From the very start at Wikipedia I have had a very uneasy feeling about the "indef block", for several reasons:

The principle that you can sentence a person to "life" is absurd...at least to some of us, who do not live in barbaric states, like the China, Saudi-Arabia or...US . If you are accustomed to a system which routinely sets out to rehabilitate all types of serious criminals ... then coming to en.wikipedia is a culture chock. English WP is so based in the inhumane, and if I may say so; rather unsuccessful American penal system. If I was Goddess-Queen of WP I would at least have a compulsory review after, say 2-3 years. For some cases, automatic unban after the same period. (Ok, ok, there are obviously mental/criminal cases who should forever stay away..no need to mention names.)

The second is the practical issue...you cannot catch all banned socks. No way. (I´ve edited WP from three different continents this last year or so... now, if I was banned, how would you catch me? ) The longer time, the less chance. Why have "laws" which you cannot enforce?

The third was something one indef banned user once said, which I found quite compelling; namely that if you are indefinitely banned, there is absolutely no reason not to break every rule. You can go socking, or vandalizing as much as you like, ´cause: things cannot get worse (w.r.t your wp-status, anyway). You have nothing to loose. In short; give the guy a hope, and they generally behave better.

Fourthly, I saw some of the early bans on editors on WP, set upon by the "Cabal" (when it truly existed) .. which still make me absolutely furious when I think about them. I have NEVER forgiven the treatment that was given to some users, now indef. banned. (How, a certain posse set out to revert every edit of editor X who they targeted.. but let the very same edits stay if it was added by anyone else! And bragged about how they could turn anyone into a disruptive->indef. banned user! And they did! Grrr.) (And yeah, I can find the diffs, if anyone ask.) Potentially valuable editors were * made* disruptive and blocked. (And no: I am not talking about any WR-member here, AFAIK)

Fifthly: now there formerly banned users who are editing again..but these editors will always be at the mercy of those "in the know". This just adds to the MMORPG-aspects of Wikipedia.

One example:
Fipplet (T-C-L-K-R-D) has been a very silly young boy ..and has been indeffed. He is, probably, 17--and been playing with different "roles", edit-warring, (Btw, this is absolutely not meant as a criticism of those who did block him/reviewed it....they just followed the present rules. Also, I have been edit-warring with Fipplet several times: his views are completely opposite of mine). However, he also has a certain talent...he basically needs to grow up. I promised him (before I stormed out) that I would support an unblock of him if he behaved for a year.

Sooo, what do people think about it, does indef block serve any purpose at all, except for enhancing the MMORPG-aspects of Wikipedia?

Indef-block is the easy way out, so to speak. Wikipedia is inundated with problems and problematic editors, and people like a solution to their problems that is easy to execute. This means bots and Twinkle and Huggle running amok, and it means issuing the life sentence when it gets too annoying to deal with someone.

By the way, it has been long-recognized that long-term banning is unenforceable. Wikipedia compensates for it by being gung-ho on banning sockpuppet accounts, which is done in excess and more than anyone should care. But as I said, Wikipedia has to deal with this stuff too much, and its administration is rather fond of carrying out its duties in an industrial way (lots of units but significantly diminished quality).

As far as I am concerned, if someone does not know the difference between the verbs "to loose" and "to lose" then they deserve to be indef-blocked from the Internet

An indefinite block is one that does not have a 'definite' expiration - not always one that is permanent, which would not be a block, but a ban. For example, if a bot goes insane, it is indefinitely blocked. Just an FYI.

Absolutely! And everyone should speak English as a first language!. Who cares what their first language actually is? If they want to be on the internet they'd better have perfect grammar and spelling and usage, damn it. Because everyone knows the English invented the internet. Banning those whose English isn't perfect from the internet is too good for them, actually, they should all be lined up and shot with nerf guns.

And ixnay on the ittingsplay of infinitives!

No. Just ban the idiots whose first language is supposed to be English but who clearly can't pass a remedial grammar test. I said nothing about people whose first language is not English nor propose that everybody should speak English on the Internet.

No need to find the diffs, I know where they are

Kjære John, jeg synes du oppfører deg som en forbanna drittsekk, som dømmer folk nord og ned uten å vite noe om dem. Kutt ut. (Såååå hyggelig å se folk åpne for nye ideer...du beynner å ligne en hvis Hest her; somikke kan ta imot noen ting hvis de har fått noe imot dem. )
<edit>

As ever ... I return to discover that wikipediareview is still full of wonderfully fine and rational analysis reasonably discussed by intelligent, insightful and experienced individuals.

it is wonderful and I agree with your findings ... but it is all vain and futile.

