Wikipedia:WikiProject User warnings/Help:Everything

This page is part of the WikiProject on User Warnings documentation.

Documentation: table of contents or all documentation
intro
template usage
template coding

The documentation provide both basic and advanced documentation to various aspects of templates.

All documentation
- Introduction to user warnings, relevant policies, et cetera.
- Template usage outlines general usage guidelines.
- Template coding describes technical template design guidelines.

Introduction

This page is a general introduction to user warnings. If you would like more information on any particular subject, see the appropriate inline wikilinks. For a basic introduction to Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Introduction.

About warnings

Any edit deliberately intended to damage Wikipedia's content, attack a person, or oppose the community is termed vandalism. Particularly, edits which go against Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are generally considered vandalism.

If you spot someone vandalising Wikipedia, you should revert their changes to a previous version. You can leave a message on their talk page to notify them that they've violated a policy or guideline, and that you've reverted their changes. There are various user warning templates available to simplify this by outputting automatic, standardised messages directly onto the talk page.

Using warnings

To use a user warning template, choose a standardised template from the main page of the WikiProject on User Warnings. Every template has a family of about four levels, from a polite pointer to the sandbox to a stern demand that they desist or face consequences. It's not necessary to start at the first level; rather, you should choose one based on how vicious the vandalism is. For example, {{test1}} is appropriate for someone who adds "Hi Joe!" to a page, whereas a rapid multiple-revert vandal should only be given one warning ({{test4}}).

On the talk page you'd like to place the message on, type {{subst:template name}}, where template name is the name of the template. For example, if you want to use Template:test1, you can type {{subst:test1}}.

The "subst" causes the text of the template to be substituted into the page when you save it, rather than having the page link to the template every time it is viewed. (See Wikipedia:Template substitution for reasons this is strongly recommended.)

On user talk pages that are getting multiple warnings, it is best to keep things organized by using section headers. Type "==Warnings==" and "===November 2024===" above the first warning, adding a new header for each month. Old sections should be removed on anonymous user talk pages after a few months.

Edits from IP addresses

Some edits originate from anonymous IP addresses. Some people have static addresses (they keep the same address all the time), particularly if they are broadband subscribers. However, many users are assigned random addresses each time they log in to their Internet service provider, or are part of a network of computers that all connect to the Internet via a proxy server with a single IP address. Because of this, a warning posted on the talk page of an IP address may not be received by the person whom you intend it to be received by.

Before posting escalating warnings to an IP address's talk page, you should check the address's contribution history to see if there has been a change in contribution style or a significant time lapse since the last series of edits. If you're not sure that it's the same person using the IP as the last time, it's best to use the lower level warnings rather than the higher ones to avoid alienating legitimate users.

After using warnings

If the user doesn't stop vandalizing after being given a few warnings, including a "strong warning" (ie a level 3 or 4 warning), you can report them to administrators for intervention. To do so, add their username to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism (WP:AIV). Note that this usually gets the attention of an admin within seconds or minutes.

Rate of warnings

If a user continues to make problematic edits after receiving a warning, it is not necessary to wait before escalating to the next warning level, or adding them to WP:AIV. So, a series of malicious edits, corresponding warnings, and WP:AIV could take place over a few minutes.

Template usage

In general

All standardized templates take several parameters that are entirely optional. For example, you can use {{s/block}} instead of {{s/block|~~~~|1 hour|vandalism}}; the template will automatically insert generic text. Further, all parameters are designed to be very flexible; you can typically write anything in them, including diff links, in-depth messages, and HTML.

User warning templates

Usage depends largely on the particular series of templates. See the documentation on the template talk pages or summary instructions in the list of templates.

Block templates

Block templates differ from user warning templates in two fundamental ways. First, they're enclosed inside a message box, which means that placing your signature outside the template will place it visually separate from the message. This is resolved by typing out your signature (typically ~~~~) as the first parameter.

The second difference is the order of the parameters: whereas user warning templates are in order of use, block templates are not. This is because some of the parameters are less optional than in user warning templates, and they happen to be at the end.

The signature should always be used; although there's an auto-signature as default value, it converts the username link to plain text (ie, [[User:Pathoschild|Pathoschild]]).
The time parameter is almost always used, as it signifies when the block expires.
The reason parameter is rarely used, and by default blames the block on vandalism.

As such, although the order of parameters in the templates are time-reason-signature, the template parameters are input as signature-time-reason. This way, you can ignore the more optional parameters by using "{{block|~~~~}}" instead of "{{block|||~~~~}}".

