Wikipedia talk:Administrators' guide/Blocking

Hi, unlike any of the other comments, this is a comment (or a question) about the actual article (Wikipedia:new admin/Blocking) - you know that "crappy" t-shirt? What is it and what is it about? It seems to be a joke but I don't get it. Can someone explain please? Thanks, Darrenm540 (talk) 18:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

---

Good idea! May I suggest a lesson for teaching about the autoblock function and how to remove an autoblock? That is one thing I had trouble with when I was new. A lesson about blocking IP ranges might be nice too. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah that would be a good idea. I'll have a bash at the auto blocks - I'm not too good with range blocks so I'll have to leave it upto someone else. Ryan Postlethwaite 14:46, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not so good with range-blocks either. So I don't really do them. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 17:34, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

---

I was just going to suggest these both as well, especially since they're currently weak points for me. — Scientizzle 18:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I might also suggest a discussion of softblocking. Perhaps, also, information about how one can check for and deal with (if necessary) open proxies, Tor nodes, zombie computers, etc.? — Scientizzle 18:26, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

4 warnings?

Should we really be teaching "View ThisIsaTest's Talk Page and verify that he/she has been warned four times and that the warnings are recent." - From WP:VAND: There are several templates used to warn vandals. They are listed at right in order of severity, but need not be used in succession. The first level warnings are designed to AGF. If a user replaces a page with something like: "LOLZ U <offensive words> SUCK!!! BAN ME" - I really don't think we should be assuming good faith. I would suggest:

1. View ThisIsaTest's Talk Page and verify that he/she has been warned with a a final warning (such as {{uw-vand4}} ) and that the warnings are recent (for IPs only). --> Does recent warnings matter for logged-in users?
2. Click on ThisIsaTest's contributions.
3. Verify that ThisIsaTest has vandalized recently after the final warning.

--Mr.Z-man 03:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Templates aren't required - all that really matters is that the user has been given adequate warning (which requires judgment to decide) and hasn't stopped. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:50, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

In cases of gross or extreme vandalism a warning is not needed at all, such as promotion of hate or racism. Other users will deserve one warning, others more warning. Decide on the severity of the behavior and the likelihood of salvaging a good user. No hard and fast rule will do, use your good judgment. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 06:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all of the above even though I wrote the bit about "four warnings". IF it's OK with User:Until(1 == 2), I'm going to copy his comment directly onto the project page. --Richard 07:01, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Very valid points here, Until's statement is very good and I agree, it would be a good one to have on the page. Ryan Postlethwaite 10:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, of course you can use my statement. Both under GFDL, and my blessing. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 13:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

31 hours?

I think there should be an explanation of the reasoning for a 31-hour block - as i understand it, it's so that the user doesn't "sleep through" the block if they edit early one day and late the next, is that right? —Random832 14:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It's from past experience that vandals would often come back at the same time next day and continue their vandalism. 31 hours means that's not possible, and if they have similar internet patterns on a day to day basis, it will most probably mean that the vandalism won't continue after the block (at least for the short term). Ryan Postlethwaite 14:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

A little late in responding.

More specific to what Ryan said, the 31 hours was to prohibit school IP based vandalism, figuring that in 24 hours the person would be back at the same computer at school. 31 hours would put them somewhere else. Keegan^talk 05:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Inappropriate account changed

Since the recent policy change has excluded random/confusing account names from block on sight, I created User:Keegaṇ and replaced the username and language as to why "too similar" is a conflict that can be blocked on sight. Keegan^talk 05:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Sensitive IP addresses

The figure on this page gives a shorter list than User:HBC AIV helperbot/Special IPs. Is it out of date? Wnt (talk) 21:29, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Checking the blocked history

How can an administrator can check to see if a user has been blocked before or not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mehrdadd (talk • contribs) 14:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Is that the correct template?

