UESPWiki talk:Blocking Policy

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Back to "real work", tackling some needed policy pages... This is what I've come up with as a first stab at a block policy. On the one hand, it tries to summarize what has generally been done in the recent past and, on the other hand, I've tried to anticipate how future vandals might try to disrupt the site and provide some preemptive advice. Of course, I'm sure there are still some cases that I've overlooked, so feedback is invited.

A large part of the page is devoted to appealing blocks. It seems that if we are going to have permanent blocks, there needs to be a mechanism to reverse those blocks, just in case we ever need it (most likely with a shared IP address, but who knows, maybe we'll even get a reformed vandal someday!). I've tried to strike a balance that makes appeals possible without enabling some users to force everyone's time to be wasted in endless appeals. My feeling is that requiring some type of demonstrated useful UESP contribution should generally separate the vandals from any real editors. I can't imagine that too many vandals would want to spend the time writing a real contribution, but it should be an easy requirement for any real editor (since that's what they want the account for in the first place).

There are a fair number of arbitrary calls that I made writing this (i.e., how long a temporary block should last). There are some bits of ideas here and there (e.g., Lurlock's suggestions in his RfA), which I've tried to incorporate here. But in general there hasn't been much previous discussion for me to use to get feedback on the community's opinions. So I'd like to emphasize that I see this as a starting point to trigger discussion; from small details to overall principles, nothing here is final. --Nephele 01:32, 9 February 2007 (EST)

Contents

[edit] One Quick Thought

The one thing that hasn't been fixed by this page is administrator disagreements. For example, earlier today, User:Queo did a little vandalism on User:Endareth. About five hours later, I gave him a warning. Then about 2 hours after that, User:Wrye put a one month block on the account. Of course, the user in question hadn't actually edited any page in the last 6-7 hours. Now, obviously, I disagree with the long block or I would have done it myself (I did consider a shorter block). I believe that in such situations, we need to differ to the first administrator to respond to the problem. If we have an issue with how they dealt with the problem, we need to bring it up with them (or if they're not around, someone else), before taking an action. Obviously, if there were other infringements, since the first warning, this would not apply.--Ratwar 14:41, 10 February 2007 (EST)

Sorry, missed your warning on the user's talk page, and have now accordingly removed the block. I think that Nephele's block policy looks pretty reasonable. This user's vandalism was fairly minor, but his other "contributions" looked like he was just diddling around, unconcerned with affects on others. So, marginal case, but by new guidelines, warning is correct response. Nephele, you should probably edit the Blocking page's policy link to point to this page. --Wrye 15:33, 10 February 2007 (EST)
Good point, Ratwar, although I'm inclined to think that something more general about administrator disagreements should be written, perhaps on the Administrators page instead of here. It seems that anything that's applicable would really be equally relevant for any type of administrative action, not just blocking. I'll try to get to that later tonight.
And thanks for going along with new guidelines, Wrye. I agree there are a few places where links to this new page are needed; I was holding off until I at least had some feedback that it wasn't completely unacceptable. And I didn't realize that there'd be such a rash of vandals making the policy relevant so quickly ;) So more editing to get done tonight! --Nephele 22:26, 10 February 2007 (EST)
I have now added a few paragraphs at UESPWiki:Administrators#Administrative Conflicts. As always, it's open for discussion, although probably UESPWiki_Talk:Administrators is a better place for any followup on that section. And links to the blocking policy have been added to both MediaWiki:Blockedtext and MediaWiki:Blockiptext. I'll add more links if I notice other places that seem to need them (and anyone else can, too :) --Nephele 17:32, 11 February 2007 (EST)
The new admin conflicts section seems fine to me. I'm a little concerned about ending up with too many rules, but so far, additions seem pretty reasonable, and in light of December's conflicts are well warranted. I'll just note that many admin "conflicts" are "oops, my bad" conflicts and are easily resolved with a brief exchange (e.g., this one). --Wrye 15:15, 12 February 2007 (EST)
I agree, I don't want the site to end up seeming like a place where everything is regulated. I modified the intro on the Policies and Guidelines pages to try to avoid scaring new editors with the rules, and to try to explain what the general intent is behind having these policy pages. --Nephele 21:12, 12 February 2007 (EST)

[edit] Another Problem Discovered in Real time!

