An update to the current rules on what you can and cannot name yourself as a user of the wiki.

Why?

We have lately witnessed several instances of users applying to join the wiki with names that some members of moderation find objectionable. We want to make these rules more clear. Specifically, we have seen users apply to the site with self-deprecating or self-demeaning usernames. We are concerned that these usernames will not allow users to participate on the site without incident, or that they will make Rule 0 violations a murkier area in a way that we would prefer to avoid. For instance, someone with the username "the worst writer" would only be able to be referred to with that insulting title, and Disciplinary wishes to avoid having to litigate a potential Rule 0 violation that would stem from comments that the username is accurate.

Solution

Following is the current (as of 24/1/2026) rules on usernames for the wiki:

Username Policy

The SCP Wiki maintains a policy that dictates what constitutes usernames that are permissible for membership. The policy is as follows:

• No names with profanity, slurs, offensive content or connotations. The final decision on what constitutes offensive content is made at the discretion of Site Staff.
• No names implying official staff positions. (e.g. Staff, Operational Staff, Moderator, Admin, Administrator, etc.)
• No names implying specific, unique positions/affiliations in the Foundation or other fictional groups on our website. In addition, no names that are based on pre-established Foundation characters, from works found on the wiki.
  • For example, names containing SCP, Director, D-XXXX, O5-Queen, MTF Captain XXXX or named characters like Clef, Gears, or Kondraki would not be permissible. For a summary of existing characters or entities, please refer to the character tab of the Tech Hub Tag List. (Note: Authors who are responsible for the creation of said tagged characters are exempt.)
• No names that impersonate or reference notable public figures. For example, "DrJoeBiden" is not allowed while "DrJoe" is.

The username policy is enforceable both for prospective members, and existing SCP Wiki members; enforcement for existing members is implemented on a case-by-case basis, at such a time when an existing user with a non-permissible username posts a page, or comments on a discussion thread.

Following is the proposed changes to the rules, with proposed additions in blue.

Username Policy

The SCP Wiki maintains a policy that dictates what constitutes usernames that are permissible for membership. The policy is as follows:

• No names with profanity, slurs, offensive content or connotations. The final decision on what constitutes offensive content is made at the discretion of Site Staff.
• No self-degrading names. (e.g., iamastupididiot, Shitty Writer, dumb_moron, etc.)
• No names implying official staff positions. (e.g. Staff, Operational Staff, Moderator, Admin, Administrator, etc.)
  • Note that this applies to all users, including all current and former SCP Wiki staff. This policy will be enforced retroactively and without regards to staff tenure. The only exception to this rule is The Administrator , due to the fact that it is an approved sockpuppet which served its purpose, and that if Fritz wanted to (re)join staff he couldn't use it for staff work.
• No names implying specific, unique positions/affiliations in the Foundation or other fictional groups on our website. In addition, no names that are based on pre-established Foundation characters, from works found on the wiki.
  • For example, names containing SCP, Director, D-XXXX, O5-Queen, MTF Captain XXXX or named characters like Clef, Gears, or Kondraki would not be permissible. For a summary of existing characters or entities, please refer to the character tab of the Tech Hub Tag List. (Note: This does not apply to characters which are named after an established user, for that user).
  • Usernames that reference fictional characters not associated with the SCP universe are allowed, so long as you do not intend to roleplay as that character (see our rule against roleplaying).
  • To clarify: you may name yourself things such as Agent Anders, Lieutenant Columbo, God King Skovald, etc., but you may NOT name yourself things such as MTF Alpha-9 Member, DrGearsFan, or SCP-173Enjoyer.
• No names that impersonate or reference notable modern public figures. For example, "DrJoeBiden" is not allowed while "DrJoe" is.
  • Keep in mind that this rule extends to notable community members. For example, you may not name yourself Doctor Gears and have the same profile picture as Dr Gears You may, however, name yourself Dr Clockwork and have a picture of a random scientist as your profile picture.
• If you are unsure of whether or not your username would be in violation of any of our rules, please ask us before making your Wikidot account on our official Discord or IRC.

The username policy is enforceable both for prospective members, and existing SCP Wiki members; enforcement for existing members is implemented on a case-by-case basis, at such a time when an existing user with a non-permissible username posts a page, or comments on a discussion thread.

Benefits/Concerns

This will help reduce general confusion by new members when asked to rename themselves, and will allow staff to have a concrete body of rules to point to when faced with pushback.

Please vote on whether or not these new rules make sense to implement.

||~ Yea ||~ Nay|| || X || X ||

The vote will go on for 7 days.

What is this?

As the culmination of the Bright Works Project, following a week of discussion, staff will now be voting on which proposal to choose, so that we can begin the resolution process.

All of the information can be found in the previous thread, or on the proposals hub; the proposals available for voting are:

• Remove and Counter Bright's Influence
• Near-Total Removal
• Single Source of Truth
• Adapted Deletions Threshold
• Minimal Staff Intervention

If there are any alternative options listed or mentioned within a proposal, the specifics will be voted on after choosing the proposal, so the immediate harm can be addressed while we continue to determine specific issues.

As such, this vote is for selecting the desired proposal. At the conclusion of this vote, the Bright Works Project will begin following the step-by-step breakdown and work towards resolution.

How Are We Voting?

For this proposal decision, to allow for staff members to list backups or secondary choices, we will be making this decision via ranked voting.

For each proposal listed, you will give them a rank between 1 and 5, where 1 is your first choice, and 5 is your last choice. You may put 0 if you do not want to choose a specific proposal, but you must choose at least your 1st choice.

At the conclusion of voting, the proposals will be evaluated via instant run-off; the majority choice will be selected. If there is no majority, the lowest choice will be removed and the results recalculated until there is a majority.