I'm still a relatively new admin, so I still come here to check I'm doing it right. I did my first IP block, and used the temporary vandal block template in the Common Block box {{uw-vaublock}}. When I sent my message, I was surprised it came up with a message of indefinite blocking. I found the correct one in the end (I did what I should have done in the first place and read the section on IP blocking). However, the box is a bit misleading. Is it really the correct template to use for temporary blocking? StephenBuxton (talk) 16:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Clearly not. I changed the page to list uw-vblock. Of course templates aren't required, and you can write custom messages by hand. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:20, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Cheers for that. StephenBuxton (talk) 15:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Change

{{editprotected}}Edit protected request removed - page is only semi-protected. There are plenty of people below who can make this edit if it is agreed to. Rjd0060 (talk) 03:03, 13 October 2008 (UTC) I think there is something missing on this page when unblocking users as i have seen it even though of course i am not an admin. When someone is unblocked, like ThisIsaTest says he is really sorry, shouldn't the autoblock #xxxxx be unblocked as well from the Special:IPBlockList? If this is correct i think this should be added as a step in regard to ThisIsaTest and then Keegan at the bottom with the family name. I am pretty sure this is what happens. 220.239.56.131 (talk) 09:30, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I switched this request from {{editsemiprotected}} to {{editprotected}} because it really needs someone who is familiar with the topic (which is pretty much limited to admins).--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 17:09, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Might be simpler to add a distinct section for autoblocks? If nothing else, we should at least be linking Wikipedia:Autoblock. – Luna Santin (talk) 18:00, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I heartily agree that I'd like to see more documentation on autoblocks, and/or how they are to be cleared, as I keep running into trouble with this. For example, yesterday I issued a routine 3RR block, then after the user apologized, I lifted the block. I kept an eye on Special:IPBlocklist to see if an autoblock needed to be cleared, and I advised the user to post to his talkpage if there was further trouble. Nothing showed up, and I assumed that he had just gone to bed. Then this morning I see that he'd sent an email (which I'd missed the night before since I didn't have my email client open), and he said in the email that after I "lifted" the block, he couldn't even edit his talkpage! So then I looked at the Special list, and this time his name was showing up in the list, so I cleared it. But I'm competely bewildered at this point. Is other words, why is it that with the block lifted, he couldn't even edit his talkpage, and also, why wasn't he showing up in the Special list until several hours later? Part of the problem is that it's hard to tell if an autoblock exists or not, because a name only shows up on the special list if it's not cleared, but once it is cleared, the name vanishes off the list. So when a name doesn't show up on the list, it's difficult to tell if this is because (a) there's not a problem; (b) the user just hasn't tried to edit anything yet; or (c) there was an autoblock, but it's already been cleared. Anyone else have any insight here? --Elonka 19:20, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... by default, Special:Ipblocklist will show only the 50 most recent blocks (which currently goes back a little under an hour); I prefer to search with a limit of at least 1000 or more to get a longer view (2000 goes back several days, so should encompass all current autoblocks given their shorter expiry). If that wasn't your problem, is it possible an autoblock was set after you searched, but before the original block was released? My own experience has been that Ipblocklist usually seems reliable... – Luna Santin (talk) 19:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, first let me start by saying that I'm very inexperienced with unblocks and autoblocks, so it's very possible that I messed something up.  :) However, I am very certain that when I lifted the block last night, I then spent the next hour or so checking and refreshing and re-refreshing the Special list to see if the blockee's name showed up, but I didn't see anything. So, one possibility is that when I lifted the block, he wasn't online anyway. Since it sounds like you have more experience with these, I'm going to throw a bunch more questions at you, since every other admin that I've asked, usually just scratches their head and says, "Good question, I've never understood that either." I've been trying to experiment with it as I could, and filling in tips and tricks at WP:AUTOBLOCK, but I still find the system confusing. So:

• Would an autoblock show up as soon as a block was lifted? Or only if the user actually attempted to edit something?
• If the user did attempt to edit something, does it show up on the autoblock list right away, or is there a delay?
• Does it matter if a user was logged in or not, at the time I lifted the block?
• Do autoblocks always result from an early-lifted block, or only sometimes?
• When I unblock a user, is there something that I can do to reduce the possibility of a lingering autoblock?