I think that we need to cover personal abuse directed to administrators and members in general. We're all here as a public service, and personal attacks shouldn't be tolerated at any level. --Ratwar 23:36, 10 February 2007 (EST)

Another thing I think might need to be added, which is relevant to that most recent one - users who deliberately choose an offensive nickname should probably be perma-blocked. Not necessarily IP-blocked, but offensive user-names should not be allowed, even if used by legitimate editors. Granted "yourmotha" is hardly the worst offender on this count, it's still pretty clear that the person who chose that name was doing it solely to offend people, and they're not likely to become productive editors. (If they did, they'd probably choose another user-name.) --TheRealLurlock Talk 01:25, 11 February 2007 (EST)
Oh, wait, it is covered. Didn't check that. Anyhow, just a possible recommendation to turn that month-block into a perma-block in that case... --TheRealLurlock Talk 01:27, 11 February 2007 (EST)
I agree that personal abuse to this degree does warrant extra measures, although there is a bit of a subjective element to it (i.e., exactly where between Yourmotha's edit and Queo's edit do you draw the line and say it's excessive?) But when there isn't any possible misinterpretation of someone's insults, there's not much point in giving them the benefit of the doubt. So should a case like this be a one-month ban, or should it just go straight to a permanent ban (based on the edit alone, not based on the user name)?
As for the user name, a block based on user name should in theory allow the user to set up a new, non-offensive user name. So changing the primary reason for blocking to be the user name would to some extent just make things more complicated. Well, maybe not more complicated, because there's still at least one more odd twist to this case, but Aristeo seems to be investigating that issue already. I think we may need to wait and see whether Aristeo learns anything before taking any new actions with this account. --Nephele 02:59, 11 February 2007 (EST)
If we have a rule against personal abuse, then it should apply equally to admins and regular editors. For Yourmotha's edit of Nephele's page, my inclination would be to go direct to permablock.--Wrye 13:31, 11 February 2007 (EST)
I totally agree. I think the line between personal attack and vandalism is in how the edit was made. For instance, Yourmotha's edit added a substantial amount of text to a page of an active user, and the edit included Nephele's name. Queo's edit changed a small amount of text that didn't include the User's name on an inactive user' page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ratwar (talk • contribs).
OK, I've added some text to hopefully cover this case. Also, once I get around to finishing up and posting my notes on Etiquette, that page will cover personal attacks and abusive language more specifically, so I'll make sure to include something appropriate there. --Nephele 17:26, 11 February 2007 (EST)

[edit] Deleting Warnings

Alright, yesterday, there was a situation over on User:ShakenMike, where the user deleted past warnings and a blocking notice. I gave him a warning for doing so, and I was wrong, according to the blocking policy. That was my fault for not knowing the blocking policy well enough. Still, I think that warnings and past blocking messages should remain on user talk pages, or on an easily accessible link from the talk page. On the User Talk page in question, you have to go back over 100 edits to find the relevant warnings and blocking messages, while wadding through all the other edits. This has the potential to make it nearly impossible to keep track of a long term vandal if their talk page is active. I suggest we remedy this situation by saying that all relevant warnings need to be linked directly off of the User's talk page or remain on the talk page itself. Obviously, this rule change would NOT apply to any violations that took place previously. --Ratwar 14:15, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

