Last modified: 2011-04-27 01:11:50 UTC
Per this link: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:AAA#Unban_User:Ungoliant_MMDCCLXIV I wish to make an application for the Wiki software to be amended to remove the right of indefinite ban against any user, and for this function to be restricted to bureaucrats only. I've had it made quite clear to me during a conversation in #wikinews that administrators do not have the right to decide that a user has no redeeming qualities, regardless of what they've done in the past or what they're doing now. As such, I feel that administrators should not have this right available to them, since we're clearly not capable of deciding what a user is doing wrong is worthy of what we apply to them.
I'm going to say this is most likely a WONTFIX issue, I can't really think of a situation where you would want to remove/hide the indef block, what you are describing sounds like a community issue if sysops can't follow local guidelines/policies in regards to blocking users.
I'm not asking for a remove or hide, simply to change the decision level for which an indefinite block can be applied.
(In reply to comment #2) > I'm not asking for a remove or hide, simply to change the decision level for > which an indefinite block can be applied. Is there even local community consenus for anything like this to occur? Either way it's not something I can foresee going/changing in core, You could do some local js hackery to remove it from the sysops I guess (in the interface only, still wouldn't stop them doing it via other methods).
Presumably an administrator that did want to place an indefinite block would do so by placing a block that expired 50 years into the future. Accordingly, to effect this change, you would need to place an expiry cap on blocks by regular administrators.
I'm gonna say +1 on the WONTFIX suggestion here. I really can't see a huge need for this.
(In reply to comment #4) > Presumably an administrator that did want to place an indefinite block would do > so by placing a block that expired 50 years into the future. > > Accordingly, to effect this change, you would need to place an expiry cap on > blocks by regular administrators. That's worth consideration. I'll suggest that to the channel I'm in.
There are two issues here: * writing and implementing this feature; * gathering consensus on a particular wiki to set this feature in a particular way. Obviously you need to write the feature before it can be set in a particular way on a particular wiki, however there are obstacles to implementing this. MediaWiki doesn't really distinguish between an indefinite block and any other kind of block (except that ipblocks.ipb_expiry is set to "infinity" instead of a timestamp). What's to stop someone from setting a block for 100 years? Wouldn't that have the exact same effect? I don't see much virtue in adding this feature into core. Even with more restrictions (such as limiting blocks to less than a year or something), it violates MediaWiki's principle of putting trust into administrators to behave appropriately. It's easy enough to customize the message above the block form, remove the drop-down selections for longer expiries, and/or add some custom JavaScript to warn/prohibit admins from setting longer blocks, but all of these can be bypassed by a willing admin. Ultimately you need to trust that the admins will act appropriately (within community norms). If they can't or won't, they probably shouldn't be admins or you should change the societal rules surrounding who can block indefinitely. This isn't really a technical issue, it's a social issue. If there were a link that admins could accidentally click (like rollback) to indefinitely block someone and they kept tripping on it, that would be a technical (user interface) problem. As it stands, admins must consciously choose to indefinitely block someone; they can consciously choose to not do so if it's against local policy.
