All The Tropes talk:How We Do Bans Around Here

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Proposal: Add "vandalizing a content page" to the list

8
Robkelk (talkcontribs)

Because I just had to give somebody a ban for replacing an entire trope page with a single word, and the only thing I could find on the lists was "putting the entire wiki at risk".

Is such an act really only worth a tempban-on-first-offence, though, or should it be a permaban? It's very annoying to clean up after (even if the cleanup is a simple matter of hitting the "undo" button) and it shows a massive disrespect for other Tropers, but it isn't actually against the law the way the other permaban-on-sight offences are.

Opinions?

Pinging the Moderation Staff and long-standing active Tropers - please comment if you have an opinion. @Labster @GethN7 @Looney Toons @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak @Beta Log 86 @HeneryVII @Lequinni @TBeholder

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

I'm surprised none of us ever noticed it wasn't on the list of offenses, because I know we've had to deal with this before.

This is a permaban on first offense thing. Period. No argument.

Regarding this specific instance, the twerp in question should be permabanned. Immediately. It wasn't an honest mistake, it was a deliberate act of vandalism, and he even went out of his way to register just so he could do it. There's no reason to let him back. At all.

Remember that when you wrote this page, right at the top, you said that these were guidelines, not rules or policy. Guidelines do not lay down hard and fast every possibility, and are not to be adhered to with no exceptions like proper rules. It already mentions instances where admins can use their discretion -- this was a case of that, and no one would call it an abuse of power or the guidelines to have permabanned him.

In fact, in the interest of protecting the wiki from a a second strike from this bozo in two weeks' time, I'm exercising my discretion and upgrading him to the deluxe block with leather interiors, whitewall tires, 8-track stereo, and permanent duration.

Lequinni (talkcontribs)

I agree with LT. Obvious vandalizing is grounds of permaban almost elsewhere, and adding "vandalizing and blanking wiki pages" to the list of permabannable offenses is just and necessary (even if it was understood within the "putting the wiki on risk" category of offenses). Drop the banhammer in the little shit and the ones who come after them.

HeneryVII (talkcontribs)

I agree too, Vandalizing a page can get a poster kicked out of any other Wiki I know of, so that should be the case here.

GethN7 (talkcontribs)

Concur wholeheartedly. While the damage is not irrevocable, someone mass deleting content from a page harms our overall mission to present said content to the public for the duration of said damage.

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

It appears we have consensus. Updating the page... EDIT: And done. Thank you for your advice, everyone.

TBeholder (talkcontribs)

"Tempban, then case by case" makes the most sense in general, in that it's not even always intentional. From previous experience we know there's a whole herbarium of bugs, retarded censorware (remember that guy with a edit-box-wide word substitute?) and probably malware… a short term first ban with stated reason doubles as "time out to fix your crap". If someone has pants on the head obsession or is a jackass, will either get bored and go elsewhere or repeat, if not, fine…

GethN7 (talkcontribs)

That's a good point. If someone blanks a page and replaces it with a message for people to kill themselves, then I think we can reasonably assume they deserve a permaban. Otherwise, depends on context and severity as TBeholder rightfully points out.

I haven't seen anyone else comment on this yet...

13
Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

...so I'll start. Overall this looks good. I've read through it several times over the past few days, and no real changes come to mind. I'd be comfortable with making this a live page as-is.

Derivative (talkcontribs)

Strong language per content pages should maybe considered not an immediate tempban

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

Good point. I've split "what is grounds for..." into two subsections: immediate tempban and tempban only after a warning. Did I put things in the right subsections?

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

Just added a reason for an immediate tempban that we've had in place for years now. As for when we shift from temp to perm, well, we had someone on a 4 month tempban which expired in November. IIRC, we promised a permban after that, so we a have a precedent to follow: if we reach a point where we're going tempban someone for over 4 months, we might as well permban.

One thing maybe we should also have is a schedule of tempbans -- do different offenses merit different initial ban lengths? And should we have a predefined series of durations -- one day, 2 days, 3 days, 1 week and so on?

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

Thanks, LT.

As for the schedule: It seems to me that a one-day or shorter tempban doesn't do much, especially if the offender doesn't try to login for a day - a two-day tempban is the shortest that I'd give if I was making the list without input. Beyond that, I'm lazy and wouldn't be averse to using as a list the predefined options that MediaWiki gives us.

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

It occurs to me that we should probably lay out explicitly the bans for spam somewhere, too. Our current procedures are permanent ban for a registered account which spams, and a six-month or one-year tempban on an anonymous IP. (I've used both one-year and permanent bans on IPs that have any results at all on StopForumSpam.com's IP Check, which generally means they're IPs owned by spammers.)

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

More changes made to the draft. Input is requested from @Labster, @GethN7, @Looney Toons, @QuestionableSanity, @Derivative,@SelfCloak, and any other interested party before I start turning this into a proper article/guideline/policy page.

If we decide that this is going to be a policy instead of a guideline, then all current Tropers should have a chance to comment.

SelfCloak (talkcontribs)

I checked the draft, it all looks good to me.

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

I think it's safe to turn this into a proper guideline page.

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

Agreed, although we should clean up some of the chattier or uncertain parts first.

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

Okay, the text has been polished.

I think this is now almost launchable. The sole flaw that I see: It needs a better name.

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

Assuming an "All The Tropes:" namespace before them:

"Tempban and Permanent Ban Policy"

"Bans: Rules and Guidelines for Qualifying and Applying"

"User Bans - How to Earn and How to Avoid"

"How We Do Bans Around Here"

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

I like the last one - succinct and clear.

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