I see your point and agree that longterm having a place that summarizes a user's blockable offenses would be valuable.
The main problem I see is with trying to force a user to keep the information on their talk page. Even blocked users are still allowed to edit their talk page, and therefore would have the ability to delete any links added to the page. With a rule that the information has to be there, that would just force admins and editors to have to play an edit war game with a blocked user. That may be exactly what a troublemaker wants: to just keep doing anything in order to waste our time and get a reaction from us.
Also philosophically I'm not sure about having a big ugly warning message be the first thing that is shown on the top of a user's main page or talk page, at least in the case of an editor who is not actively blocked. If the editor is currently allowed to edit the site, I don't know that having their past offenses blatantly advertised to every other editor who visits the page is the right thing to do. Yes, admins need to know the info (just like police need to be able to pull up anyone's criminal record), but it shouldn't be the first thing that any editor learns (people aren't forced to announce their criminal record every time they introduce themselves to someone). On the other hand, I think we've only ever had two editors who have made non-vandalism contributions after being blocked once, so it's not exactly a common situation that warrants a lot of attention or concern.
It seems like having a warning subpage such as User talk:ShakenMike/warnings is a workable solution. In other words, continue to initially post any warnings and/or blocked messages on the standard user talk page, just as we do right now. But if the messages are deleted at any point, create a warning subpage as a permanent record. If there are any problems with the user modifying the subpage, the page could be protected so only admins can alter it. The remaining problem is how to make the page accessible... a link on the user talk page could be deleted, starting an edit war. Should we just know to always check whether a warning subpage exists? --Nephele 14:50, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
Given that he's a questionable character, bordering on trollish, I think that other editors need to be able to discover that rapidly, so that they can find out where to go and/or just ignore the guy. Talk page doesn't work because that's alwasy editable even for a blocked user. User subpage doesn't work because it's too obscure. So I think that best solution is the one I just did -- put warning on user page, then protect it -- but on the protected user page do an inclusion of a subpage which is not protected. Granted a warning on top of the talk page is a little loud, but it's warranted in this case. And in practice, I think that what will happen is that other editors will find themselves irritated at something he's done, go to his user page find the warning, and then either 1) think "Oh good, it's known. I'll just ignore him." and/or 2) go to complaint area on admin board and post. If other editors know there's a process and where to go, I think that will settle things out a bit and the rest of us can get back to work. --Wrye 15:37, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
Update: Perhaps drama with that user is over (he just asked to be blocked, so I did), but possibly we might need to do something like this in the future with another user. --Wrye 15:37, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
Yep, the protected-user-page-with-inclusion solution seems like a pretty good one. And I see your points about other editors visiting his page to find out about him, and that it's probably useful for other editors to see that they're not the only ones getting irritated and to get some advice on what to do. Hopefully we won't have to do this again, but we should still keep track of the useful solutions just in case ;) --Nephele 16:09, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
Wrye, that was (and still is) a great idea. It solves all my concerns. --Ratwar 21:30, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
Tecnically, I probably should have moved his user page to the subpage (so that it would have all of the history), and then edited the new re-direct page to have the warning and include. Just a note for next time, I guess... --Wrye 22:03, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
It's an excellent idea, I remember thinking about this problem last night, bravo. So do we to vote to make it policy? -- Chaos Monkey Talk 23:30, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
We're not quite so formal unless we need to be. Nephele is the policy writing gal. When/as she has time she'll add it to the guideline, and then we'll have a chance to comment. However, we've essentially already skipped to that step (all yay's no nea's). So I think that we already informally consider it to be policy. --Wrye 01:40, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Account Creation + Anonymous Only

What are the general guidelines for using these options when blocking? I didn't see it stated definitively anywhere what settings we're supposed to use when blocking people. I've generally allowed account creation and disallowed anonymous editors only when blocking an IP, on the chance that somebody may be using a school computer or another IP shared by multiple users. These are not the default settings for either option, and I've noticed looking at the block-log that other admins are not generally following the same practice. (Ratwar seems to be doing the same as me, but nobody else.) Just want to be sure I'm doing these right. --TheRealLurlock Talk 10:13, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

The default options are no check next to "Block anonymous users only" and a check next to "Prevent account creation". According to wikipedia these options have no effect on username blocks, except that they will affect any IPs that are autoblocked by a username (i.e., if UserX is blocked, then any time UserX tries to use the account the IP address used by UserX is temporarily blocked, I believe for 24 hours).
I've generally been leaving those options at the default values, which seems to be what's implied by wikipedia's policy. The only time I've been unchecking the "prevent account creation" box is when blocking someone for choosing an inappropriate username, since the point is to allow the person to create a more appropriately named account. Although I see your point with the anonymous IP options, we haven't had any cases yet of multiple people using the same anonymous IP, and so it seems to me that using non-default options means that someone who's been blocked can immediately circumvent the block if they want to. I figured that if someone ever asked to use a blocked IP address we'd change the options on that IP so an account could be created. But I'd be open to any alternative guidelines that we want to come up with. --Nephele 10:40, 22 March 2007 (EDT)
Wikipedia is somewhat different in this respect, as they actively encourage users to create accounts rather than edit from anonymous IPs. (I made maybe 2 minor edits to Wikipedia before I created an account, and was automatically greeted with a message saying I should create one.) We don't have a similar system in place, and thus I think have a greater percentage of editors who use anonymous IPs rather than creating accounts. My original question is in response to these specifically, since most of the blocks I've given out have been to IP editors rather than usernames. So should the policy be to leave the options at default for username-blocks and to change them both like I've been doing for IP-blocks? --TheRealLurlock Talk 10:01, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

