Wikipedia:Banning policy

The Wikipedia banning policy is a formal revocation of editing privileges on one or more pages in Wikipedia, usually in the scope of an article ban or a topic ban, though they may extend to the entire project. A ban may be temporary or permanent. The standard invitation Wikipedia extends with the statement "edit this page" does not apply to banned users.

Users may be banned as a result of the dispute resolution process, or by uninvolved administrators who are enforcing rulings of the Arbitration Committee.

Bans are social constructs, and are not enforced by the MediaWiki software. However, users who violate a ban may have their account access blocked entirely, as a way of enforcing the ban.

Banning should not be confused with blocking, which is a technical mechanism used to prevent an account or IP address from editing Wikipedia. While blocks are one mechanism used to enforce bans, they are most often instead used to deal with vandalism and violations of the three-revert rule. A ban is a social construct and does not, in itself, disable a user's ability to edit any page.

Decision to ban

The decision to ban a user can arise from various sources:

1. The Wikipedia community can decide, by consensus, to impose a ban.
2. The Arbitration Committee can use a ban as a remedy, usually following a request for arbitration. In the past these bans have nearly always been of limited duration, with a maximum of one year.
3. The Arbitration Committee may delegate the authority to ban a user, such as by authorizing discretionary sanctions in certain topic areas, which can be imposed by any uninvolved administrator. See also Mentorship.
4. Jimbo Wales retains the authority to ban users.
5. The Wikimedia Foundation has the authority to ban users, though it has rarely exercised this authority on the English Wikipedia.

Community ban

The community may impose various types of bans, by consensus, upon other editors who have exhausted the community's patience:

• If a user has proven to be repeatedly disruptive in a certain area of Wikipedia, the community may engage in a discussion at a relevant noticeboard such as the administrators' noticeboard. Topic bans may be implemented by a consensus of editors who are not involved in the underlying dispute.
• If a user has exhausted the community's patience to the point where an administrator has blocked the user long term or even indefinitely, and where no uninvolved administrator is willing to unblock him or her, the user is considered to be community-banned.
• In some cases the community may have discussed the block on a relevant noticeboard, and reached a consensus not to unblock the user. Users who remain indefinitely blocked after due consideration by the community are considered "banned by the Wikipedia community" and listed on Wikipedia:List of banned users.

Appeals process

Bans imposed by the community may be appealed to the Arbitration Committee (arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org). Banned users should not create sockpuppets to file an appeal. Rather, they should contact a member of the committee or an Arbitration clerk by email and ask that a request be filed on their behalf. Generally speaking, the banned user will make the request on his or her talk page, which will be copied to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration by a clerk. In some cases, a banned user may be unblocked for the purpose of filing an appeal. In such cases, editing of unrelated pages is grounds for immediate re-blocking.

Users who have been banned indefinitely by the Arbitration Committee may appeal to the Committee after one year.

While any arbitration decision may be nominally appealed to Jimbo Wales or the Wikimedia Foundation, historically, it is rare for either to intervene.

Administrator ban

The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee has designated several topic areas where uninvolved administrators are authorized to impose discretionary sanctions. These sanctions include bans on editing.

For example, articles within the topic area of Israel-Palestine issues are often the subject of edit wars and other disruption which resulted in a great deal of community disruption, and multiple arbitration cases. In January 2008, the Arbitration Committee, as part of the Palestine-Israel articles case, stated that any uninvolved administrator could take necessary measures on articles within that topic area, to ensure the smooth functioning of the project. If an administrator identified that a certain editor was being disruptive in this area, the administrator could warn them, and then if necessary ban the editor from work within that the topic area.

Sample bans might be:

• "You are not allowed to edit articles in this topic area for one month, though you can still participate at discussion pages," or
• "You cannot edit or engage on the talkpage of this one article for the next week," or
• "You are not allowed to post at the talkpages of these three users for one month", and so forth

In November 2008, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion which stated that administrators are prohibited from reversing or overturning (explicitly or in substance) any action taken by another administrator pursuant to the terms of an active arbitration remedy, and explicitly noted as being taken to enforce said remedy, except:

(a) with the written authorization of the Committee, or

(b) following a clear, substantial, and active community consensus to do so.

Administrator-imposed bans should be appealed at the administrators' noticeboard, or the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. If there is no consensus on how to deal with the situation, then a request for clarification or appeal may be filed to the Arbitration Committee.

Dealings with banned users

Wikipedia's hope for banned users is that they will leave Wikipedia or the affected area with their pride and dignity intact, whether permanently or for the duration of their ban. As such, it is inappropriate to bait banned users, or to take advantage of their ban to mock them.

Editing on behalf of banned users

Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called "proxying," unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them. Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to that effect may be reverted. Wikipedia's sock puppetry policy defines "meatpuppetry" as the recruitment of new editors to Wikipedia for the purpose of influencing a survey, performing reverts, or otherwise attempting to give the appearance of consensus. It strongly discourages this form of editing, and new users who engage in the same behavior as a banned or blocked user in the same context, and who appear to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose, are subject to the remedies applied to the user whose behavior they are joining.

