WikiIndex talk:Blocking and banning policy: Difference between revisions

WikiIndex talk:Blocking and banning policy (edit)

Revision as of 02:00, 10 August 2009

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move discussion from WikiIndex:Blocking Policy

DavidCary

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+== 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:Wikipedia:Blocking policy|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: [http://en.uncyclomedia.org/wiki/Uncyclopedia:Ban_Policy] [http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/HRWiki:Blocking_Policy] &mdash;&nbsp;<span style="font-family: Kristen ITC, Arial;">[[User:Sean Fennel]][[User talk:Sean Fennel|@]]</span> 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 [http://www.wikiindex.org/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block 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?
+--[[User:DavidCary|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. [[User:Proxima Centauri|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...--[[User:Comets|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. [[User:Huw Powell|Huw Powell]] 06:23, 12 July 2009 (EDT)
+----
 Different wikis have different policies and block lengths are inevitably arbitrary.  [[Wiktionary]] hands out [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Log/block short blocks] when [[Wikipedia]] would warn a user and in my opinion the Wikipedia policy is better for several reasons,
 #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.