Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy

The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Wikipedia. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Please review policy editing recommendations before making any substantive change to this page. Always remember to keep cool when editing, and don't panic.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Blocking policy page.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Shortcuts

This is not the page to report problems to administrators
or request blocks.

This page is for discussion of the Wikipedia blocking policy itself.

Report incidents such as block evasion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.
Report violations of the three-revert rule at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring.
Report active, persistent vandals at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism.
Report violations of arbitration remedies at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement.

See WP:PROPOSAL for Wikipedia's procedural policy on the creation of new guidelines and policies. See how to contribute to Wikipedia guidance for recommendations regarding the creation and updating of policy and guideline pages.

Archives

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22, 23, 24

This page has archives. Sections older than 60 days may be automatically archived by when more than 4 sections are present.

Block policy adding request

I request add this in policy:

Unblock request should be review by another administrator (not the blocker).

It may help for the unjust administrator to make malice block and block the appear. Gongxiang01 (talk) 07:04, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's already there: "Since the purpose of an unblock request is to obtain review from a third party, the blocking administrators should not decline unblock requests from users when they performed the block." This is the policy on the English Wikipedia; the Chinese Wikipedia may have different rules. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:26, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PBLOCK community consensus

Partial blocks may be used at the discretion of any administrator in accord with the rest of the blocking policy, or community consensus.

What does this mean? Is it simply saying that a community discussion can result in a PBLOCK, or is something further intended? If the latter, I'd like to amend the sentence to Partial blocks may be imposed at the discretion...blocking policy, or may be imposed by community consensus. Nyttend (talk) 13:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've always understood it to mean that partial blocks may be placed in any way that a full block can be - i.e. in circumstances articulated in the blocking policy or in any other circumstances if there is a community consensus to do so. That would mean your proposed change would not alter the meaning but may clarify it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When partial blocks were the new hotness there was much fear of the unknown which got hashed out at WP:PARBLOCK2019. One of the questions was "Should partial blocks be limited to community consensus only?" That got voted down nearly unanimously, and the "discretion of any administrator" language came out of that RFC close. RoySmith (talk) 14:40, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PS, I can't think of any reason a discussion at WP:AN or WP:ANI couldn't end with "There is broad consensus by the community to ban User:Foo from Some Namespace (or from some specific list of articles)". The community passes bans like that all the time. Bans state the will of the community. Blocks are just a way to technical way to enforce a ban. If the community banned somebody from (for example) a namespace and that user violated that ban, I suppose an admin could then impose the corresponding pblock to enforce the ban, but I think it's more likely they would just block the user completely; that's usually what happens when users disregard community-imposed restrictions. RoySmith (talk) 14:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything needing changing; admins can make unilateral partial blocks (e.g. in cases of edit warring) or at the close of a discussion where consensus is achieved (e.g. an article subject who can't be neutral on their article). Primefac (talk) 22:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unblocks of a global block

