WikiIndex talk:Blocking and banning policy

Discussion

After staring at the red link to this page for a while, I grew suspicious that we aren't being real consistent in when and for how long we put down blocks on spammers. A cursory scan of Wikipedia's blocking policy suggests the notion that lengthy blocks on IP addresses is a little extreme. For reference I pulled up the blocking policies on a few other wikis: [1] [2] — User:Sean Fennel@ 14:19, 18 January 2007 (PST)

The Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Blocking policy is to block for 24 hours on the first incident, "longer for successive violations". Looking at Special:Ipblocklist and the WikiIndex block log, I see some people at WikiIndex think "infinite" blocks are appropriate. Some people at WikiIndex at WikiProject:Junking bots suggest 3 days for the first incident.

I think we need to balance 2 things:

• We need to make it long enough that we don't have to waste all our time cleaning up after spammers who continue to spam -- over an over again -- as soon as the block period is over. Because we don't want to become grumpy, overworked sysops.
• We need to make it short enough that people who would otherwise be fine, productive, upstanding members of our community, but accidentally make a questionable edit and are (accidentally?) banned by grumpy, overworked sysops, aren't driven away and lost forever. Would you stick around some place that, after you made some tiny little mistake, publicly posted signs accusing you of being a (gasp!) spammer and refused to take those signs down or even let you say anything in your defense -- not even "I'm sorry and I'll never do that again"?

Is there any way to objectively decide whether the "first block time" is too long or too short? --DavidCary 03:11, 21 June 2009 (EDT)

For minor offenses warnings should be given out the first time. Users who have been warned will certainly see the warning when they get a notice that they have new messages. A short block may be overlooked if the user did not try to edit during the block period. If an offense is repeated after a warning administrators can assume the user knew his/her behavour was unacceptable. Proxima Centauri 13:17, 11 July 2009 (EDT)

Agree with proxima though spambots that are logged in should be blocked indefinitely but anon spambots have to be checked to see if they are open proxies or zombie computers and if they are, they should be blocked for a maximum of 1 year but if that IP has similar problems on all the other major wikis out there, block should be extended to 3 years as a safe precaution...--Comets 01:12, 12 July 2009 (EDT)

The key is to not be a target of vandals. Then there are the spambots, which are obvious, I would hope. Block them forever, or for years. PC is right, a short block might go unnoticed by a real person editor, a warning makes more sense. Do you guys get a lot of wandalism here, or just random botting/trolling? At Rationalwiki we really don't much wandlalism, a few trolls, I guess, but mostly no one harasses a wiki that has lots of active editors/sysops (we sysop everyone, pretty much). OK, maybe it's because we're a fairly cool site, trolls prefer to attack loser sites. But it might really be because we are active enough that trolls/spammers see they'd be wasting their time. Hope I helped in some way. Huw Powell 06:23, 12 July 2009 (EDT)

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Different wikis have different policies and block lengths are inevitably arbitrary. Wiktionary hands out short blocks when Wikipedia would warn a user and in my opinion the Wikipedia policy is better for several reasons,

1. Wiktionary users may not realize that they have been blocked if they don’t happen to try and edit again till the block has expired. Then they get repeated entries in their block logs without even knowing that they have done anything unacceptable.
2. When they realized they have been blocked or try to edit during a block this is unnecessarily punishing.
3. When users who have done something unacceptable get a warning on their talk page they will certainly see it next time they log in and the warning is less punishing.

Wikia prefers warnings before blocks for minor offenses. Here’s the Liberapedia Category Policy though in practise these rules are not consistently observed. At Liberapedia liberals are treated gently while administrators assume that conservatives aren’t likely to want to contribute constructively and they tend to get treated as vandals. Here are the Atheism Wiki Blocking policies Note that, "Sysops are encouraged to try to reason with vandals if possible."
Trying to reason with vandals can feed trolls and one should be careful before doing that.

Note further that, "Sysops should try not block people with whom they are in personal debate."
I've been here struggling with trolls from RationalWiki and I could not easily block them because of the above rule, when finally I did block one of them predictably I was accused of administrative abuse. I feel other administrators should be more ready to support an administrator who can't easily use blocking power in a personal debate.

From the blockee’s point of view being blocked is more unpleasant and more punishing that, for example finding that a wiki is no longer online or is temporarily out of edit mode for everyone. Ban windows are designed by expert advertisers to be unpleasant.

Spambots don't have feelings so it doesn't matter whether you are consistent not. I sometimes take character into consideration as well as the offense, that’s why I was harsher to inactive than to User:ChrisChanSonichu Proxima Centauri 10:31, 10 July 2009 (EDT)

Trolls and vandals sometimes mix constructive edits with vandalism for varied reasons though the main reason is to hide unconstructive edits. Then sysops stop giving suspicious edits that might be good faith edits the benifit of any doubt, this hapens especially often if the sysop has just spent a long time cleaning up after vandalism. Next stage:- complaints of sysop abuse etc that may or may not be justified. Proxima Centauri 15:31, 10 July 2009 (EDT)

On Wikipedia, if you block someone, they can still edit their own talk page. I don't know if that's in effect here, but I assume it is a configurable parameter. The advantage of this is that the blocked party has a venue to ask to be unblocked if they think that they have been blocked unfairly. This would particularly be useful for situations where we've blocked IP addresses which are used or reused by multiple people, for example, a school.

As far as deciding on whether a block is too long or too short, I think that's always going to be subjective. So, we can either be arbitrary and define what's appropriate. Or we can let admins do as they deem appropriate. I think it's even fair game to shorten the length of a ban set by another admin. I see it happen frequently on Wikipedia - with justification, of course.

I don't think that I've blocked many people here at WikiIndex and then only in cases of obvious vandalism or spamming. I tend to fall on the draconian side - I'm pretty sure that my blocks have always been non-expiring. However, I'm perfectly happy to use a system of escalating blocks according to repeated incidents. On Wikipedia, it's non uncommon for a first-time offender of its various rules to be blocked for 24 hours. It then usually escalates to 48 hours, 72 hours, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, or infinity. For us, we could set the block interval at any arbitrary point in between. I don't think we should be too lenient, though. If someone continues to vandalize or spam after being blocked twice, it seems to me that we should just ban them forever. I'm open to suggestion, however. --MarvelZuvembie 16:55, 10 July 2009 (EDT)

I once needed to edit my talk page at Wikipedia, I edited from a different IP adress, not my usual one and an administrator thought someone else was impersonating me. It was quite annoying but I'd have minded more if someone had really impersonated me and the admins had done nothing. Anyway I edited my talk age and tried to explain and later wrote more from my usual IP adress. I agree that blocked users should be able to edit their talk pages but if they write rubbish on their talk age then we protect the talk page or reset the block to prevent that. Proxima Centauri 04:52, 11 July 2009 (EDT) Proxima Centauri 04:52, 11 July 2009 (EDT)

How do we check if a spammer is a zombie computer? is there any way we can alert the owner? Proxima Centauri 01:44, 12 July 2009 (EDT)