User:Testingthisthing/indefproposal
| Description | Page | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Talk page | User talk:Testingthisthing | - |
| Statement on Fram | User:Testingthisthing/Fram | August 31, 2019 |
| Arbitration Committee 2019 predictions | User:Testingthisthing/ArbCom2019 | November 19, 2019 |
| Proposal on indefinite to two years | User:Testingthisthing/indefproposal | December 7, 2019 |
Proposal
Reduce indefinite to two years
- Remove indefinite as an option for blocking. Reduce the maximum length of a block from indefinite to two years.
- Editors are people but they are de facto blocked for life if they gain an indefinite block for whatever reason. Admins these days are hurling indef blocks to good editors for small reasons, going against the spirit in which the blocking system was formed. It was original decided that indefinite blocks should be used against only the worst of wrongdoers such as chronic harassers and LTAs. As of now, indefinite blocks are handed out to long-term established editors who 1) use bad words, 2) edit war, 3) are simply being a "dick", etc.
- Editors do not deserve to be "imprisoned for life" by the Wikipedia community. I think this worst punishment should be reserved only for spam bots or accounts that are obviously never going to be used again, although it's not absolutely necessary since spam bots are dealt with by stewards using global lock. Everything should have an expiry. Some good-faith editors who have been constructive for years have been blocked indefinitely for petty reasons such as saying another editor had been "bitching" (Legacypac), violating strictly-construed topic bans possibly by mistake (A1Cafel, Winkelvi), naming whistleblowers (Wumbolo) and suggesting mean things to newbies (Thewolfchild). These reasons are problematic but they are also trivial enough to sweep under the carpet and certainly not justify indefinite blocking. They can be dealt with using time-specified blocks such as a week or a month.
- In the period these editors remained blocked, they were unable to produce the thousands of edits they would've made had their indefinite block expired after a short while. These are just a few editors. There are hundreds if not thousands of other good-faith editors who, for example, have created Featured articles and made constructive edits for years but were blocked indefinitely over small issues such as personal attacks, edit warring and topic ban violations.
- There have been cases where the enemies of an editor would gang up on him to get him site-banned for no reason at all. They are able to manipulate consensus with their collective strength. For these reasons, an indefinite block serves as a life imprisonment for productive editors. Some may say, "just appeal the block if you're innocent". This does not always work. There is a de facto bias on Wikipedia where admins, most of the time if not always, side with each other against non-admins. Admins rarely get sanctioned for petty things like edit warring or name calling. These things regularly get non-admins indefinitely blocked. So when a non-admin challenges their block, a reviewing admin would often stand up for their fellow admin and uphold the block without further investigation even when the block is unjustified, because apparently to them, going against another admin would mean becoming a "race traitor" and they would lose the fondness of this and other admins and their favor in the future. There are some non-admins who suck up to rogue admins for the sake of making a good impression, just so they could earn their approval that will help them in their future RfAs. This clearly shows the injustice presently existing in the Wikipedia community.
- A way to mitigate the problem is by reducing the block length from indefinite to, at most, two years, or preferably, six months. This will not only allow great editors to get back into the community after their block expiry, but will also allow the one-time clumsy child vandals to mature up and become constructive editors over time. Seeing a giant red box on their page and not knowing what to do is a problem that will only chase them away from Wikipedia forever or into further disruptive practices such as sock puppetry. Appealing may work, but given the flaw in the system and the high intolerance of the community, it may be very difficult for the average Joe to be successful.
- The goal is to bring back great editors into Wikipedia not permanently send them away for trivial reasons. They may have issues, temper and stuff that may prevent them from making a successful appeal, for that reason they may succumb to giving up and never rejoining Wikipedia again.