Wikipedia:Banning policy

"WP:Banning" redirects here. For banned links, see Wikipedia:Spam blacklist.

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

Users may be banned as an outcome of the dispute resolution process, or by uninvolved administrators enforcing Arbitration Committee rulings.

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 used to deal with vandalism and violations of the three-revert rule. As a social construct that is not enforced by the MediaWiki software, a ban does not, in itself, disable a user's ability to edit any page. However, users who violate a ban may have their account access blocked entirely, as a way of enforcing the ban.

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.

Except as noted above, individual users, including admins, may not directly impose bans.

Community sanctions

The community, through consensus, may impose various types of sanctions upon editors who have exhausted the community's patience:

• If a user has proven to be repeatedly disruptive in one or more areas of Wikipedia, the community may engage in a discussion to site ban, topic ban, or place an editing restriction upon a consensus of users who are not involved in the underlying dispute. When determining consensus, the closing administrator will assess the strength and quality of the arguments.
• If a user has been indefinitely blocked and through community discussion it is determined that no administrator is willing to lift or reduce the block, the blocked user is effectively considered to have been community banned.
• In some cases the community may have discussed a block and reached a consensus of uninvolved editors 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.

Sanctions process

Community sanctions may be discussed on the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Discussions may be organized via a template to distinguish comments by involved and uninvolved editors, and to allow the subject editor to post a response. Sanction discussions are normally kept open for at least 24 hours to allow time for comments from a broad selection of community members. If the discussion appears to have reached a consensus for a particular sanction, an uninvolved administrator notifies the subject accordingly. The discussion is then closed, and the sanction should be logged at the appropriate venue, usually Wikipedia:Editing restrictions or 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. Some banned users are not allowed to edit their talk page; such users should contact the ArbCom or admins through email. 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, unless a shorter minimum period is specified in the Arbitration Committee motion or remedy.

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

When reviewing bans, any editor (such as a prior victim of harassment) who may be affected should be informed, so that he or she can participate in the ban review.

Administrator topic bans

The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee has designated several topic areas in which 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 have often been the subject of edit wars and other disruption which has 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 can take necessary measures on articles within that topic area, to ensure the smooth functioning of the project. If an administrator identifies a certain editor as being disruptive in this area, the administrator can warn them, and then if necessary ban the editor from work within that topic area.

Sample bans include:

• "You are not allowed to edit articles in this topic area for one month, though you can still participate at discussion pages";
• "You cannot edit or engage on the talkpage of this one article for the next week";
• "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 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 with 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 they have independent reasons for making them.

WP:SOCK 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 imitating.

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. While all editors are expected to respect the enforcement of policies by not undermining or sabotaging them, no editor is personally 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 days remaining" to "ten days remaining". So if the user doesn't subsequently evade the ban again, his or her eventual total duration would be 16 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 such core policies as neutrality, verifiability, and biographies of living persons. Users who reinstate edits made by a banned editor 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 in which a banned user attempts 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, including indefinitely blocked users, can usually still edit their talkpage.
• Site-banned users may lose 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 talkpage).
• 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, by Jimbo Wales, or by the Wikimedia Foundation.

See also

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