General design guidelines

Severity levels

Every series of templates includes four templates of increasing severity, designating a tone ranging from kindly to stern. These don't necessarily designate a chronological order; a user may simply use a level of his choice based on the severity desired. For example, the test series is test1, test2, test3, test4.

Assumes the user is not malicious; welcome with polite pointer to sandbox and/or to relevant help and policy pages.
No faith assumption; pointer to sandbox with polite request to stop and mention of consequences.
Assumes bad faith; stern cease and desist.
Assumes bad faith; strong cease and desist, last warning.

Civility

Regardless of the severity level of the template, the user warning should be a model of civility (even for the most destructive vandal). Remember than when you use a warning template, you do so in Wikipedia's name. See Please do not bite the newcomers, Civility, and Etiquette.

Derivatives

No derivative template (a non-standard variant of a template under a new name) should be included in the list of standardized templates or mentioned in the documentation. Although users are free to create and use non-standard templates, these should not be recognized by the project.

Template coding guidelines

Categorization

Template page

User warning templates should be categorized to Category:User warning templates (if the template is a redirect page to another template, it should be categorized using the sort key "Redirect"). User block templates should be categorized to Category:User block templates, with the sort key "Temporary" or "Indefinite" as appropriate. The category tag should be on the template page within noinclude syntax.

<noinclude>
[[Category:User warning templates]]
[[Category:User block templates|Indefinite]]
</noinclude>

User talk page

Any template that places pages it's used on into a category should surround the category tags with the category parameter. If the template uses <noinclude> tags, be careful to place the parameter inside these tags. This allows the use of the template on a page (such as a talk or list page) without adding that page to a category by using the template with no value specified for the category parameter: {{template|category=}}.

<noinclude>{{{category|[[Category:User block templates|Temporary]]}}}</noinclude>

Parameters

Default values

Nearly every parameter should have a default value, such that misuse does not break the template. You can set the default value of a parameter by using piped syntax ({{{1|default value}}}). For example, the template below takes a parameter which expects the user to supply the proper pronoun.

{{{1|He or she}}} is cool.

Supplied the pronoun with {{template|He}}, the template will expand to "He is cool". Ignoring the parameter with {{template}}, the template will default the value and expand to "He or she is cool".

Named syntax

When a template's parameters might be given symbols that break templates (notably the '|' pipe symbol and '=' equals sign), a named syntax should allow these. In such cases, a named and unnamed can coexist as needed. For example, a wikilink template can assign both a name and a number to a parameter by 'nesting' them (placing parameters in other parameters' default values).

[[{{{link|{{{1|{{{default value}}}}}}]]

Using {{template|article}} is straightforward enough, and will expand to [[article]]. However, some symbols will break the template if used like that. These require the named syntax: {{template|link=article|name}}, which will expand to [[article|name]].

Nested substitution

Any template containing templates, magic variables, or ParserFunctions should include a "safesubst:" parameter at the appropriate location. This allows for easy substitution of all nested templates inside a template. For example, consider the following template code:

This is {{{{{|safesubst:}}}CURRENTYEAR}}.

Substituting the template using {{subst:template}} will output "This is 2024".

Block template CSS

Wikipedia allows registered users to maintain a personal stylesheet located at user:username/skin.css, where 'username' is the username and 'skin' is the name of the skin in use (usually monobook). To help users take full advantage of this feature, block templates should be enclosed in a CSS container with the "user-block" class.

<div class="user-block">template message</div>

Should the user wish to, they can customize the appearance of all block templates by adding CSS to their user stylesheet. For example, the following code adds a dark red background with white text.

.user-block { background:#C00 !important; color:#FFF; }

Compatibility with lists

All user warning and block templates should be natively compatible with lists. For optimal intervention efficiency, talk pages with numerous warnings are sometimes organized into formatted lists sectioned by date (see the guidelines). Due to the way Wikipedia parses wiki syntax into HTML, list items are closed at any newline.

Templates with newlines will break any list they are placed in: the first paragraph will be in the list, the others out, and any subsequent templates in the list will begin a new list. By using HTML paragraph syntax directly, Wikipedia's paragraph parsing is circumvented and multiple-paragraph templates can then be added to organized warning lists without problem.

<p>Paragraph 1.</p><p>Paragraph 2.</p><p>Paragraph 3.</p>

To prevent the problem with newlines, templates must be on a single code line; however, this is highly illegible to humans in edit view. To restore legibility, HTML comments can be inserted to emulate the appearance of newlines. Although this looks ungainly with two-term lines, the comments are much less bulky when used with more realistic paragraphs.

<p>Paragraph 1.</p><!--
--><p>Paragraph 2.</p><!--
--><p>Paragraph 3.</p>