At the end of the voting timer, all votes will be tallied and calculated in a public Google Sheet; the proposal with the majority of votes will be selected.

The timer for this vote is set at 7 days to enable both sufficient time for staff to weigh in, while continuing with a focus towards harm reduction. This vote is open to Junior Staff, given the nature of the topic.

Vote code:
Please enter "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", or "O" into the table below, in the same row as the corresponding proposal. 1 is your first choice, and 5 is your last — 0 means that you do not want this proposal to be considered.

||~ Proposal ||~ Ranking|| || **Remove and Counter Bright's Influence** || # || || **Near-Total Removal** || # || || **Single Source of Truth** || # || || **Adapted Deletions Threshold** || # || || **Minimal Staff Intervention** || # ||

What is this?

As the culmination of the Bright Works Project, there is (at the time of posting) an ongoing discussion thread to discuss the proposals in preparation for voting on them.

However, some level of action against Bright's most harmful works is guaranteed, given that staff can now confirm that the Minimal Staff Intervention Proposal represents the accepted least action staff will take. Due to a desire to minimize harm in the interim (while the final outcome for these works is being decided), we should enable staff to hide harmful material until such a final outcome is decided.

As such, this is a vote to provisionally blank selected Bright articles while this process is ongoing.

Why now?

There were a number of reasons why an incremental proposal of this nature was not raised sooner, beginning in late 2024 when the possibility was seriously raised staff-wide. These reasons include staff capacity; issues with the initial iteration of the project contributing to lack of clarity about whether such an incremental proposal was a wise choice; assessments that the current, active potential harm of having these named works on the wiki was sufficiently low enough to temporarily postpone acting to avoid greater harm; the assessment that AHT did not have the authority to directly intervene under its existing rules for emergency intervention (explaining why this was not done instead of a proposal); and a need to balance direct intervention with concerns of abuse of staff power and staff capacity.

However, these reasons are not sufficient to explain the inaction that has taken place and the harm that has resulted from it. Further, this provisional blocking proposal should have been completed sooner, and on behalf of staff as a whole, we apologize. We also apologize on behalf of staff as a whole for staff’s broader failures addressing the Bright works in general. The extenuating circumstances do not excuse these failures. Staff through the years have made many mistakes running this project, and the current initiative has had to clean up after and make up for these, on top of any mistakes we have added.

To address these failings, once a proposal has been voted on and implemented — there will be a post-mortem focused on both community response and interactions and the actual process, with staff and non-staff involvement, looking to analyze and understand each misstep and hurdle around the project. The goal of this investigation is not to excuse staff failings — but rather: to provide an analysis, and explanation, to the community; identify structural issues; and assess the actions of individuals who the community feels have failed them. Our goal is that in addressing and fixing the issues, we will be able to regain some of the faith in staff that many users have lost throughout this process.

Solution:

This vote proposes that, for each page, its content will be replaced with the following:

Staff will choose which articles (if any) from this list should be blanked in this manner:

Note that blanking is a reversible action, and as such, will not interfere with whatever proposal staff ultimately elects to perform.

The timer for this vote is set at 3 days to enable both sufficient time for staff to weigh in, while permitting expeditious concealment of harmful pages while the longer O5 discussion and voting stage continues. This vote is open to Junior Staff, given the nature of the topic.

Vote code:
An "X" indicates that you think an article should be blanked. Remove it from any line where you feel the article should not be provisionally blanked.

||~ Article ||~ Blank Article? || || SCP-963 || X || || SCP-1004 || X || || SCP-001:O5 || X || || The Self Insert || X || || Personnel Director Bright's Personnel File || X || || SCP-029 || X || || SCP-590 || X || || SCP-1590 || X || || SCP-2976 || X || || SCP-100-J || X || || SCP-5555-J || X || || An Evening With Bright || X || || Annon || X || || Blind Date || X || || Code Brown || X || || Ecce Perago || X || || Games Reality Benders Play || X || || Here There Be || X || || Jack of Clubs || X || || Jack of Diamonds || X || || Mary Sue Who || X ||

Rules text

Current rule

Proposed Rule Up For Voting

1. AI-generated content
   1. The use of generative⁴ machine learning⁵ models to generate, translate, or edit user facing content⁶ is banned.
      • Posting generative machine learning (AI-generated) content to the SCP Foundation Wiki, the associated forums, or any official Sandbox in violation of this rule will result in a permanent ban. This ban may be appealed through the standard disciplinary process.
      • Good faith exception for images: Users will not be banned for making use of AI-generated images from external sources provided all of the following conditions are met for a given image:
        • The poster has no knowledge that it was AI-generated after having done a reasonable amount of diligence.
        • The image is cited properly when used on the Wiki and appears to be compliant with both our license and the Image Use Policy.
        • The image was not created by, for, or at the behest of the user who posted it to the Wiki.
   2. All pages containing AI-generated text will be eligible for summary deletion under the standard summary deletion procedure.
      • All AI-generated images and other media will be removed by staff, irrespective of whether the good faith exception applies.
   3. Furthermore, the usage of tools whose primary use is generative machine learning is also banned for user facing content.
   4. Examples of banned content include but are not limited to
      1. Any ChatGPT-generated text or images, including modifications of existing text or images
      2. DeepL translator
      3. Midjourney/Stable diffusion
      4. AI voice generation
      5. Almost any system which generates text or media in response to a free-text prompt
   5. Examples of allowed content
      1. Fractal generation
      2. Traditional text to speech (if license compatible)
      3. AI-generated CSS code

Rationale

Voting Procedure

There are two questions here:

1. Should the overall rule change above be implemented? (I.e., everything aside from the underlined portions related to translation.)
2. Should the use of AI for translations be disallowed? (I.e., should the underlined portions be included in the rule change?)

