Wikiquote talk:Blocking policy/Archives/2007-04

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Basically this looks good! I have copyedited the draft slightly and removed one old historical passage. Note that English Wikipedia has also w:Wikipedia:Banning policy that should not be confused with blocking policy. I have changed few instances of "banning" to "blocking" in this draft. jni 08:14, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Personal attacks?

What about editors who engage in personal attacks? Should sysops be allowed to block them based on their own judgement alone? Should sysop block someone who insults him/her or should that be delegated to another, neutral sysop? Note that the Wikipedia blocking policy deliberately does not allow blocking for personal attacks, do we want to change that? jni 07:14, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that EN WP rules can be on the existence of arbcom and other system like mediators. But currently it is appear our community has too small to have an arbcom or such sorts of committee, so we should rely on our own decision by concensus or vote. And I prefer to keep our administrative system bureaucratic as less as possible.

But I convince we shouldn't be arbitrary beyond rules & guideline or without concensus. So I think content base case would be better to discuss once on the community, not upon a single sysop decision.

Blocking for personal attacks has merits and demerits. It is not good generally personal attack receive no sanction . On the other hand, if a sysop put blocking arbitrately, it might be bad. And if an editor do nothing but personal attack, I feel this guy is worthy to ban. But I know everyone has different thought and feeling and it differs from person to person what are personal attacks. Recently on another project, a troll, at least I think him, has tried to compel me to expose my private life outside of wiki, and this guy stated it was a personal attack but no rules prevented him substantially, so he had right to do so under the freedom of speach. And no one without a sysop opposed this spurious logic, and this guy began to make a rant toward this good person. Of course, no one attempted to help her. Not only I but she are now inactive there. It is a really horrible experience, I don't want to see such a rant among us(thank you for your patient listening).

Back to the topic, I have two ideas on this issue.

1. To allow a block for the reason of personal attack, but by a neutral sysop, if remains.
2. Not to allow this reason, but apply other guideline, like "No discussion place" in "WQ is not". If an editor posts heavily irrelevant topics and/or links, or violates Wikiquote policies, specially in case this editor has little major edits, we could say he has no serious interest to contribute the project, even he himself convinces he does a great contribution? In this case, can we say to him "no, thank you. Find another place suitable for your interest. Farewell, and good luck" and block him for a proper duration until he understands our mission and turns his mind to be an acceptable editor among us? Then I suppose, we can block him because of his disruption, not arguing if he intendspersonal attacks? Or this logic is tricky?

Any proposal, comment or suggestion is welcome.

--Aphaia 08:05, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Update

Jni added chapters 'Impersonation' and 'Public accounts' from WP policy, with a commnet "these should be non-controversial enough to include right away.". I agree with Jni and support for this modification. The former is not only rude, if intentional, but a sort of vandalism and in purpose to bring confusion and defame the impersonized user and harm to community integrity with a bad faith. Public accounts is not allowed from the view of security and accountability. By the way, it is sad now the time we should say so clearly has come. --Aphaia 07:33, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

3RR

I noticed we do not have an official w:WP:3RR. I happen to think it's a useful rule, and would like to import it as-is from WP. Anyone thinks differently? MosheZadka 15:28, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

While we can expect to be adding many WP-derived rules as Wikiquote grows, we should also consider that every new rule requires additional maintenance effort and provides an opportunity for bad-faith editors to cause problems by violating it. If I'm not mistaken, 3RR conflicts require some kind of arbitration forum, and we don't even have a basic "requests for comment" page yet. Are we having 3RR problems yet? — Jeff Q (talk) 16:42, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I guess you confuse "three reversion rule" with arbcom or somehow. So-called 3RR is "if you revert one article three time within 24 hours, then you will be blocked without any warning", if I recall correctly. Please see w:WP:3RR for further information. This rule isn't applied to reversions against clear vandalism. --Aphaia 17:28, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To answer your question about needing, notice Abortion reversions. MosheZadka 21:11, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, most of what I recall from 3RR on WP is how people would occasionally complain about repeated violations, which I guess means that, given the size of WP, the basic rule sufficed most of the time. And I'm not the least bit surprised that Abortion seems to be our test case. There are people in this world who just can't accept that different people and different cultures have different ideas and values, and can't understand the benefit of having a place to see all those ideas collected. It reminds me of a Will Cuppy quote: "They believed in freedom of thought for themselves and for all other people who believed exactly as they did." I withdraw my objections to importing WP's 3RR. — Jeff Q (talk) 21:55, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree. 3RR is somehow useful