Evasion and enforcement

Wikipedia's approach to enforcing bans balances a number of competing concerns:

• Maximizing the quality of the encyclopedia
• Avoiding inconvenience or aggravation to any victims of mistaken identity
• Maximizing the number of users who can edit Wikipedia
• Avoiding conflict within the community over banned users
• Dissuading or preventing banned users from editing Wikipedia or the relevant area of the ban

As a result, enforcement has a number of aspects. As with enforcement of other Wikipedia policies, no individual editor is obligated to help enforce any ban.

Blocks

In the case of project-wide bans, the primary account of any banned user may be entirely blocked for the duration of the ban.

If the banned user creates sock puppet accounts to evade the ban, these usually will be blocked as well. When evasion is a problem, the IP address of a banned user who edits from a static IP address may also be blocked for the duration of the ban. If a banned user evades the ban from a range of addresses, short term IP blocks may be used. Typically, these last 24 hours.

Restart and extension of ban duration when evasion is attempted

It is customary for the "ban timer" to be reset or extended if a banned user attempts to edit in spite of the ban. No formal consideration is typically necessary. For example, if someone is banned for ten days, but on the sixth day attempts to evade the ban, then the ban timer may be reset from four more days remaining to ten days remaining. So if the user doesn't subsequently evade the ban again, their eventual total duration will have been sixteen days.

Enforcement by reverting edits

Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban. By banning a user, the community has decided that their edits are prima facie unwanted and may be reverted without any further reason. This does not mean that obviously helpful edits (such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism) must be reverted just because they were made by a banned user, but the presumption in ambiguous cases should be to revert. When reverting edits, care should be taken not to reinstate material that may be in violation of core policies such as neutrality, verifiability, and biographies of living persons.

Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating edits made by banned users in violation of the ban, and such edits may be viewed as meatpuppetry. Users who reinstate such edits take complete responsibility for the content by so doing. It is not possible to revert newly created pages, as there is nothing to revert to. Such pages may be speedily deleted. Any user can put a {{db-g5}}, or its alternative name {{db-banned}}, to mark such a page. If the banned editor is the only contributor to the page or its talk page, speedy deletion is probably correct. If other editors have unwittingly made good-faith contributions to the page or its talk page, it is courteous to inform them that the page was created by a banned user, and then decide on a case-by-case basis what to do.

User pages

Banned users' user pages may be replaced by a notice of the ban and links to any applicable discussion or decision-making pages. The purpose of this notice is to announce the ban to editors encountering the banned user's edits. Indefinitely site-banned users may be restricted from editing their user talk page or using e-mail if they are disruptive.

Other means

Serious, ongoing ban evasion is sometimes dealt with by technical means or by making an abuse complaint with the operator of the network from which the edits originate.

Reincarnations

Banned or blocked users sometimes return to Wikipedia using another user name. Obvious reincarnations are easily dealt with—the account is blocked and contributions are reverted or deleted, as discussed above. See sock puppet for policy on dealing with unclear cases.

Coercion

Attempts to coerce actions of users through threats of actions outside the Wikipedia processes, whether onsite or offsite, are grounds for immediate banning.

Scope and reciprocity

The English-language Wikipedia does not have authority over the Meta-Wiki, sister projects, or Wikipedias in languages other than English. As such, bans issued by the Wikipedia community or by the Arbitration Committee are not binding on other projects.

Reciprocal recognition of bans is an unsettled area of policy, in part because of the relative rarity of cases where banned users attempt to join another project.

Difference between bans and blocks

A ban is a social decision. A block is a technically-imposed restriction.

The term "ban" can also mean different things depending on context:

Administrator bans

In terms of ArbCom-authorized discretionary sanctions, a ban is usually a temporary revocation of editing privileges from one or more pages. Such a ban may be imposed by any uninvolved administrator after an appropriate warning, and has nothing to do with a block, though a block may be used to enforce a ban, if the banned user violates their restrictions.

Site bans

Another use of the term is a "site ban" or "full ban", whereby an editor is completely ejected from the project. This is similar to an indefinite block, but has some differences:

• Blocked users can usually still edit their talkpage
  • An indefinitely site-banned user loses the right to edit any page of the project, including their talkpage

• A blocked user who is evading a block, may still manage to get edits added or pages created, and those edits then have to go through the normal AfD or dispute resolution process
  • A banned user who evades a ban, may have all of their edits reverted without question (with the exceptions listed here). Any pages that they create may be deleted on sight, per WP:CSD#G5 (though care should be taken if other editors have made good-faith edits to the page or its talk page)

• Indefinite blocks may be imposed by any uninvolved admin, after sufficient warnings and/or other shorter blocks
  • A site ban can only be imposed by community consensus, by the Arbitration Committee, or by Jimbo Wales

See also

• Wikipedia:Editing restrictions
• Wikipedia:Blocking policy
• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Past decisions
• Wikipedia:List of banned users
• CommunityExile, RequestToLeave and RightToLeave, from MeatballWiki
• Blacklist