The issue of whether AI translation will be allowed is a separate question in the same vote. This will affect the underlined portions only. (If the overall modification passes but the vote results in AI translation being allowed, the underlined sections will be removed and 'DeepL translator' will return to the list of examples of allowed content.)

Voting Template:

||~ ||~ YEA ||~ NAY||
||Overall Rule Change|| X || X ||
||Disallow AI Translations|| X || X ||

A yes on the second question is a vote to disallow AI translations.

Discussion thread

Based on recent discussions and related to our changes in deletion policy, I'm proposing a modification of rule II.5, Content Posting by Banned Users:

Proposed rule:

5. Content Posting by Banned Users: Users currently banned from the site may not submit new content to the site in any way. This includes articles, forum posts, and all other forms of content. Site members may not post content on behalf of a banned user.
a. Banned users may request anonymization of their articles, which will be carried out in accordance with the site's license.
b. Staff will consider allowing the posting of collaborations that were in-progress at the time of a user's ban on a case-by-case basis, provided at least one co-author remains unbanned and that any banned user(s) ceased work on the collaboration at the time of their ban(s).

READ ME: Clarification regarding user-requested deletions

I'm offering this clarification to address comments in the 04 discussion.

Section 5.b of the current rule is a dead letter and currently has no effect. The ability of staff to delete works at the request of their authors, banned or otherwise, was already removed by the vote here. Voting 'no' will not undo the results of that prior vote. Whatever the outcome of this vote, staff will remain unable to delete banned users' work(s) at their request.

Please vote on the following question: Should the Site Rules regarding content posting by banned users be modified as described?

The vote will be open for 7 days.

Voting Template:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY|| || X || X ||

Discussion here.

Changes

1. We change the Licensing Guide's language to state the following:

2. We host a page on O5, for internal use, outlining the best practices a game developer can take, to stay compliant with the Wiki's license. This page does not constitute legal advice, and is stated outright at the top. The page will be provided to game developers on request, and subject to complying with the outlined suggestions, a game will be considered as a 'good faith attempt' to follow the Wiki's license, and licensing team will not pursue any corrections. In instances where a video game does not properly attribute the wiki, the Licensing team will be able to contact the developers regarding the issue, as with any other derived content. The contents of this internal page below:
https://05command.wikidot.com/games-licensing-guidelines

Reasoning

The current Licensing Guide outlines specific rules for the development of video games that are derived from the SCP Wiki. The listed rules are overly restrictive, and many of the largest current games based on the SCP Wiki do not comply with the license as written — notably, the current rules prevent the usage of any major Game Development Engine, presenting a major blocker to aspiring developers. As well, when contacted with questions regarding the current policy, Licensing staff is unable to give a solid answer, due to the non-enforceability of the current policy, without potentially providing information that is legally correct, but contradicts the policy.

Please vote on if you think that this should be our policy approach to video game licensing.

This vote will be open for 7 days.

Voting Template:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY||
|| X || X ||

Vote will be open for 7 days

Voting Template:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY||
|| X || X ||

Deletion Self-responsibility

Staff will no longer execute voluntary deletion requests. Authors will be wholly responsible for removing their own works, as well as maintaining their own deletion permissions. They can request for articles to be unlocked to this purpose, but staff is not obligated to intervene further on the author's behalf.

The following paragraphs on Deletions Guide will be removed:

If an author should request their material be removed, and be able to prove authorship beyond a reasonable doubt, these requests are granted. Authors may also request deletion of all their work to be done by staff. This will likely require a basic explanation of why, and may not be immediate, but generally speaking the wiki staff will acquiesce to such requests.
If circumstances imply that a request for deletion is being made during a time of distress, or there is evidence of malice or spite on the part of the user, requests for self-deletion may be delayed or denied.

Failed self-deletions (deleted:) will still be considered a technical error and summarily deleted.

Slug Reservation ability

Staff will have the ability to reserve slugs by creating placeholder pages. The content of the placeholder created here should be one (or more, if applicable) of the following:

• A disclaimer regarding the circumstance of removal (relevant discussion: Deleting Bright's articles)
• A redirect
• An idea summary of the work previously held at this slot. This will be tagged with rewritable and considered an open entry on Curations' docket
• Navigation-specific functions (e.g. disambiguation, See also)

Eligible-for-reserving slugs exists under the following conditions:

• SCP slots
  • Staff may reserve slots in existing Series that were recently vacated due to non-negative-vote deletion and were at least one of the following:
    • older than 2 years old,
    • was a prize of a Contest (such as Kcon).
  • Contest Staff (or equivalent) may reserve any slots in unopened Series.
• Non-SCP slugs
  • Staff may reserve slugs that were recently vacated due to non-negative-vote deletion, and were older than 2 years old.
• The Technical Team can reserve any slug indefinitely for technical function or mitigation of technical issues (see Poisoned Slots)

Staff may move or summarily delete any articles posted to an eligible vacant slug up until 7 days after the initial vacation. If no placeholders are created within that timeframe, staff forfeits reservation rights to it until the next time it is vacated due to non-negative-vote deletion. Eligible slugs can also be voluntarily forfeited sooner than 7 days, at staff's discretion.

Placeholders may only exist indefinitely with a passing Staff vote (excepting Technical Team's purview). Otherwise, they can only exist for up to 6 months, after which they must be vacated, and the slugs considered ineligible for further reservation (until the next time it is vacated due to non-negative-vote deletion.) Fiats may be used to extend the duration, but for no longer than a year.