• to stop an on-going edit war almost automatically (both side will be blocked in most cases)
• to prevent increasing the number of involved parties and growing a bad atmosphere
• to prevent increasing histries without any useful changes

And it introduces sometimes another problem (you would find an example - a bit long - on another project although, in most cases it brings benefits rather than demerits, so for now introduction of 3RR has three supports, no dissent. I think we could apply it tentatively if necessary, but better to have more supports. Any comment? --Aphaia 11:18, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have, in a way, stopped agreeing with myself. I still want 3RR but not wikipedia's. I suggest something along the following line: a page that's been involved in a 3RR violation will be protected for a day, always of a version that the 3RR violated *reverted*. This gives a softer disincentive for violating 3RR than being blocked: namely, having m:The Wrong Version be protected. A user could still comment on the talk page, but would not be able to affect what he thought was so important to revert that he did it thrice. If there is general feeling that this is a good idea, I do not mind taking some time to draft something we can vote on. Thanks, MosheZadka 13:48, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

MosheZadka proposed a good idea, that is indeed what I did on Talk:Abortion case. Only a half day protection (not blocking on the users involved) helped to build a constructive discussion . And we don't hae edit wars on it. I am not sure if his idea works well, and in the worst case, we need 3RR like WP at last, but his scheme is worthy to consider and try once in my opinion. --Aphaia 23:33, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

214 case

And now our first attempt (24 hours protection) is almost close to the deadline. Does anyone have opinion? There are some possibilities

• Keep the page protected for a while or until concensus would be built.
• Unprotect the page and place a block on 214 for a while (24 hours) just after unprotection of the page
• Unprotect the page but not place a block on any editor.

Note - already another editor is annoyed with protection. See the bottom of Talk:Abortion. --Aphaia 18:54, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Offensive username

Hitlersshithole (talk · contributions)

Agreeing to Amgine (he is mainly active on Wikinews, and there a sysop), MoscheZadka and Jni (our sysop!) I banned the user above permenently because this user name is offensive. According to Jni, an user under the same name was blocked on English Wikipedia already. I confess I haven't checked his or her submission(s), but this name is in my opinion offensive enough ban from our project. But I don't deny any discussion and if anyone have a different thought, please explain your idea and propose another solution. --Aphaia 27 June 2005 16:27 (UTC)

Note that I said that such a name would almost certainly be blocked by Wikipedians, not that I have observed this exact same user there in past. Do we have any precendents (or objections) to blocking because of user name? I think our draft blocking policy has a gap here. I'm about to add a mention of this reason for blocking. jni June 27, 2005 16:34 (UTC)

Thank you for your clarification, and I would like to add we don't have any solid evidence those two accounts are owned by one same person. I imported Template:UsernameBlock - if I had done so before blocking, it were nicer. I put it on the user page of this account.

But I feel it offensive, and seems to me it is a bit awkward we don't nothing only because "our policy say nothing about it currently". Even Wikipedia didn't have a full set of policies like today and many policies and guideline are documentation of former unwritten rule. We have no dissent to block impostors (and after blocking this rule was introduced if I recall correctly), so on my part I have no reason to let problematic user name be free. But I am not surprised the other guy have a different view, and would like to unblock this account. So I don't oppose anyone who will unblock but hope strongly the sysop who will unblock to join this discussion. --Aphaia 27 June 2005 16:49 (UTC)

I doubt anyone will unblock this guy, but I would like others to sanity-check and review my change to the policy. BTW, here's some useless trivia: of English WPs 310163 (and counting) users 6 have usernames that begin with string "Hitler". All seem to be blocked or have never done even a single edit. Here in WQ we have only 1 out of 3966 starting with "Hitler", the one mentioned above. (Is there an easy way to search for usernames that contain a given substring in them?) jni June 27, 2005 17:07 (UTC)

