A way of responding to flagrant and/or repeated abuse of the features of MediaWiki software reserved for administrators. Specifically:
A) Deletion or undeletion of articles contrary to the guidelines accepted by the consensus of the Wikipedia community, and the dispute cannot be resolved with a brief exchange of reasons for the action and the objection
B) Attempts at coercion by threatening the acts defined in 1.A
C) Blocking users, by name or IP, contrary to the guidelines accepted by the consensus of the Wikipedia community, and the dispute cannot be resolved with a brief exchange of reasons for the action and the objection
D) Attempts at coercion by threatening the acts defined in 1.C
E) Protecting and/or unprotecting and/or editing protected pages, contrary to the guidelines accepted by the consensus of the Wikipedia community, and the dispute cannot be resolved with a brief exchange of reasons for the action and the objection
F) Attempts at coercion by threatening the acts defined in 1.E
G) Similar uses/abuses of any admin-only features implemented in the future
What this policy and process is NOT
A first course of action in a dispute; a venue to carry on an on-going dispute; to be used when honest mistakes or misunderstandings occur; to be used in cases where the applicable policies are in active debate, or consensus has not yet been reached; or to be used regarding actions any Wikipedian can take. Specifically:
A) Only disputes regarding article deletion, article undeletion, protecting pages, unprotecting pages, editing protected pages, and/or user blocks, or threats to do these actions, should be raised here (this is intended to include any admin-only features implemented in the future)
B) If a user (of any status) and an admin are having an edit war, or flame war, or any other dispute not related to the admin-only actions defined in 2.A, the complaint will be judged in that context, and may be summarily dismissed
C) Attempts should first be made to resolve the issue in a more direct, constructive way. In general, the objection should first be raised directly on the admin's Talk page, stating the contested action, the policy(ies) it is believed in violation of, and a request for explanation or reversal, all stated as clearly and specifically (including reference(s) to policy pages and passages) as possible. In most cases, if it can't be resolved that way, the problem should be brought to the Village Pump to get input from neutral parties, and hopefully find a consensus and/or resolution. The matter should only be raised here if the issue can't be resolved more directly
D) Cases where the policy is unclear, hasn't reached consensus, and/or is under debate, should generally not be brought here. For example, currently there is much deliberation over the definition of a "substub", and the appropriate response(s). So, at this time, neither deletion nor undeletion of a substub should be weighed under this policy and process