This is not meant to be used to perpetually occupy a slug, but rather to resolve the underlying situation in under 6 months where possible. Seek other methods to deprecate the placeholders naturally, such as the Slot Goblin contest.

Integration with Unlisting Policy

Slots vacated and reserved by use of the unlisting policy is not subject to the 6-month time limit.

Voting Template:

||~ ||~ YEA ||~ NAY||
||Deletion Self-responsibility|| X || X ||
||Slug Reservation|| X || X ||
||[If Slug Reservation is Yea]Staff can summarily delete works posted in eligible slug within the 7-day timeframe|| X || X ||

Discussion here.

Any student wishing to conduct a study on any of our official platforms must prepare the following, to be presented to site staff upon posting:

• A clear statement of purpose. An explanation of the study/assignment will do fine.
• A clear illustration of what information on users will be gathered, and how it will be used.
• A clear statement that all information collected for the purposes of the study will be publicly available.
• A clear illustration of risks and or benefits associated with participating. For example, how are you helping advance a study subject's understanding of or engagement with the community?
• A clear statement of what this information will be used for specifically. Is this a paper that only a professor and TA will see? Will raw data be destroyed after the course ends? Etc.
• A clear definition of the tools being used to carry out research. This is essentially to filter out unsafe platforms such as Google Forms.
• A contact for questions, concerns, etc. An email address or professor's name and email address will typically suffice.

None of the above has to be written academically, something that the average person can read and understand what they are signing up for is best. This is a rough approximation of the information we previously required of studies operating in wiki spaces to abide by.

If someone attempts to share links to their study without the aforementioned requisites being fulfilled, a member of staff must ask that it be provided. This can be any member of staff, but will likely end up being a member of IO or Discord due to the online nature of the wiki and these studies. If the study's representative is unable to or unwilling to comply, we as staff reserve the right to remove their study from our platforms.

If a study asks that staff do anything in support of the work such as promoting it on IO platforms or allocating any resources to it, we must require an IRB number¹ with the appropriate search engine to read the full details so that we can decide before saying yes.

Any student seeking to make an account with us to conduct their study on our platform must follow these rules:

1. The research project must get its own account, to distinguish from any personal use of the wiki participating researcher(s) are engaged in.
2. This research account should be barred from any voting on pages. If the researcher feels that voting would be necessary for their work, they should submit a request for an exemption (with reasoning) to administration.
3. The research account must observe the following specific naming scheme for easy identification: "Academic Student [name]".²

Please vote on if you think that this should be our policy approach towards studies.

This vote will be open for 7 days.

Voting Template:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY||
|| X || X ||

This is a voting thread for the proposed Video Games Licensing Guide.

Issue:

The current licensing guide has a small section within the "For Specific Creator Types" tab, that covers a very surface level of how our site's licensing interacts with video game development. The issue with the current language is that it is not very specific, and partially contradicts itself.¹ Given the increasing number of games being developed based on the SCP Wiki, the creation of a dedicated guide is necessary.

Solution: A New Games Licensing Guide

To address this issue, I have created a new guide to break down exactly how software licensing interacts with the SCP Wiki, and answers a number of frequent questions that are typically asked by users. The intent of this guide is to provide more focused guidance, especially in relation to how a game developer can ensure that their game is compliant, while still giving them the freedom to distribute their game as desired.

The full text of the page has been included below, in a collapsible, and may be reviewed and discussed in full. For a short summary, this is a TL;DR snippet from the page:

TL;DR: Any asset you create for the game needs to be licensed under CC-BY-SA, or a compatible license, and must be packaged separately from the other assets, within an unencrypted folder. Any source code, engine code, executable or otherwise are not considered relevant in terms of the CC-BY-SA license, and may be licensed under whatever you would like.

Following an internal review, the Licensing team reached consensus and agrees that this proposal provides the best balance between ensuring that works are properly attributed, while allowing for flexibility with game engines that can be used in the creation of related games.

Please vote on if you think that this guide should be the official interpretation of how to handle licensing SCP content for video game development.

This vote will be open for 7 days.

Voting Template:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY||
|| X || X ||

This is a voting thread for the proposal to form an AI Detection Team.

The Problem:

In the past few months, Disciplinary has been tackling the various cases involving AI-generated content. While Disciplinary has been doing fine, there's a few oversights that remain in place due to the unofficial nature of how this system works.

As it is now, AI-generated content investigations and determinations (hereby referred to simply as AI Cases) begin when a user notes an article as possibly containing AI-generated material. From there, Disciplinary investigates the article before determining whether or not the article possesses AI-generated content or not.

The issue is, there's no clear distinction or requirement on how many members of Disciplinary need to agree that an article is AI or not. Unlike other Disciplinary matters, AI Cases are sometimes decided by no more than two members of Disciplinary, and in some extreme cases, just one member decided an article appeared as AI-generated resulting in the user's revocation. For example, this case here: https://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-16959844/ai-record-candon-halcomb, where AI Content was not just obvious, but blatantly stated. However, despite this particular case being blatant and while I doubt anyone on the team would abuse this loophole, the loophole still exists.

Proposed Solution:

The formal creation of a dedicated team along with a strict procedure to process AI Cases.

The team as a whole will be a subteam of Disciplinary since determinations can lead to disciplinary action (including revokes and permanent bans).

The team will have a single team lead whose duty is to ensure all AI Cases reach one of two verdicts in a timely manner:

1. AI Content Detected, where AI Content is detected and evident to members of the team.
2. AI Content Not Detected, where AI Content is not detected or the content is determined unlikely to be AI-generated.

In the case of present AI Content, the offending user will be revoked on first offense and permanently banned on second offense.

