User:L235/DS page sanctions

The current discretionary sanctions procedure is widely understood to need certain improvements. Here are my [preliminary] suggestions for additional safeguards on discretionary article-level sanctions.

Current procedure states:

Any uninvolved administrator may impose on any page or set of pages relating to the area of conflict semi-protection, full protection, move protection, revert restrictions, and prohibitions on the addition or removal of certain content (except when consensus for the edit exists). Editors ignoring page restrictions may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator. The enforcing administrator must log page restrictions they place.

Unfortunately, this procedure lacks the checks provided by other processes and even other discretionary sanctions programs. In particular:

• When imposing sanctions on individual editors, administrators are given guidelines on when sanctions are appropriate. Specifically, editors may be sanctioned only if they have failed to edit carefully and constructively, to not disrupt the encyclopedia, and to: adhere to the purposes of Wikipedia; comply with all applicable policies and guidelines; follow editorial and behavioural best practice; comply with any page restrictions in force within the area of conflict; and refrain from gaming the system. However, page sanctions have absolutely no Committee guidance on when they can be used – all while imposing an arguably-greater burden (imposing restrictions on everyone, not just those who are disruptive) on editors. The confusion also muddies any WP:AE review/appeal of the restriction, where admins don't have any clear standard to evaluate the propriety of any given sanctions.
• While sanctions on individual editors are rarely indefinite in duration (especially the first sanction imposed on an editor), article-level sanctions are almost invariably indefinite from the beginning.
• While sanctions on individual editors are required to be logged at WP:DSLOG, rarely are article-level sanctions logged at the discretionary sanctions log.
  • Apparently article-level sanctions must be logged: The enforcing administrator must log page restrictions they place. Often, this does not happen. For example, the following articles display notices imposing page-level 1RR and required consensus (as discretionary sanctions) without being logged at WP:DSLOG: Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, Donald Trump, Roger Stone, DREAM Act, Devin Nunes, and many more. That's not to say that those articles necessarily shouldn't have DS, but procedure hasn't been followed in those cases (afaict).
• While sanctions on individual editors provide clear appeal notice and a direct link to the administrator who placed the sanction, rarely do article-level sanctions include that information – and the templates for imposing article-level sanctions don't even have a field for the name of the administrator.
  • The procedures provide: Appeals may be made only by the editor under sanction and only for a currently active sanction. However, article-level sanctions do not have particular "editor[s] under sanction". Historically, AE has accepted appeals by any editor for page-level sanctions, but it would be worth making that clear.
• Community members have created templates that impose page-level sanctions for DS topics that have become accepted as the "standard" for the area of conflict, leading administrators to inadvertently impose page-level sanctions on an article that may have even thought certain restrictions were required to be imposed.
  • The best example of this is {{American politics AE}}.
  • At the very least, the Committee should require that all templates indicate whether a particular restriction is required for all pages in an area of conflict (e.g., {{ARBPIA}} lists the Committee-mandated 500/30 and 1RR) or whether the restriction is imposed as a discretionary sanction by an administrator (e.g. {{American politics AE}} lists administrator-imposed 1RR and consensus-required restrictions).

Some of these issues may be addressed by a consensus of the clerks. For example, a consensus of clerks and interested arbitrators can authorize the change of an arbitration enforcement template (such as {{Ds/editnotice}}). Other changes will require formal Committee action to enact – for example, a motion clarifying that page-level sanctions must be logged at WP:DSLOG or imposing a time limit (say, one year) on page-level sanctions (in line with the current limit on DS blocks). My hope is that this page will be a good starting point for Committee and community discussions.