The Internet can be a wild and scary place, but Wikia is something of an oasis for many of us. It's generally a friendly, open, and safe place to be, with people working together to build something great! But it's still important to look after your security wherever you are online, and to be sure that you stay safe as you surf.

Did you know that the most common password used online is "password"? If that's the one you have chosen for your account – time to change it now!

It's very important that you choose your password carefully, and keep it private. At Wikia, Staff have some tools to help us if your account is stolen, but there is always the possibility that if your account is hacked you will need to create a new account. To avoid this, we…

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Hi Everyone,

We're making some changes today to the Community Central admin team and the VSTF, so that we have an updated group to take us in to the next year. Many wikis leave inactivate or departing admins in place, but here on Central we want to try to make it very clear who the admins are and where new visitors can find help.

So we've been discussing this with everyone in the two groups, and making sure we have the right people in place.

Of the current admins, Dantman and Godisme will be leaving the group. We want to say many thanks to both of them for all their help, and we wish them all the best in their other projects. See you around Wikia guys!

BlueDevil, Randomtime, and Robin Patterson have agreed to continue as admins here, and we ha…

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As part of building better guidelines for this wiki, we've been working on a new page for chat moderators on Community Central. These guidelines should help all of us active in chat to make it a welcoming and helpful place for new and old visitors alike.

Here's what we have so far:

• 1 Be a Facilitator
• 2 Be Friendly
• 3 Assume Good Faith
• 4 Be a Leader
• 5 Kickban with great care
• 6 Keep it fun

As a Wikia chatmod, your primary focus is on encouraging conversation, supporting users and, in general, making sure Community Central chat is a welcome environment for all. The ideal chatmod is encouraging, and helps people feel supported and empowered. Chatmods are not police, they are guides and try to move the channel gently towards being a better place for all. This…

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Recently I've been working on creating some guidelines for admins here on Community Central. That and Trella's post about "the qualities of a good admin" set me thinking about an overall philosophy for wiki admins.

This is more general than the guidelines I'm working on, it's just some thoughts about the things that I strive for when I'm on Wikia. My aim in life is to try to avoid adminitis ;) and to follow the example of the best admins around. These are my thoughts on how to do that and I'd love to get some feedback on this: Anything I've missed? Anything that doesn't sound right to you? What do you think of these thoughts?

Admins are role models. They are the people who others want to be. They lead by example, showing how it's possible to…

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Wikis are all about groups of people coming together to build something. They grow best when people can work well together, agreeing on what the site should be and how to best build it. Wikis work because most people are good, and most edits are a positive addition to the project. Otherwise, we’d all be drowning in spam and vandalism, not building awesome sites!

But every group will have its conflicts: disagreements over how things should be, arguments when participants can't get along, or someone causing a stir simply because they can.

Each situation is different, but there are some general tips that can help everyone get through the difficulties.

One of the earliest wiki principles was "Assume Good Faith". When we're disagreeing, it's easy …

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