Users that are determined to have used AI-generation but attempt to lie or fabricate evidence to prove to the contrary will be permanently banned regardless of first or second offense.

Articles that are determined to have AI Content are to be summarily deleted, a process requiring three (3) staff witnesses.

Each AI Case requires a quorum of three (3) and any verdict must receive a supermajority of 75% of the votes in favor of it in order to pass. In the event a supermajority is not reached but quorum is reached, the Team Lead/Vice Captain is required to gather the entirety of the AI Detection Team to vote/weigh in on the discussion. The AI Case will remain open for another week or until all members have voted, whichever comes first. If, at this point, a supermajority is still not reached, the verdict defaults to "AI Content Not Detected".

In the event quorum cannot be reached on a given AI Case with AI Detection Team members, standard Disciplinary Team members may be asked to weigh in and vote.

All cases are to be logged on O5, though specific details are to be discussed on the Staff Discord Server. All AI Cases are to keep an accessible copy of the suspected material's source. This should be done by storing the source material in a code block collapsible on the AI Case's specific forum thread on O5.

A list of common AI indicators will be maintained to assist in training new members and to assist established members.

Benefits/Concerns:

In terms of benefits, this formally codifies requirements of the team and the policies on which it acts on. It removes potential loopholes and angles of abuse. Establishing a dedicated team lead also ensures that no case goes unfinished and that potential investigations don't linger around without end, causing undue stress to users who are suspected of AI-generation.

In terms of concerns, there will always be the concern that AI Content is difficult to conclusively prove. This proposal hopes to alleviate those concerns by requiring at least 3 individuals to agree that there is AI Content.

What Would Need to be Done

1. A team lead would need to be chosen, ideally from existing members of Disciplinary who regularly perform AI Detection.
2. Existing Disciplinary members will need to determine whether they wish to be officially part of the proposed AI Detection Team or not.

Voting will be open for one week.

Voting Format:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY|| || X || X ||

Should the following text be added to the promotions policy under obtaining mod tools?

This vote is open to OS+ and will remain open for one week.

Voting Template:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY|| || X || X ||

After a discussion started by the current state of the admin contact role (Dexanote being the admin contact for seven teams, several admins not being contact for any team, some teams having four contacts and others having one), the decision reached by AdCap was that the admin contact role is that it is largely defunct, and at some level at odds with how the site operates.

The responsibilities of an admin contact (also referred to as a go-to admin) are unclear, and have been for some time. Several admin contacts do not perform any tasks for their team, and only hold the role because it is required. The only codified role in site policy is in the Staff Structure document, which defines them as the following:

Your “go-to” administrators are whom you contact with issues, problems, changes, requests, or anything else along these lines. They have been appointed to that position to help your team function and to regularly check in with team captains to see how things are going. Each team has a primary contact listed; however, all administrators listed can also act in a given situation.

Additionally, according to several discussions with thedeadlymoose, in the original framing of the Teams system in 2014, the intent would be that the admin contact would be the leading guiding voice for policy, while the Captain would be responsible for day-to-day management of the team. This was not formally encoded into policy.

There are several additional uses/roles/responsibilities for admin contacts which have been mentioned over the years; however, these are largely the result of guesswork about what the title is supposed to handle, and exist outside of the intended system.

The enumerated responsibilities of the admin contact role are now largely defunct, thanks to the transfer of site staff and chat from IRC to Discord. During the IRC period, site admins would frequently be hard to reach, and not as invested in chat structure. In the present, Discord makes admins much more reachable and able to be contacted — one can DM an admin when they are not online, as well as ping the @Administrator role to get the attention of all admins. These changes to the chat ecosystem make admins much more easily reachable, and the responsibility of being the contact for issues has been largely shifted to the admin team as a whole. The further responsibility of regularly checking in with captains and helping them function is due to the recency of the team system when this policy was written, as it was something of an experiment at the time. Now, ten years later, we are able to call the experiment a success and can formally remove some of the "training wheels" that were built in at the outset.

The implicit and intended function of the role given by moose is also largely defunct — there has been a broad sentiment that the person best suited for pushing policy forward is the one who is most involved with the day-to-day operation of the team, which the policy voice function of the admin contact is at odds with. Additionally, we have seen a significant increase in the number of Operational Staff members who put policy forward — in the current staff model, this role of policy voice has been distributed throughout the body as a whole.

As such, it is being proposed that the role of admin contact/go-to admin be formally deprecated.

This will require the removal of the role from the Staff Structure page, as well as any Team/Staff listings that include it. Any errant mentions of the role should be removed or disregarded.

Please vote on the following question: Should the admin contact / "go-to" admin role be formally deprecated?

The vote will be open for 7 days.

Voting Template:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY|| || X || X ||

This is a voting thread for the proposal to restructure the Disciplinary Team of the SCP Wiki.

Problem

The Disciplinary Team has been caught in a mire of dysfunction for a long time now. The role of Captain has been vacant for nearly two years, and the role of Vice Captain was functioning as Acting Captain until mid-2023, when that also became vacant. Since then, the two leadership roles in the team have been empty, and along with other factors like near-constant high-complexity cases and a poor drive for recruitment, have contributed to a slow but clear decline in team function. Cases are missed, reports are taken and not followed up on, actions are decided upon but then no one executes them; the lack of leadership means that there is no central figure making sure things are done and that admins/other teams are kept in the loop.

Additionally, the Disc team is operating on a mandate that is suited to the era where the only offsite space was #site19. As it stands, Disc simply has no actual authority to deal with anything that does not occur on the SCP Wiki itself — which seems reasonable, until you register that most community interaction exists in public Discord servers, some of which are official, some of which are not. If someone has a dispute in a major public SCP server where, for example, they use a slur, Disc has no ability to deal with it, and is forced to send it over to the only team that does have a mandate extending offsite — Anti-Harassment.

