RuneScape:University of Lumbridge/Lesson/Community Interaction

Community interaction is much different from the other main subjects seen here. You can edit without using tables or templates, but no matter what, if you are around the wiki for very long, community interaction will become an everyday part of your life. It varies from welcoming new people to getting involved with projects like this one! The community is the biggest factor in anything at the wiki, so would follow that learning how to participate in discussions and share your ideas is one of the best things to do around here. This lesson will show you how to do just that.

Vandalism
If you are around the wiki for any length of time you will begin to notice that it is vandalized on occasion. We pride ourselves on having a very active userbase that reverts all damage done by vandalism generally within seconds of it taking place. There are no requirements to help revert vandalism, and it's a very simple process, but first you must learn to identify it. Vandalism can just be adding obscene things to a page, or it could be changing the numbers in a charm log to show false results of the drop rates of certain charms. It could also be done by falsely changing the information in the grand exchange page for an item, causing it to reflect a false price for people. It could also be spam.

The most important thing to remember with vandalism, is that you must always assume good faith. Unless you have a reason to believe someone is vandalizing, assume that they were making an edit to try to improve the page. As such you should approach it like that. When you notice an unproductive edit to a page. You shouldn't immediately scream at the editor and say "OMG why you vandalise noob!!!!!@!!@!@!" as that's likely to just escalate things and give you a negative response. It's much better to approach it something along the lines of "I noticed your edit to ______(page here)______. Thanks for contributing, but that is actually incorrect.  I have reverted your edit, but I wanted to let you know why it had been reverted.  I hope you understand, and good luck editing ~ ". That let's them know that you care and are trying to help them. There are templates for this, but personal messages generally go a lot farther than templates. If you notice someone is making multiple unproductive edits, you should leave them a sterner message like "Your edits to ______(page here)______ are unproductive. In light of this fact, they have been reverted, and you would be asked to not make edits like them in the future.  If you continue to edit in this manner, you may risk being blocked.  Thanks, ~ ".

Counter-Vandalism Unit
If they continue to vandalize after they have received multiple warnings, you should go ahead and add them to the CVU (Counter-Vandalism Unit). When you go to it, you should scroll to the bottom of the page, click to edit the last section, and replace with the vandal's username/ip address followed by the page. Such as:. This person's contributions will then be reivewed, as well as all other information that needs to be taken into account, and then a sysop will decide whether to give the person a temporary block or not. (Or in extreme, repeated cases an indefinite/permanent block.) Remember to only report people who have vandalized and been warned multiple times.
 * RuneScape:Counter-Vandalism Unit

Policies
Policies are in use all the time. They can be used for good things or bad things, but if you want to get involved in the community, learning about policies is one of the best things you can do. Many policies are put into everyday use, some aren't so common. This lesson will go over most of the basic ones that are very important for contributors here to know and understand. Think of them as your rights. They will protect you, but only if you know how to use them.
 * Full list of policies here

Opinion Policy
The Opinion policy is meant to stop any one group from ruling the wiki. It means that even though a sysop has extra tools than an autoconfirmed user, their opinions count for the same amount in a discussion. Supposing of course they bring up equal points. This does not mean you can say "because they are my friend". But you could say, "I've known ____ for quite a while. I consider them my friend.  Because of this, I've really got to know them, and I think that they are very helpful to everyone..." As long as the point is valid, it counts the same, no matter who's idea it is.
 * RuneScape:Opinion policy

Assume Good Faith
This policy has already been discussed above in the vandalism section, but just to reinforce it, as it is a very important one. Unless you are beyond reasonable doubt that someone is unproductively editing a page, assume that they were making the edit for the best, and act accordingly. This can be hard to follow, but many new editors blank pages and make edits that would seem to be bad, but really they are just trying to figure things out. Being nice and letting them know that their edits aren't helping in a friendly manner can mean the difference between gaining a very valuable contributor to the wiki or annoying someone such to the point that they will vandalize more (intentionally) and possibly tell their friends and/or people they meet that the people here are mean and that would ruin our reputation as on the of best sources of RuneScape information.
 * RuneScape:Assume good faith

Yew Grove

 * Forum:Yew Grove

Article of the Month

 * RuneScape:Article of the Month

User of the Month

 * RuneScape:User of the Month