What is the estimated half-life of Pee-dia pollution on society anyway? How long is it going to last for?

Indefinitely blocks ... the 'made-from-sponge' gopher hammer intended to exorcise admins' frustrations salving their egos with instant gratification at having actually achieved anything today ... by fucking someone up.

Yes...and no. We have had more than one experienced admin here saying they know about former indef-blocked users who has turned a new leaf, come back, and become trusted users, even admins., without the "general population" knowing about their "rough" past.

Which is well and good.

However; such a user is always at the mercy of those "in the know". Such knowledge is the equivalent of hard cash, in the wiki-world.

If we did not have such draconian rules in the first place, if, lets say, an amnesty was given after 3 years for any (non-mental, non-criminal) idef-blocked: you would, for one thing, ruin the secret "knowledge-capital" that MMORPG-players have.

Is that a bad thing?

My starting-point, so to speak, is that I do want more openness, more accountability on WP. Unenforceable draconian rules goes against any such development.

An "indefinite" block is one with no defined time period. As is frequently observed, that doesn't mean "infinite" or forever.

This isn't just a theoretical point. Plenty of indefinitely blocked users have been allowed back based upon the passage of time and/or promises of improved behavior.

I understand the suggestion that it might be better to put a time period on every block. But what time period would you use? Changing all indefinite blocks to, say, one year would be a bad idea, because there are indeffed users who've been allowed back in much less than a year.

I once blocked someone indefinitely because he kept deliberately repeating certain impermissible behavior, with the statement that he'd be unblocked as soon as he agreed to desist (and I noted that in the block log). He agreed the next day and that was the end of it. No block of finite duration would really have been as appropriate.

Conversely, it would be a rotten idea for certain gross vandals to have a fresh chance to vandalize with each of their hundreds of blocked socks a year from now.

Maybe there are too many indefinite blocks, but that's very different from saying there should be no such thing.

Perhaps the problem is that the software allows for blocks of definite duration. That is, if all blocks had been "indefinite" in the first place, there would not have developed a mythos around blocking that treats an indefinite block as a "life sentence".

Law of Unintended Consequences, I suppose. I imagine the reason for timed blocks in the first place was to allow for blocks to deal with what were presumably transient disruptions without having to force an admin to remember to go back and remove such blocks when the disruption had presumably passed. In retrospect, this probably should have been handled differently, as the present scheme has obviously created difficulties.

If you get on the wrong side of a powerful clique, then even years later you'll be treated as a pariah, and there will be dogpiles of opponents of the lifting of your block/ban, and should that side lose anyway and you get unblocked, they'll at least insist on all sorts of degrading and demeaning conditions be placed on the unban, and they'll watch you like a hawk for the most minute technical violation for which they can reblock you.

Which is what motivates people to ditch their old accounts, start new ones, and do their best not to get caught. Apparently, this has worked for many people. (I personally don't know any names).

It's also what turns WP into a costume drama. Not all returning characters resume their roles with pure hearts. Others have malice in their hearts and mischief in mind.

Definitely. When the police officer yells "Stop!", and someone doesn't stop, they might get arrested. An arrest has no specific period associated, though there are legal limitations. What makes sense to me is that all blocks would be indef, with no presumption that they are correct. If an editor can't respond to a warning and stop a behavior, at least pending discussion, then the editor is in a dangerous condition and should be blocked, until there is a reason to unblock. Which leads us to the real problem: not blocking procedure, but unblock procedure.

Which leads me to the practically universal problem: how does the community make decisions? Technically, the community doesn't decide, it advises, WMF decides, perhaps through Jimbo, but, of course, in practice, the community, through a mass of rather uncoordinated administrators and editors, makes all routine decisions, and the WMF's "decisions" are mostly to leave it alone.

(Another way to state this is that all Wikipedia decisions are made by individuals with the power to implement their own personal decision, and, then, with an assumed responsibility for having made the decision. This is why I argued against closes of discussions with an admin saying "the consensus was ..." instead of stating why that admin was making the decision, personally, because some very good closes have been made that differed from 90% of those commenting, and I've seen bad closes where it actually snowed -- participation bias plus me-too !votes, with no research. There are lots of excellent procedural reasons for no decision ever being made purely on a vote basis, though there are also good reasons to avoid closing with a decision that disrespects an uninvolved majority, because it's likely to be disruptive, even if the close is "correct." Don't agree with the majority, don't close that way! Close favoring the minority, if you are neutral and that is your conclusion, or don't close. And then you can defend the close personally, and, as well, change your mind. The problem with "consensus" closes is that there is then nobody responsible for the decision, and to change it requires a new discussion, instead of the much simpler request to an admin to reconsider, based on new argument or evidence, which I was able to do a number of times, successfully. No DRV needed.)