This is bad for staff, because now the lines between the teams are growing muddled, and it’s bad for users, because AHT’s much broader power is supposed to be matched with a much smaller scope — they aren’t supposed to handle standard rule breaks, only personal harassment of users. Due to the nature of the harassment they are meant to handle, AHT generally also does not discuss matters with all involved users, make public records, or notify the community of ban specifics — all things users deserve to get when they make or are the subject of a Disc complaint. De facto, Disc’s authority already extends offsite (for example, someone can be banned for inciting a brigade in a Discord), but in a jagged, inconsistent way that has happened piecemeal over a decade, and needs to be standardized.

Solution

The issues with the Disc team are systemic and structural; the lack of mechanisms for someone to take charge of cases and lack of new people coming in completely neuter the team’s ability to actually enforce the Site Rules, and the limited mandate means that most rulebreaks can’t be prosecuted effectively anyway. To that end, the team has discussed a radical restructuring, consisting of three components.

I. Captaincy Restructure

• The roles of captain and vice captain will be abolished.
• They will be replaced by two new roles, to be called Duty Captain and Special Captain.
  • Pre-emptively, these roles are to be filled by OriTiefling and AriadnesThread, respectively; in the future, when a vacancy arises, administrators will fill the vacancy with all due haste, ideally taking advice from the team.
  • Each will also pick a vice captain, but the vice captain has no prescribed duties beyond simply filling in when their respective captain is unavailable or indisposed.
• The Duty Captain will dedicate their attention to daily duties of the Disciplinary Team — revokes and bans of trolls, spammers, Rule 0 violations, logging of actions, the day-to-day work that needs to be done. They can focus on these common but low-complexity matters, leaving the Special Captain free to focus on their mandate.
• The Special Captain will dedicate their attention to particularly complex or delicate cases involving high-profile community members and PAIs, cases that demand a thought-out approach and beyond-thorough investigation. They can focus on these uncommon but high-complexity matters, leaving the Duty Captain free to focus on their mandate.
  • Beyond their leadership roles in team function, the Duty and Special Captains have no decisionmaking capacity beyond that of regular team members; their votes count the same as any other member. Should they believe a change to team function is in order, either is empowered to take up the matter with the administrative team.
  • The Special Captain will handle demotions and staff disciplinary cases, and as such, is to be treated as the captain for demotion purposes as specified in the Site Charter.

The reality of the Disciplinary Team is that 50% of the work comes from 90% of the cases: the standard, daily banality of revoking spammers, vandals, trolls, et cetera. The other 50% of the work comes from the other 10%: relatively infrequent cases that involve a number of high-profile community members often making Disciplinary complaints about each other, or whose behaviour crosses the line in some way that means the Disciplinary team cannot blindly make a call and leave the consequences for later. Having one person as the Captain handling 100% of these cases is a recipe for burnout — they can’t focus on the first class of cases because of the second, and they can’t focus on the second because of the first. Splitting it up distributes duties across the two new captains evenly and allows them to handle their business effectively.

II. Mandate Change

• The list of duties on the Disciplinary Team hub are to be changed to include:
  • Delivering warnings and disciplinary actions on the SCP Wiki on members who break the Site Rules on the Wiki, or break basic Site conduct rules in private messages with other Wiki members, and in major Wiki community spaces.
• Additionally, the Site Rules are to be changed to include:
  • § 0: Rule 0: We expect you to behave in a reasonably civil, mature, and non-disruptive way on the SCP wiki and in major SCP Wiki community spaces.
  • § VI: Unacceptable Offsite Behaviours: Your behaviour in private with other Wiki members, in major SCP Wiki community spaces (such as large public Discords), and occasionally beyond reflects on your presence on the wiki. If your behaviour in other spaces online is found to egregiously violate basic site conduct rules, you may be subject to disciplinary action on the SCP Wiki in response. See also the Anti-Harassment Policy.
• Major Wiki community spaces are defined as those that fit all of the following criteria:
  • Publically-accessible.
  • Primarily related to or focused on discussion of the SCP Wiki.
  • Frequented by users of the SCP Wiki.

This formalizes Disc’s ability to ban people from the site should they, for example, yell racial slurs in an unofficial but major Discord frequented by authors, or private message insults to a user with whom they had a dispute — a clear violation of the community standards, but one that at the moment we have no legal power to punish beyond sending to AHT. Additionally, the wording for the Section VI edit has been altered to allow for the possibility of disciplinary action for users who, for example, operate a social media account filled with bigotry.

This does not grant Disc the authority to force moderators of that Discord to punish or ban the user in question — it only gives us the right to account for offsite actions when we make decisions about whether they should stay on the Wiki or not. Major Wiki community spaces are not the Wiki, and the Disciplinary Team has no authority to make moderation decisions on their behalf.

III. Process Changes

• The Duty Captain is to implement a system to keep track of open cases and allow team members to easily determine and change the status of a case.
  • The specifics of this system are to be determined later and by team consensus; various ideas include a bot, enterprise task-tracking software such as Jira, or Discord forums.
• The Special Captain is to remain in close contact with both the administrative team and the Anti-Harassment Team to determine that complex cases are being handled with all discretion and cases are not being forgotten when passed between the teams. AHT is to inform the Special Captain when they have decided on a ban for a user, so as to not interrupt a Disciplinary case in progress, and vice versa.

This change is largely to re-orient the team on the path of productivity, reducing the possibility of cases ‘falling between the cracks’ or otherwise getting lost as they have.

