Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Block policy

Yay administrators! We get to come up with a block policy! How doth we handle this?

With extreme prejudice.
No, actually, I like the current policy - unwritten. People know when they're being obnoxious - Freakzoid knew it, and he went there anyway, including posting anonymously when he had been banned, and then posting to flip you grief after reducing his ban. If anything, you were too tolerant, allowing a weak-ass excuse to cut his ban in half - but I digress.
An unwritten policy says "There is an invisible, undefined line - so don't even come CLOSE to where you think it starts!" - and reasonable people won't. Any written policy invites quibblers and people who put one toe over the line and then two, and then three but only on occasion and they apologize right away and then argue about where the line actually was - phhhht. The tighter you try to define "a law", the more people rely on that definition rather than common sense and courtesy. You know what's acceptable, I know, and so does everyone else. And if/when they cross that line, it will be equally clear to all, and they'll know what a ban is like.
We can list "no religion, no RL politics, no this, no that" - but then we're back to defining those terms, and then the definitions, ad infinitum. If we want to write up some formalized complaint process, including 3rd party complaints (when the "victim" isn't bothered or doesn't want to make a fuss, but others think they should), that works for me - if two Beavis's are arguing, they might only be insulting each other, but it offends the entire site, and similarly if someone is attacked but doesn't feel like defending themselves, or someone crosses a line without a clear target.
My 2 dwarfbucks.--Albedo 11:51, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Interesting points. --Briess 12:35, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

First, a minor quibble. I think the policy should come from everyone, admin or not, but if you think that shouldn't be the case then feel free to strike this statement.

I think that if people are being disruptive and personally insulting others, they should have a minimal (days) editing ban. If they come here deliberately to put vandalism on the wiki (replacing an article with 'fuck' for example), they should be gone for weeks from editing. I think that's enough for this wiki. I don't see any good reason to ever ban an IP/username from viewing the wiki (as I've seen mentioned before), who cares if someone is read only? Block, like everything else here should be used or done only to improve or protect the wiki from falling apart, doing something else (if possible) is unnecessary always. Mason ^(T-C) 12:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll agree that this policy should also be a community effort; but bear in mind it affects the administrators who have to administer policy the most. --Briess 12:35, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Community input, certainly, but not just a "vocal majority rule" decision (nor policy "by committee").
Every site where I've seen hard rules, I've seen some users who push back equally hard. Soft rules mean there is nothing to push against, except the Admin's and Community's tolerance for BS. We could codify "punishments", so those are known - first offense, vandalism, spam, personal attacks, edit wars, ignoring Admin, etc. etc, and again, loosely defined, if at all. But I think they should be harsher than gentler - the message should be "Just don't go there!", not "Be sure to weigh this before going there". (And then the Admin can be lenient if/when they deem it approp - easier than the other way around.) Likewise, true vandalism, vulgar obscenities, blanking a page or spamming the site, getting cute while banned, I think should be perma-ban, zero tolerance. (We aren't here to teach social skills, and "once" is once too much with such.) As far as blocking "reading", that might be kept but as an extreme measure - some people just can't let something go unless they're truly removed from the influence. ; ) --Albedo 13:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

All sounds good, completely agree. One concern if we block IPs is that we should recognize the fact that like on wikipedia some people MAY be in a situation where they share a public IP with some asshole and we should at least make it so that it's possible for people to help out here if they can prove they aren't the one with that IP. Though this will of course be a very uncommon scenario. Mason ^(T-C) 23:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

My suggestion is "keep the rules simple and easy to follow." (Easy to follow implies easy to find...) My experience is that "positive statements" are more effective than trying to exhaustively list everything that's banned. You can have some internal guidelines on when to apply which sanction, but how often does it happen that something more than a gentle warning and a revert is needed? Nuke the spammers, but respect your contributors. --MathFox 15:18, 24 April 2010 (UTC)