Which then leads me to possible solutions, methods for large groups of people to seek and find true considered consensus, efficiently and fairly, given the nature of the situation. Because the community consists entirely of volunteers, centrally coercive solutions, while very common because they are so easy when centralized power exists, are known to fail, to divide and reduce effectiveness; in the long run, such solutions weaken voluntary organizations and often ultimately cause them to fail. They are unstable, but because of the apparent absence of alternatives, failure tends to oscillate between similarly unstable solutions. Overthrow a fascist government, what do you get? Maybe you get something better, quite often you get something worse. There is another approach.

Some of those reading this, and knowing my history, might be surprised at my conclusions: they imply that involved admins may block, unless they have been enjoined not to do so. "Involvement" is highly associated with knowledge, and excluding those with knowledge from blocking or banning (i.e., strong warning re a topic area, as I interpreted it) is to exclude action by the knowledgeable. Until we have more efficient means of advising the uninvolved, it is necessary to enable involved action, but, then, to set up much better structures for reviewing such actions promptly and reliably. And, let's not forget, efficiently. The present methods for review, when there is real controversy, are horribly inefficient. Were they reliable, the inefficiency might be tolerable. But they are not reliable, precisely because they are inefficient. Who has the time to review all the evidence and argument presented in RfAr/Abd-William M. Connolley? In an efficient system, most of that text would never have been written, or, if written, written in very small-scale discussions seeking consensus, with escalation only over points of disagreement, until major specific disagreements might be considered at whatever top-level forum exists, restated through consensus summaries by each "faction." You might see an ArbComm case where there are two parties presenting a case and answering questions from arbitrators, with general community comment partitioned off and filtered into the case by the parties or arbitrators. Structure. Deliberative process. Filtering. All of these are necessary for community process to exceed in intelligence the intelligence of the most perceptive of the participants; instead, because of the lack of structure, overall intelligence is greatly reduced.

ArbComm itself has some structure, but not nearly enough.

(emphasis mine)

(emphasis mine)

You appear to be contradicting yourself (by omission), as your first statement doesn't seem to start out "With the exception of non native speakers of english and others with good excuses" or the like.

Thus, lacking a qualifier, it's a blanket statement, and you have disparaged the writing of someone who is a non native speaker of English. I don't know what The Adversary's response to you says, I don't even know for sure which Nordic language it is, but I'm willing to bet it's not uniformly complimentary. (any takers?)

Apparently my sarcasm was lost on you. A pity.

Perhaps I should have just come out and said directly what I thought of your statement? Language flames usually are lame, and yours was no exception, you displayed your ignorance and provincialism with your first statement and did nothing to dispel the impression with your second.

I suspect we fundamentally disagree on this.
My starting point is that no-one should be indef banned, meaning banned for life.

I would suggest that "the indef ban" on WP would be, say, as a default, max. 3 years. Or possible: 2 years.

There would be nothing, absolutely nothing, which would stop people from being unblocked after one day (as you did) -given, e.g., that they had fulfilled certain conditions.

But look at the Fipplet case I referred to above: he had been taken for abusive socking once...less than a year later he is caught again. And indeffed.
Would you unblock him the next day, if he promised to "never do it again"? I hope not: he had already broken that promise once. What he needs (IMHO) is a long break from WP, grow up a bit (?)....then, possible, come back. I think editors like him needs to be given a fixed time limit, knowing that they will be allowed back, without extra conditions, (if they behave) after that time. Indeffing a person like him is inviting socking.

This whole idea (that you have the right to return) run against the present "philosophy" of WP, where editing rights are taken as a privilege. And a very "uneven" privilege, as "oldtimers" have an advantage.

Having said all this: yes: there are cases that are "incurable"; mental/criminal cases. And where "indef" should indeed be "life".

<edit, add:>

No takers to that bet, I hope. It will probably get me indeffed blocked on all the four Nordic Wikipedias

American jurisprudence draws a distinction between "life" and "life without possibility of parole". That may be a useful distinction here too? But it may not be needed.

How long do you expect your website will last? Really?

But when you have WP as the "review board" for your possible parole; I´m afraid it simply does not work. As Dtobias and others have noted.

This is a dramatization of a wiki banning event..

I kept hoping for 2010 to be the final year, but it appears that that is simply a pipe dream and Wikimedia will likely continue to exist (at least) for several more years. Survival of the fittest and all that—there's still no viable alternative to Wikipedia.