[edit] User Page Warnings

Moved to Community Portal since the actual focus here is on the warning on Aristeo's page, and most previous discussion regarding Aristeo has been on the Community Portal. --Wrye 00:27, 27 November 2007 (EST)

[edit] Another Policy Addition

I know Nephele is working on a new version of this at the moment but here's something else I want to throw into the discussion. I propose that any IP address making even one vandalism edit may be blocked IF it is also identified as an open proxy on Wikipedia or another reputable site. I'm sure you've all seen the idiotic edits made by one particular individual recently? These have now started to come through open proxies. The trouble is that although it's pretty clear it's the same child, there's not enough proof (in my opinion) to go for a block under the existing policy. Open proxies are, in any case, not the sort of thing we want to allow onto the site and I don't think we'll be losing anything important. (For one particular example, look at the recent edit to my talk page and then at the Wikipedia page for that IP. I know this can never be a 100% solution but anything that makes it more difficult for this idiot has got to be a good thing. –Rpeh•T•C•E• 17:44, 31 January 2008 (EST)

Good point. At one point when we were having a rash of problems associated with open proxies, I did go through and block a large number of IPs identified as open proxies by wikipedia (see Proxy Vandalism). So I'd support a change to make it possible to block any new open proxies as they come to attention for whatever reason (e.g., because someone uses the proxy to vandalize the site).
On the other hand, it's only going to get us so far. This person's latest edit came from 69.94.124.137, which does not seem to be on wikipedia's open proxy list (based on user talk pages at en.wikipedia.org, simple.wikipedia.org, Wikipedia's open proxy list, or Wikimedia's list). Although an IP lookup says that the name is proxy.sneakbuddy.com, and that the name is probably forged because proxy.sneakbuddy.com does not exist (and I'm not inclined to trust anything associated with sneakbuddy.com). So do we also say that IPs coming from known proxy providers should get blocked? --NepheleTalk 18:30, 31 January 2008 (EST)
I think we can trust our collective judgment here. I see no reason why known proxies or strong suspects shouldn't be blocked as long as the admin responsible places a clear reason in the block notice on the talk page. If it turns out to be a mistake, we can always unblock after all. –Rpeh•T•C•E• 05:51, 1 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Spamming Questions

Just out of curiosity (and partly desire for help), what do you do with spammers? Do you just ban them infinitely? For instance, people posting up articles on ads. We (The admins) do this a lot on the GHWiki, and I'd like to know the policies of other wiki's, so I can feel safe in not being overly draconian in the matter. (No, I'm not a terribly great admin, I just have too much time and effort) Humbly, Erathoniel 23:47, 28 May 2008 (EDT)

We ban and then leave a message on the talk page about it, so if a legit user ever does use that IP address, they will be able to ask us to unblock them. The Official forums have a similar policy. Don't feel bad about banning bots... They don't have feelongs... Yet.--Ratwar 02:56, 29 May 2008 (EDT)
Of course, a little preventative action can go a long way against spammers. We have a Captcha plug-in on the site that forces you to prove you're human if you try to put an external link onto an article. Adding that reduced the spam influx to pretty much zero. (People can still put spam on manually, but most don't bother - spam is generally done by bots.) --TheRealLurlock Talk 10:25, 29 May 2008 (EDT)
Yeah, I should ask JH about that. Dunno if our spam is from bots or people, though, since we get only one article per spammer almost every time. It's also been known to occur in Simplified Chinese. Erathoniel 16:36, 29 May 2008 (EDT)
Are you sure it's only one per spammer? Keep in mind that many spambots make a regular habit of changing their IPs and/or usernames (if any) between every post. So the fact that they don't look like the same poster doesn't mean that they aren't. And the fact that they're posting in Chinese tends to make it even more clear that it's not a human posting them (unless other legit parts of your site are in Chinese as well, which I'm guessing is not the case). Any person coming to the site and seeing that it's not written in Chinese would not be wasting their time posting spam in Chinese, because almost nobody who visits the site would be able to read it. Thus it's more than likely it's not a person doing it but a bot gone haywire. --TheRealLurlock Talk 19:10, 29 May 2008 (EDT)
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