User blog:GellyPop/Fanon Patrolling: Regular User Edition

"For the version that is primarily intended for Sentinels, see here."

s are the main patrollers of, who often looks out for what's happening in the wiki, as well as maintaining and enforcing , particularly the on  pages. However, there are times that they may have missed something, especially those Fanon pages that were created much earlier, even before the Great Merge. If you are just a normal user, and you happen to end up on those pages, you can still do something to help maintaining and enforcing those Fanon Policies.

Normal Users are Still Versatile
While there are some special tools that normal users lack, they can actually still move pages. It is only that redirects are left around. Of course, moving pages should be in a good reason, generally if the page didn't meet the policies.

Helping in Moderation
The first you need to do as a normal user is to understand. If you are a prominent conceptionist, you should have known the standards of a Fanon page, and applied it to your concepts. Once you are familiar with it, go to a Fanon page. You can easily land on one through.

Once there, check if it meets the policies, and if it does, go to another Fanon page, and repeat. If the page doesn't meet the policies, and its one-week grace period is over, depending on what issue is present, do the following:

Ownership/Fanon Template are Missing
Author, Collab, Public and Adopted are the ownership templates used to determine the kind of ownership the page have. The first one is used for pages authored by a single user, the second one for collaboration of different users for the page, the third being open to edit by anyone, and the fourth for pages “adopted” by a user after being “abandoned” by their original author. Depending on the page, add the appropriate template. Note that if Fanon is used on that page, it isn't required to add also either of the ownership templates.

Missing Categories
Categories can be easily added on a page, even without using any of the article editors. At the end of the page, you can see what are the categories that the page is labelled into. If there is a category that the page is missing, you can simply click “ADD CATEGORY”, then type the category name (say, a concept page about a Fanon boss, it should be categorized into . Make sure that you have entered the exact name of the category, and don't create additional categories.

Other Issues
This is the rather more complicated method of dealing those pages. Unless if you are the author or one of the authors (if collaboration efforts), or the page is considered Public, on which you might just go fix what problem/s the page has, do the following in order:

Excellent! Even if you are a just a normal user, you just helped in moderating content.
 * Check the page's history to see who created the Fanon page.
 * Check and clear WhatLinksHere.
 * Go to the included pages and edit those to remove the link/s that lead to the Fanon page. Make sure to cite in the Edit Summary what you did, since otherwise you might be considered a
 * For the cases of threads, notify either a, or a  so that they can check which messages/replies contain the link/s and remove them.
 * If user blogs or comments are also included, notify a Moderator or a Community Administrator only. Sentinels cannot edit those, but the former two can.
 * Leave the associated talk page of the Fanon page, as bots regularly deal with them.
 * Move the page to the author's userspace (e.g. ). You can do this by selecting “Rename” from the dropdown arrow besides the “Edit” button.
 * Change the namespace from  to , and replace   and   with the user’s name and the page’s name, respectively. Make sure that the name is exactly the same, otherwise it will be moved to the other user’s space.
 * If the page is an adopted concept, move the page to the adopter’s userspace instead, since it is their responsibility to maintain it.
 * Cite the reason why the page is moved. Usually, it is stated that the page didn't meet the Fanon Policies, and elaborating the issues it had.
 * Do not  leave the “Rename associated talk page” box checked. If left checked, this can mess up with the user’s message wall.
 * The “Follow this page” box is up to you whether you should leave it since if it is checked, it will notify you changes on that page through your E-mail address.
 * After moving the page, remove all categories from it.
 * Go back to the redirect page of the Fanon page (the previous name of it), and mark the redirect page for deletion by editing it and replacing it with Delete. With this, either a Sentinel, an Admin or simply the bots can deal with them.

“I didn't understand what to do.”
In case you haven't understand the above, you can still do something. Simply notifying a Sentinel about the Fanon page that didn't meet the policies is actually helpful. After all, not everyone can find which pages doesn't follow the policies, so it is a big thanks to you once you shared what page you had found.

The End
Well, looks like you now know what to do when enforcing. Even if you are just a normal user, you have just shown that you are one helpful user out there. Perhaps you might even become an Editor of the Month. Who knows? Anyways, thank you for reading, and good luck on Patrolling Fanon pages.