[WikiEN-l] Re: blocking user name

Mon Sep 1 13:57:59 UTC 2003

Anthere wrote...
> From: Toby Bartels
>
> >Will this be working on any wikipedia as well ?
>
> I don't know.  Would you want it on [[fr:]]?
>
>
> -- Toby
>
> Me ? No :-)))
>
> Or Utilisateur:Papotages would have been banned before
> I was back from my holidays :-)
>
> I think several french would be very happy to have
> that feature. But there was never any serious
> discussion since we considered a "fact" we could not.
> Likely, f the feature is now possible, it will be
> transfered.
>
> Till now, we succeeded not to have any user name ever
> banned (except perhaps Mulot, but that was in phase I,
> I am still shivering in the memory of permanent
> deletion). The reason probably is that Jimbo is not
> able to follow some of the discussions.
>
> If the feature is available, it will be used. And
> probably not with Jimbo seal. Till now, conflict was
> eventually "solved" through mass reversion and
> protection of page. I suppose now it will perhaps be
> through blocking.
>
> It is easy to see on RC that a user is mass reverted.
>
> It is not easy to see a page is protected (essentially
> because people don't put headers, do not list it, and
> others unprotect). But we may notice the user
> protesting vehemently
>
> However, if the user is blocked, we may not even
> realise it (except for pure bliss coming down the
> wikipedia after a fight). I wonder if it might not be
> relevant to have somehow a warning somewhere telling
> us that a user name has been blocked since last
> connection. Otherwise, we might not notice and be able
> to unblock him perhaps.
>
> Just thoughts. Setting up blocking of names (which
> will be block with the ip, so entirely prevent the
> user to communicate with us) is just changing the
> concept. It requires to adapt.

I've changed it now so that we can switch it off on a language-by-language
basis. But like you say, many French Wikipedians may want it on, and there's
not much I can do about that.

Brion mentioned that it's currently not really clear what a banned user is
meant to do to get unbanned: they get a message saying "discuss this with
[[User:Someone]]", but they can't modify the user's talk page, and they
can't email him/her either. Perhaps we need to have a sandbox especially for
blocked people, where they can write comments or plead for forgiveness. The
difference between this page and ordinary pages would be that there's no
edit summary, and so no chance to flood RC with obscenties.

-- Tim Starling.