[WikiEN-l] unilateral bans of controversial users

Wed Feb 4 06:56:12 UTC 2004

In the past few days, we've had three unilateral bans of controversial 
users:
  *  Lir by Hephaestos -- twice, unblocked by Tim Starling once and 
Angela once
  * Wik by Hephaestos -- once so far, unblocked by me just now
  * Anthony Del Pierro by Eloquence -- twice, unblocked by me once and 
by Eloquence once

I was under the impression that when the new ban functionality for 
logged-in users was implemented, sysops were explicitly forbidden for 
making use of it except in three cases:
 * Users Jimbo has personally said should be banned
 * Reincarnations of such users
 * Users who have no edit history except for pure vandalism

A possible fourth that has proved controversial but generally at least 
tolerated is "emergency" temporary bans to stop damaging vandalism 
streaks by other users (e.g. making tons of edits or moving pages around 
or deleting images).

Recently, Jimbo has indicated that he wishes to stop making the banning 
decisions unilaterally, and so has constituted an "arbitration 
committee" to take over the responsibility of doing so when necessary.  
However, I do not recall at any time there being a green light given to 
all 150-something sysops at large (nor the members of the arbitration 
committee, acting individually) to use their individual discretion in 
banning logged-in users, but this seems to be what's happening, and not 
by recently-elevated sysops either.

So I suppose my main purpose in this email is that I'd like to request 
that the original guidelines be forcefully restated and that this stop 
happening.  We can't have controversial users being banned without any 
sort of process at all, at the sole whim of any of the 150-plus sysops, 
and I'd rather this not generate into a reversion war of sorts where 
some sysops ban users and others immediately unban them (and the 
original sysops reban them, and so on...).

-Mark