The Disciplinary Team believes that these changes, bundled together, will structure the team to alleviate the current dysfunction and allow the Site Rules to be effectively enforced on the community again.

This vote will go on for seven days.

Voting format:

||~ YEA ||~ NAY|| || X || X ||

This vote is to add the following rule to the Site Rules:

Rule II.6:
Editing:
Replacing an existing article of yours with a new one that is not a rewrite without first deleting the page and reposting is against the rules. April fools edits are permitted, however.

The vote will go on for one week.

|| Yes|| No|| ||X || X||

Previous 04 Discussion

Link to Site Charter

Intro

The Charter is inconsistent, vague, and somewhat unhelpful, I think we all know that.

In my opinion one of the worst offenders is the section on Admin Fiats ( "Staff Rules and Rights" Section E) which poorly defines such a powerful tool. This is my main focus in this discussion. For the most part my proposal (Proposal II) is defined to be descriptive, and to force admins to be descriptive of fiats when these are performed.

In the process of this I also recognized a number of small inconsistencies in the Charter which I believe are easily fixed. These small changes would not change how we operate and will I have no doubt will be uncontroversial. (Proposal I)

Proposals

I. Minor Charter Edits

In the collapsible below I have listed several noted inconsistencies and how I believe those should be rectified.

Please feel free to note any other similarly minor inconsistencies you may note in the Charter.

There's also the matter of -"administration", "administrator" "Administrator" (capitalized), "the Administrative team", "administrative staff" and "Admin" being used inconsistently within the Charter.

I suggest changing all these terms to "Administrator", "Administrators" and/or "Administration" for consistency as "Administrator" is the term defined in "Staff Levels" and as "Administration" is a term with a different meaning than "Administrators" (which additionally should be defined somewhere imo)

2.1 under "Charter Review" in "Introduction" capitalize both "administration" in paragraph 2 and administrator in paragraph 4

2.2 under "Site Discipline" Section I.B capitalize the 11 instances of "administrator" and "administrators"

2.3 under "Staff Rules and Rights" Section IV. B. 1
the term "Administrative team" is used in place of "Administration". As these two terms seem to refer to the same idea, and as the Administration is not at this time a team in the same vein as, for instance, Curations or Licensing.

As such I propose changing " the Administrative team" to "Administration"

2.4 under "Staff Rules and Rights" Section IV. C. 5
"Administrators" here seems to refer to a consensus by the Administration, rather than individual Administrators.

As such I propose changing

A Staff member that the Administrators determine to be Inactive will remain Inactive until the Administrators determine that they are Active or Reserve again. Returning from the Inactive status usually requires a return to work before the Inactive status is lifted, as a show of good faith.

to

A Staff member that the Administration determines to be Inactive will remain Inactive until the Administration determine that they are Active or Reserve again. Returning from the Inactive status usually requires a return to work before the Inactive status is lifted, as a show of good faith.

II. Merge Voting Period extension under Fiat
Section III. C.2 of the charter reads:

Issues that have received less than the required amount of Staff participation may be extended by up to one week by an Administrator, or longer with the agreement of at least three Administrators.

This is essentially a fiat without being called such, and has been recorded as a fiat by Administrators in the past. I suggest formally making this power the application of a fiat to limit confusion. As such I propose editing the section to the following:

Issues that have received less than the required amount of Staff participation may be extended by the use of an Administrative Fiat

III. Admin Fiat Revamp

I propose the creation of a new page in the Administrative Fiat section of 05command.

This page will be pinned.

The intended content for this page at the time of its creation is here.

The content of the current section of the Charter defining Administrative Fiat (Section IV E) will be replaced entirely with a link to this new page.

This new page will be considered for all intents and purposes to be part of the Charter. (voting requirements for edits etc)

This vote is open to Operational Staff and above.

Per the Site Charter, for this proposal to pass requires a supermajority (60%) of votes to be in favor, and the participation of at least 50% of active Staff. (equaling 40 total voters)

|| Vote || Yes || No || || Minor Charter Edits || X || X || || Merge Voting Period extension under Fiat || X || X || || Admin Fiat Revamp || X || X ||

The duration of this vote will be one week.

This vote is to determine whether genre tags can be applied to SCPs and GOI formats. This would allow users to apply the tags to their own articles and for staff to tag new articles. There will not be a staff effort to tag old articles until MAST decides the effort would be feasible. There will be a separate vote for both types of page.

Do we add the following to the tagging policy?

This vote is for Operational Staff and above. The vote will go on for a period of one week.

I propose the following changes

Replace

Blurbs must be at least one sentence or equivalent in length

With

Blurbs must be long enough to have a meaningful hook.
Blurbs should not be above 180 characters in length (soft limit), and ancillary utilities are not expected to fully show blurbs longer than this. Blurbs may not be above 200 characters (hard limit).

In the technical content policy

And add

Staff may freely unlist and relist pages created for staff purposes (e.g. guides, admin pages and contests) with sign-off from the appropriate captain(s).

To the unlisting policy

This vote will go on for one week

||~ Topic ||~ YES ||~ NO || || Technical content changes || X || X || || Unlisting changes|| X || X ||

This vote will encompass two separate but related issues. Elements in square brackets [like this/or this] represent aspects that will be voted on in addition to the overall rule.

Disciplinary action for posting AI-generated content

https://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-16669841/discussion-disciplinary-action-for-posting-ai-generated-imag

The following changes have been made as compared to the version of this policy in the discussion thread:
1. Added option for revocation vs. weeklong
2. Added good faith exception discussed in comments

Users who post AI-generated content to the SCP wiki will receive a [revocation of membership/weeklong ban] on their first offense, and a permanent ban on the second.
Good faith exception: This policy does not apply to properly-cited images from external sources [appearing on the Image Use whitelist] unless they were created by, for, or at the behest of the user who posted them to the Wiki.