Reading the most recent admin newsletter, do we feel like current blocking policy covers the situations where we would unblock someone on enwiki who is blocked globally or do we need to hash out new language for it? I genuinely don't know how I would handle such a request which maybe reflects that this isn't the normal area I work or maybe reflects something that needs clarifying. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:13, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I saw that. To be honest, I'm hard pressed to think of a situation where we'd want to locally unblock somebody who is globally blocked. Accounts don't get globally blocked without a good reason. RoySmith (talk) 16:23, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Given how new global blocking is, I'm not sure I have a sense of what people will get globally blocked for and thus not sure how often enwiki might reach a different conclusion about it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:34, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I am sure about is that having two different features named "global block" and "global lock" is guaranteed to create confusion. RoySmith (talk) 16:38, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a plan to merge global locking into global blocking (though the name may still remain on-wiki) at T373388. Not planned for the short term though. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 17:32, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One thing to note is that global blocking for accounts was developed so that there would be a way to prevent temporary accounts from editing on all wikis. If you lock a temporary account it just allows the user to get a new temporary account on their next edit. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 17:34, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not for en.wp at this time, but I think about cases like Malnadach and Slowking as perhaps illustrative. There may be less difficult cases also, perhaps global blocks will come first for VOAs or other not-difficult cases instead of locks and they'll be able to appeal on particular projects. Izno Public (talk) 17:10, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to mention that we already locally unblock global IP blocks with existing policy. It's not common, and admittedly has a different flavour. Personally I think we should cross whatever bridge when it happens. And it should by default go in front of the community on a noticeboard (do we need to actually write that? I don't know). The only thing we shouldn't be doing (and I don't know how relevant that is here) is to undo an office action, but I think that's probably adequately documented under the office policy. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:24, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what should happen with the "request glock" feature of WP:SPI? The SPI templates support flags for this, and User:GeneralNotability/spihelper.js (which I guess is orphaned at this point) has functionality to make the requests on meta. Should we switch that over to using gblock instead of glock, or expose both options? RoySmith (talk) 17:46, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or maybe not orphaned after all! RoySmith (talk) 17:48, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We will need to consider this for temporary accounts, as global blocks is the only method to prevent them editing cross-wiki (global locks don't work as I've mentioned above). Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 17:35, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree with Zzuuzz that this should be handled on a case by case basis. However I would say that rather than by default go in front of the community on a noticeboard that local unblocks should only happen as a result of a consensus at a community noticeboard (I don't have a strong feeling about which board), and I do think it worth explicitly saying this. When there have been enough of both global blocks and local appeals of global blocks that we have a reasonable feel about why they get applied, what grounds people appeal them on and what the response to the appeals is, we can amend the policy to reflect what is and is not controversial in practice. To that end it might (or might not) be worth explicitly marking it as a temporary policy that will only apply to the first say 10 appeals with a mandatory discussion to keep, remove or amend at that point (such a discussion need not be more heavyweight than a "This seems to be working well, we'll mark it as permanent unless anybody objects in the next week" or "in practice these are uncontroversial, does anyone object to just replacing the policy with a note saying whether to accept, decline or discuss is an individual admin's discretion?"). Thryduulf (talk) 19:56, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the thing. As Roy mentions above, global blocks are different than global locks. So I agree with what @Thryduulf and @Zzuuzz are saying about global locks - they need either community input or ArbCom concurrance. Global blocks are a whole different new thing and my gut tells me they should be handled more like a normal unblock - given that the user might have done nothing wrong on enwiki before being globally blocked even - than an unlock where sometimes they need community input but normally not. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:37, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it turns out some or all local appeals are uncontroversial then we can remove the consensus required provision when we know that, but until we do know who is getting blocked, who is appealing and what the community attitude to those appeals is, I'm not confident that individual admins will know enough to know what is and isn't going to be controversial, what is a reasonable grounds for appeal and what isn't. If some appeals are uncontroversial then consensus to unblock will develop quickly (I'm not proposing a quorum, minimum discussion length or anything like that) and nobody loses. Thryduulf (talk) 20:50, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think if we start with the highest cost option - everything must be community reviewed - it's unlikely we would ever go back to a lower cost option. I appreciate the work Izno and Roy are doing below in getting this onwiki so we don't have to talk hypothetically. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:49, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I put a request in the ear of a steward to move onwiki the discussion stewards are having about global blocks, so perhaps we won't have to just "come up with something" without considering the dimensions they'll be thinking about. :) That feels like the primary blocker to thinking about the problem. Izno (talk) 22:57, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've also been interfacing with some steward ear today. From what I can tell, they're as unsure about all this as we are. RoySmith (talk) 00:38, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Blocking IP addresses

I have come across an indefinite rangeblock which has not been cancelled although 16 years old. The range is 66.197.128.0/17. Can it be removed? 82.0.216.119 (talk) 16:07, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That IP address belongs to Netflix. Nobody should be editing from there. I'm not seeing any reason to lift the block, would you mind elaborating why you think this is necessary? --Yamla (talk) 16:10, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The IP is unable to reply, as it was used by WP:LTA/VXFC to evade their ban. Favonian (talk) 16:24, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Blocking policy" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Blocking policy has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 October 12 § Blocking policy until a consensus is reached. C F A 💬 20:38, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]