.

Deletion
Sometimes articles will need to be deleted, either because the article is spam, vandalism, or it has no need to be here. If you see an article that you believe should not exist, simply type   on the top of the article. But if an article absolutely must be deleted as soon as possible; type   on the top of the page. If the article contains swearing, spoilers, or anything that might be offensive, please blank it and type   on the page.

An administrator will look at any articles for deletion as much as possible.

Other Websites
Sometimes websites will need to be looked at by an administrator before you are allowed to link to it. Unless it is an offical owned by Lego.

BIONICLE Fansites and Forums
We do allow linking almost any BIONICLE fansite as long as they seem to have appropriate rules and policies.

Linking to any BIONICLE forums are also allowed, as long as they don't have inappropriate content.

It is prohibited to link to any non-BIONICLE forums without permission from an admin first. The exception to this rule is if it is another Wikia forum.

Promoting other Bionicle Wikis
We will only allow mention of other BIONICLE wikis as long as they are hosted by Wikia (or if they've been aproved by the Bioniclepedia administration). Linking to BioSector01.com (BS01) is currently allowed as long as the link is to a specific userpage. Copying information from any other Bionicle wiki and adding it here is prohibited, and vise versa, and may result in a ban.

YouTube
We do not currently allow linking to YouTube, although posting a YouTube video here is okay.

Voting Rules
This rule was created because lately there has been a lot of debate over who is allowed to vote in matters such as user promotion or important site decisions that the admins leave for the community to decide, like the past tense rule.

The guidelines for being able to vote are as follows:
 * You must have made your first edit with your account at least a week before the poll started. This is to ensure your account isn't a sockpuppet (a duplicate account made only to vote) or a meatpuppet (an account made because your friend told you to sign up and vote for their cause). Sockpuppeting and meatpuppeting are strictly forbidden.
 * When you receive a rating deduction or block, you are not allowed to vote for a month afterwards. This is because you might be vengeful from your recent punishment and may vote just to get back at the admins in whatever way you can think of.
 * If your first edit was less than 6 months ago, you must have made at least 2 edits to the main namespace (any page that doesn't have User:, Talk:, Lego Bionicle:, Forum:, etc. in front of the title) per week (8 per month) to vote. If your first edit was more than 6 months ago, you simply must have 50 or more edits to vote. This ensures that only people who have made significant contributions to the community, relative to how long they've been a part of it for, can vote.

The guidelines for how voting works are as follows:
 * The generally-accepted way to vote is by having the matter being voted on (say, "GenericUser's Request for Adminship") with "For", "Against", and "Comments" sections.
 * If you are voting to elect one out of several options, you can only put your vote "For" under one option, and your vote "Against" under as many as you want. If you are voting to elect multiple options, or each matter being voted on is unrelated to the other, then you can vote "For" as many things as you want as well.
 * "Comments" is to talk about the votes or the subject at hand; if you aren't sure to vote "For" or "Against" you may want to leave a note under "Comments" that you couldn't decide.
 * In the case of a user promotion, at least three votes "For" are needed, and an additional vote "For" is needed for every vote "Against"; the user in question cannot vote for their self, and at least two of the votes "For" must be from an admin, and none of the votes "Against" may be from an admin.
 * In the case of a community poll on a policy (for example, a vote to keep/get rid of/revise the Rating System), a time period will be defined and at the end of it, whichever the majority agrees with will happen.
 * In the case of another kind of poll, such as an election (like Featured Article or User of the Month), the voting rules will be specified on the poll page.