If passed, the new policy will be added to the Site Rules and will become effective upon its addition.

Plagiarism jurisdiction overhaul proposal

https://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-16686225/discussion-plagiarism-jurisdiction-overhaul-proposal

The following change has been made as compared to the version of this policy in the discussion thread:
Wording tweak for reference to the first proposed rule

"Plagiarism" as used here incorporates any failure to properly attribute or obtain permission for the use of some or all of an external work, as well as any violations of site plagiarism policy. Instances of plagiarism will normally be handled by the Licensing team and recorded in non-disciplinary records on 05Command. Under some circumstances, the Disciplinary team will investigate plagiarism and, when necessary, impose punishments pursuant to site rules. An investigation by the Disciplinary Team should not be taken as a guarantee that a user will be punished.

Instances of plagiarism will only be considered Disciplinary matters (meaning the Disciplinary Team will handle such cases) when one or more of the following applies:

• Dishonesty
  • Example: A user downloads an image from imgur and includes it in an article they wrote, claiming to have been the creator of the image. The image is found to have been taken from a photographer's website, and the photographer confirms that they are not that user.
  • Example: A user posts an article containing an image with correct attribution to a non-CC source. They falsely claim that the creator of the image gave them permission to distribute it on the site under CC BY-SA 3.0. A takedown request is subsequently received from the original creator, who claims permission was never given. When asked to substantiate their claim of having been permitted to use the image, the user cannot.
  • Example: A user posts an article incorporating several sentences of what appear to be slightly-paraphrased text from a published novel. When questioned by staff, the user claims that this was a coincidence.
• Pattern of behavior: If a user continues to plagiarize after having previously been warned by Licensing. If a user already has one Licensing warning for plagiarism within the past month or two within the past year, subsequent instances within that time frame will be treated as Disciplinary matters. For purposes of this rule, a warning will be considered to encompass all instances of plagiarism between the prior warning, if any, and the date the warning was issued. Any new instance of plagiarism after the posting time of the 05command post shall be counted separately.
  • Non-example: If someone writes three articles and improperly cites images in all three, but Licensing staff only notices and requests a modification after the third article is posted, that will count as one instance, not three. This is true irrespective of whether the three articles are investigated simultaneously by Licensing or whether they have separate entries in the 05Command record.
  • Example: A user posts an article on Monday. On Tuesday, Licensing notices that the image in that article is not properly cited. The user corrects the citation. On Wednesday, they post another article with a properly-cited image, but the image is licensed as CC BY-NC-SA. Disciplinary then investigates, concludes that both instances were honest but careless mistakes, and warns the user to pay closer attention to licensing rules.
  • Example: The same user above posts an image with incorrect attribution a week later. Disciplinary investigates again and revokes the user's membership.
  • Example: A user repeatedly posts articles incorporating text from other users' sandboxes, without attribution or permission. The second such instance within a month will be investigated by the Disciplinary team.
• Referral by Licensing, Administration, or AHT. Any member of those teams/groups may suggest that an instance of plagiarism be referred to Disciplinary. If there is agreement in the team/group, the case will be referred. This rules is intended for situations such as acting in bad faith or line-toeing.
  • Example: Licensing staff believes that a user is attempting to game the above rule because they posted two unsourced images 32 days apart.
  • Example: A user asks why the statue image was removed from SCP-173 and receives a correct answer. The next day, they post a tale about 173 containing the same image, with no attribution. Disciplinary investigates the user for trolling, and Administration asks the Disciplinary team to consider the plagiarism element as well.
  • Example: Alice and Bob are collaborating on an article. They have a falling out. Bob posts the final version of the article, without credit to Alice, and makes a passive aggressive snipe at her in the author post. Alice contacts AHT and makes a complaint. AHT finds that while this was uncivil and malicious, it didn't rise to the level of harassment. AHT decides to refer the rule 0 violation and the plagiarism to Disciplinary.
• Any other circumstances defined by other rules, e.g. the proposed rule above.

If none of these conditions are met, the instance of plagiarism will be considered an issue in need of correction but will not be subject to the disciplinary process. (In other words, the problem will still need to be fixed but the user won't be "in trouble.") Similarly, if the user is a member of staff it will not be considered to rise to the level of "failure to uphold their duties as a member of staff" for purposes of the site charter unless one of the above conditions applies.

Irrespective of whether disciplinary action is taken, Licensing will retain authority over the correction of the plagiarism issue in question. (E.g. deletion of the page, editing to add a citation, removing a paragraph of offending content while keeping the remainder of the page, etc.) In particular, the Disciplinary team will not have special authority to remove or edit a page for licensing violations regardless of whether a case was referred to them.

If passed, the new policy will be added to the Site Rules (probably via a link to a child page, since it's rather hefty) and will become effective upon its addition.

Voting

Disciplinary action for posting AI-generated content: || ||~ No ||~ Yes || ||Approve the new rule || X || X || || ||~ Revocation ||~ One week ban || ||Action on first offense || X || X || || ||~ All sources||~ Only sources on the Image Use Whitelist || ||Good faith exception applies to || X || X || Plagiarism jurisdiction overhaul proposal: || ||~ No ||~ Yes || ||Approve the new rule || X || X ||

Note that you may vote on other aspects of a rule even if you vote against the overall rule.

Voting Period

Voting will be open for one week. This vote is open to operational staff and above.

Implement the Site Rules restructuring and minor changes?

|| ||~ Yes ||~ No || ||Implement update|| X || X ||

This vote will last 7 days.