Wikibooks talk:Blocking policy

While a past discussion resulted in the rejection of Blocking guideline, nearly all other projects have some sort of guideline/policy. We could at least get some information down on why blocks are made, how to resolve unblocking, etc. Like most of our policies this can be vague enough such that it doesn't tie administrators' hands. -- Adrignola talk contribs 05:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

A few changes made
&mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 15:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Grammar, spelling, and stylistic changes.
 * Removed the adjective "persistently" from disruption reasons for blocking. This doesn't reflect reality and opens the door to wikilawyering.
 * "Unblock to reblock" is no longer necessary, you can alter block settings without unblocking.
 * You must not use autoblock when blocking malfunctioning bots.
 * Removed mention of enwiki's unblock-en-l mailing list
 * Used language from Template:Checkuserblock - they must not be altered without consultation.

A few changes to be made
&mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 15:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think this should be a guideline, not a policy. This would reduce the space users may wikilawyer in.
 * The section "Recording in the block log after username change" mischaracterizes RTV. The section should point to the page on Meta, rather than duplicating content (badly).
 * The conflict of interest section(s) are too strict. This is a small wiki, and everyone knows everyone (more or less). Requiring an uninvolved administrator at every turn would effectively stop any administrative action from being taken. The real standard must be whether the action is correct, not who did it. The section should make this clear.
 * The section "Dealing with off-wiki block requests" is also too restrictive, and singles out IRC when there are a multitude of off-wiki discussion forums (Skype or other IM, Facebook or other social networking sites, mailing list, private email, phone, in-person...). Again here, the standard must be whether the block is correct, not how it happened to be discussed. Mentions that "IRC != consensus" belong at WB:IRC, not in the blocking policy. The section should simply be removed.
 * Removed section on off-wiki requests. Removed defined block period reference to leave it to discretion of blocking admin.  Removed section on conflicts of interest.  I'm not familiar enough with RTV to know what needs to stay on the page.  As to guideline/policy, I have no position on that but put the new revision here to avoid overwriting the version linked above that failed to reach consensus. -- Adrignola talk contribs 17:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The last proposal was voted as a guideline because it was extremely simplified (lots of exceptional situations were expected), this new proposal seems very complete. It also resolves some of the terminology issues the previous proposal had.
 * A point that wasn't made clear in the previous discussion is that this policy is not especially important to the users that will be discussing it. But it will be extremely important to the normal Wikibookian that may eventually be target to a block. I think that this is the basis for the references to the problem of using this text for wikilawyering, there is an understandably resistance in one minority but extremely vocal group (admins) to see their actions restricted (or strictly defined) as this will increase the level of effort and difficulty to execute them, even if in this case the result can only be positive. Even in extreme circumstances, our objective shouldn't be the exclusion of people.
 * As for the edits I noticed that in the Disruption section the word "persistent" was removed this creates an inconsistency on the text as in general it points to repeated occurrences... --Panic (talk) 18:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Made some changes to Block reviews section to conform to what was discussed in the past as reasonable. Admins should, if possible, be first informed of any changes to blocks they made (this avoids errors and reduces confusion). I also made the possible discussion more public, as there is no special reason that it should take place on the Administrative Assistance room (it should be made visible to the general community so all can participate), otherwise some level of more general announcement would be necessary (and included on the text). --Panic (talk) 20:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't agree that the "The conflict of interest section" was particular problematic (probably could have been better worded). But I'm certain that the reason Mike provided for the removal is not completely aplicable since as I said above the text establishes relations between few-to-many.  In any case and because of the type of relation, that restriction is made redundant, as admins are expected to know better (IIRC this is in some form already covered on the policy defining administrators), and the text makes it so that any review is not performed by the blocking admin. A better approach to the previous practice, that on our community level of activity permits quicker reactions, as I think was part of the point Mike raised...  --Panic (talk) 20:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Blocking for sock puppetry
Not all sock puppetry is unacceptable. Please improve policies of blocking users. 83.8.204.86 (discuss) 11:14, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Any exceptions re sock puppetry are very rare and should not be an occasion for rule bloat. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:02, 8 February 2019 (UTC)