Surely has issues, no argument there. I was merely noting that there's no "without parole" as any ban is theoretically reviewable (at least occasionally) over and over.


My website? I doubt it will outlast me. Or did you mean WP? I have no idea. I expect most people now reading this to outlive it, though. But not necessarily all of the content created for it. Some of my prose is deathless.

I was thinking of WP. A life time ban is a little like getting a life time guarantee on a beta-max video, I suspect. Of course you can also just wait until circumstances give you an unrelated IP address and start over. I think it would be obsessive to do anything special or go to any special expense to get one. Anything is better than the pissing and moaning involved in any "dispute" on WP. No one outside WP gives a care, nor should they, about any of the internal wonkery on the site. If they would address BLP abuse, respect legitimate experts and scholars., provide reliable information, address child protective concerns, etc they can be as "totalitarian" as they want as far as I'm concerned. Seems to me nobody is holding a gun to you're head if you know what I mean. This too will pass.

Basically I agree with this. It needs to happen. I don't think it will happen though.

At the heart of the Pee-dia is a snakepit of writhing manipulators. I cannot even see why the saints would waste their time on it.

In my long and varied experience of such matters, 99% of the time it is used to mean the latter ... a lifetime sentence to be tactically devised, trawled up later, speculated about, exaggerated and used as a prejudicial device.

Either the Pee-dia could go complete anonymous, where it is only down to the content without any personal accreditation (like Hiroyuki Nishimura's 2ch theory etc), or they go completely accredited and accountable. And turf 90% of the shits out.

I do not see either happening so it will continue to fester at the same level for as long as their are human beings at that stage of their evolution. How I see it now, the mediocrity, the melodrama and all the boy scout stuff like barnstar badges and 'bigga numbaz is betur' edit counts is its appeal.

Do something radical to sort it out Brad.

Hiroyuki Nishimura's experience ...

??

I'm pretty sure the US legal system allows for Natural Justice

Natural Justice

Maybe this concept could become WP:Policy when blocks/bans are applied?

Back to the legalese for a moment ... who is it that is actually being blocked "without definition". The individual ... the user name ... or the IP address? I have seen all three being blocked.

As one generally does not know who the actually individual is, isn't the concept of judgement and punishment involved a bit unreal?

In most cases, it is all as real, and on a par with, "bang-bang you are dead".

Has the Pee-dia ever offered periods of Official Amnesty? Perhaps there should come a time when it should stop acting as the 'Eternal Akashic Records for the Souls of Lost and Wayward Geeks', and they remove the histories?

But how can all the unpaid and junior employees be expected to know about all the subtleties of Wiki-Law when there are not training programmes, no examinations and only voluntary "legal" procedures along the lines of third world justice?

Indefinite bans are thought of, used and traded as infinite bans whatever the theory.

Time to restart that old favourite on Rights for Wikipedians?

I think it would be more productive to focus on the rights of those written about BY Wikipedians.

Most everyone editing Wikipedia is there either to plump up their own ego, or to advance advocacy for some cause or another, often rather bizarre ones. In the grand scheme of things, claims of a "right" to do either of these things seems pretty weak, and if we have to curtail those "rights" in order to protect other people, well, that's just too fucking bad.

Wikipedia should adopt reasonable governance, but only because having reasonable governance somewhat slightly increases the chance that they'd do something about the use of Wikipedia as a defamation engine. If Wikipedia were like most hobbies and just existed so that people could get together and share bread recipes or something, it wouldn't matter if their governance resembled grudge match night on WWE. It's the impact on uninvolved parties that makes Wikipedia's lack of sensible governance important. Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

I would add that acquiring rights for oneself does not appear to give any moral obligation to provide those rights to others indeed, there are plenty of examples around the world of those who should have rights not being able to exercise them. I often think that the rights issue of the last decade or so, where any issue gets turned into a rights issue is simply a demonstration of the inability of those in power to actually do anything practical (aside from occasionally shoot themselves in the foot).

I think that's only partially true. There are some good editors that just write for the joy of it, and to do a good thing. They keep a low profile and are tolerated. However, I believe these types of editors can only hack it so long, leaving in disgust after a while.

When you say “the community” in terms of Wikipedia, who are you talking about? English Wikipedia has over 10 million registered users – yet it appears that the same 20 people constantly turn up at WP:AN, the same 50 people populate AfD discussions, and the same 100 people are always at RfA. Is this a community or a clique?

You see, that is the great myth of Wikipedia – there is no community. There is a huge population that is barely cognizant that the web site has rules and procedures, and there is a tiny clique – maybe 100 or 200 people or so – who creates rules, votes its friends into power positions, determines what stays and what goes, etc.