Last modified: 2010-05-05 07:46:14 UTC
Similar to, and building on, bug 15641: administrators being able to unblock themselves seems ludicrous except for the valid points raised in comment #2 of that bug. However, these apply only on wikis that are both A) small enough for one rogue admin to be able to lock out all the others before being stopped, and B) not part of a framework such as wikimedia, where the steward system, global groups, global blocking, etc, renders such attacks impossible. Surely, blocked administrators' ability to self-unblock should be a boolean parameter in LocalSettings.php, defaulting to true, that can be revoked when a wiki grows to the stage where the feature becomes more of a hindrance than a help.
This should be a bug, not an enhancement - it is a flawed design. The points raised in bug 15641 are not valid. Self-unblocks could be allowed in the case of self-blocks, self-blocks could be disallowed in the first place, or people could just pay the price for having shoved beans up their nose. As for a wiki with two admins with one going rogue, allowing self-unblocks doesn't really solve anything anyway, unless you think "mutual assured destruction" is a legitimate fix. One possible fix could involve making "unblockself" a separate right, which can be granted to some sysops but not to others.
Fixed in r64228.
I think that the permission should be given to sysops by default, because so far they could unblock themselves, and changing it should only be done by decision of the wiki sites themselves.
In fact we certainly have had admins go rogue and block a pile of people (generally admins first, *cough*wonderfool*cough*), and it is also true that this is a big change to expected behavior. I have seen admins blocked as a form of censure, with all that entails, rather than the sort of "last result" described in bug 15641. I agree that this should be configurable and a wiki should request the change if its community agrees to it.
Default set in r64231.
