WikiIndex talk:Blocking and banning policy
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,
- 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.
- When they realized they have been blocked or try to edit during a block this is unnecessarily punishing.
- 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 User:Patricia Martellotti 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. Next stage:_ complaints of sysop abuse etc that may or may not be justified. Proxima Centauri 15:31, 10 July 2009 (EDT)