Your addition seems to me almost good and it is reasonable not to mention "changing user name" because this is suspended for now. But the unblocking procedure would be useful for some sysops in my opinion, specially when we will grow up more. --Aphaia 27 June 2005 19:02 (UTC)

Additinal note; the latter part "shithole" hasn't been mentioned by anyone, but in my opinion it is also offensive - and I don't think here we can think it as double negation. --Aphaia 28 June 2005 01:52 (UTC)

I consider this username offensive.--Jusjih 01:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Forging votes

Is forging votes grounds for blocking? Should it be? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 12:49, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

"Repeat vandal"

We often block registered usernames for "infinite" with the justification of "repeat vandal". I have looked through policy, and noticed that currently, this is not allowed :( Since I've seen all sysops do it (including me!), I prefer we change the wording of the policy, since it is obviously out of consensus. Of course, I may have simply missed the relevant section. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:39, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

70.29.3.3 has posted 70 vandalisms on Wikiquote on a single day, October 23, 2005. So far he has not been warned, having just begun here; but I note that he was blocked on Wikipedia on October 21 after a long history of vandalism. Considering what has already happened on Wikipedia, I would like to suggest forgoing the usual warning stages and opt for an immediate and permanent ban. Making 70 vandalisms in one day is so disruptive that I think this constitutes a need for action right away. Here is a link to what he has done so far: [1] InvisibleSun 02:04, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Any objections?

This policy has been mostly stable, and seems to me that it is pretty close to being followed by all sysops. Barring objections, I plan to mark this as "policy" within a week. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 18:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I've made some cleanup edits to remove references to "banning" and some personal comments, in preparation to moving this to official status. The only issue I have is that we usually block IPs for 3 days-7 days for spamming, even if they are dynamic. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:35, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the static/dynamic idea was well-intended (as imported from WP, I imagine), but there are at least two basic problems with it:

1. With 0-2 (est.) sysops watching for vandalism at any given time, we don't have the luxury of many eyeballs to make it easy for someone to spend time doing 2- or 3-transaction queries of hierarchial whois DBs to figure out which is which.
2. The old idea of determining static/dynamic IPs is seriously out-of-date anyway. Most DHCP-assigned IPs stay with customers for months or even years (I've had the same one since I started on WP back in 2003), and many, possibly even most "fixed" IPs are actually hiding NAT-based networks of dynamic IPs behind them. Therefore, blocking a dynamic IP for an extended time may be completely reasonable, and blocking a fixed IP fo a day can cut off an entire company, school, or other organization. And there's no way we can tell for sure which applies.

I support treating IPs uniformly unless and until someone complains, and even then trying to address the specific complaint before we worry about the larger implications. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:31, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I agree: I believe policies should be descriptive, not proscriptive, since consensus is mostly marked by actions. In that vain, Kalki and UDScott also agree with you by their actions -- and the four of us are responsible for over 90% of the IP blocks :) I will modify the policy to more accurately describe current practice soon, and wait a while before marking it as official policy to give everybody time to object. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:26, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Interesting information. I agree that we should treat IPs uniformly. iddo999 18:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Cumulative vandalism and community consensus

If someone persistently vandalises and gets the test1, test2, etc. templates, shouldn't he eventually get a permanent ban? Also, given the small number of admins here, it shouldn't be difficult to achieve community consensus on WQ:AN for a permanent ban.--Poetlister 22:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I agree on that we are better to place a permanent ban on a basis of community consensus. However I don't think we necessarily achive community consensus before we place a permanent blocking on registered users.

We sometimes have blocked registered users permannently, when we thought those accounts created only for disruptive purposes. It is clear from their edit patterns, and I think it is nice for us all to have a review opportunity. On the other hand WQ:AN is open for everyone and if a certain blocking is questionable, we are happy to discuss it and if necessary, lift up the blocking in question. If it is not clear from this document for now, it will be nice to describe this opportunity in a clearer expression. However our community is not so big that we can spend much of our time to administrative issues, and I prefer to spend time to do other activities like cleaning-up articles to discuss vandalism which is unlikely repeated.

As for the necessity for "repeated vandals", I don't think so. On our experiences, temporal blocking is enough for them. Most of those people seem not to keep their violent interest for a long time, so I guess even some hours blocking is okay to prevent them from disruptions.--Aphaia 09:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)