Looking forward to learning more, --Elonka 20:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah! Questions! Most of these can be answered with the following: by my understanding, once an account is blocked with autoblocking enabled, the server will immediately attempt to set an autoblock on any IP address(es) recently used by the blockee account, and may attempt to set further autoblocks if the blocked account attempts to edit from any other IP(s) while the autoblock-enabled block is active.

If the original block is released (or expires), new autoblocks should not be set, but autoblocks set before that time will continue to be active, each autoblock expiring completely independently of the original block or its sibling autoblocks. That independent nature in particular can sometimes lead to confusion. I suppose that there must be some database involved in the autoblocking, but I'm not aware of any significant delay... be wary of loading cached copies of Ipblocklist, though.

As far as avoiding lingering autoblocks, my best advice I think would be to double-check for autoblocks after releasing the original block, since that's the only time you know it should be impossible for more to be set. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Yum! Answers!  :) This stuff definitely needs to get documented. Would you like to do it, or shall I? And I guess another related question is: When blocking a user, when should the autoblock checkbox be used? I guess one way to avoid ever having to deal with the issue, is just to never check the box, correct? --Elonka 21:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

One reason it's hard to find straight talk about autoblocks is the slight concern about WP:BEANS. :) The biggest problem with autoblocks has been (at least theoretically) solved with MediaWiki:Autoblock whitelist... it used to be that autoblocks on widely shared IPs like StarHub were quite problematic. Generally, though, I think they're quite handy; we usually don't want a blocked user to just log out and get a free ticket to keep vandalizing/edit warring/whatever. As far as documentation... every time I think about improving it, I'm not sure where to begin. Probably my problem is wanting to compress too much knowledge into a tiny paragraph, without really being sure which specific snippets are most helpful as an introduction. Usually people want to know "how to find them" and "how to release them" for starters, I guess? – Luna Santin (talk) 21:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on an overhaul at Wikipedia:Autoblock, I'd appreciate if you could review and tweak things if I got anything horribly horribly wrong. I feel like I'm understanding most of it now, except for the stuff about talkpages... According to the description page, autoblocked users are still allowed to edit article talkpages?? Is that still true, or is that legacy stuff? --Elonka 02:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

BTW, that problem showed up again with a user I just blocked and unblocked, 6afraidof7 (talk · contribs). When I unblocked the account, I checked Special:Ipblocklist several times, and there was absolutely no mention of the account. Then a bit later I got a message from the user saying that they still couldn't edit, and I checked the Special list, and now the account did show up, and actually appeared to have an earlier timestamp on it from when I'd been checking the list before. I've got it cleared now, but I'm still scratching my head. I think next time I'll try to get some screen captures of the blocklist to see if that helps to clarify what's going on. --Elonka 22:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

How to deal with Abuse Filters

I recently came across a report on WP:AIV about an abuse filter. Not knowing what these things are, I raised a question at WP:AN. After a lot of questioning, I did eventually get a full explanation, but it would be handy if there was something here (or anywhere really!) that is easy to find and gives a full explanation on what the filters are, and how they should be dealt with. Even a link on this page would be useful. Can anyone help? Stephen! ^Coming... 09:12, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

User's request to be a test for blocking

I've removed a user's comment that they volunteer to be the subject of test blocks. It's not necessary, as user:ThisIsaTest can be used instead. I also suspect that they may be trying to hide their own legitimate block log behind test blocks.  An optimist on the run! 22:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Setting the block length

According to the current text, this can be done any way, but this does not appear to be true. There is an administrator who likes to block people for 59 days - he's done it twice this month. Now October has 31 days and November 30 (total 61) so this means the block should expire in December two days before the corresponding date, but it doesn't. This formula blocks the editor for exactly two months. Whether the situation would be different if the number of days in the month is different I do not know. 86.191.97.221 (talk) 11:25, 31 October 2015 (UTC)