Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Archive/Specialised blocks

Specialised blocks

Merged with another proposal

Problem: Currently the one way administrators can block users is by taking away all editing privileges, this is regardless of what caused the block in the first place, someone can be a good content editor but less than civil in the talk pages, or someone can be good at discussing things in talk pages but revert war in the articles themselves.

Who would benefit: Everyone, as content editors wouldn’t be prevented from continuing to improve content and metapedians who are lousy at content editing can continue to give good comments about the content itself.

Proposed solution: Blocks that exclusively apply to certain features, for example “Talk:XXX” blocks for users who have abused their ability to edit talk pages, or blocks that only apply to mainspace articles, or “Wikipedia:XXX”/”Commons:XXX” but not restrict uploading privileges or the the other way around where good content editors add copyrighted images be restricted from uploading exclusively, for sockpuppetry this could be account creation, or restricting only a single account to edit on an IP, for e-mail abuses this could only be disallowing that particular user to e-mail other users, Etc.

More comments: Currently the editor retention is low, after having experienced non-stop (and still ongoing) threats and insults (especially in the IRC) purely based on the fact that I'm a blocked editor I don't find this exodus surprising, one of the reason why people leave is because all editing privileges are revoked with a block and topic bans are a lot rarer than blocks even if many blocks are based on similar reasons.

Well, the reason I want this to be a thing is because there was a global lock 🔒 requested for a photographer who’s content I really like, on September 1st I drafted this message for Wikimedia Commons:

“Verzonden: vrijdag 1 september 2017 04:42:07 Aan: Donald Trung Onderwerp: Unblock Classiccardinal.

Classiccardinal is a great photographer, just because he can only speak in insults and harasses Hedwig in Washington and Yann doesn't mean that he should be barred from uploading his great pictures that benefit other Wikimedia projects, another measure should be taken to prevent his disruptive behaviour such as an interaction ban with the people he keeps harassing or another form of ban where his ability to edit talk pages and userpages is prevented while he could still upload pictures. He has been on Commonswiki for years and his contributions here benefit the project, Commons should be about the images and not its community. --Donald Trung 15:56, 11 November 2017 (UTC)”[reply]

But seeing the seriousness of this user’s harassment I don't have any immediate plans for requesting an unblock for them as they still don't seem to have learned to behave, but I don't think 🤔 that the community should miss high quality great pictures 📷 because the photographer can’t behave, maybe there are other ways to address this like making an “upload-only” user-class, but having specialised blocks might prevent any such harassment while great photographs such as [ these] can continued to be uploaded. Well, that’s why I think 🤔 why having such a feature would be greatly beneficial. --Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) 15:56, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Phabricator tickets:

Proposer: Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) 15:07, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Community health initiative/Per user page block. MER-C (talk) 06:35, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So this has already been discussed, but its happening a bit slowly. A Den Jentyl Ettien Avel Dysklyver (talk) 15:09, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This might be not the only new feature you'd like to see, but at least preventing a user from editing certain namespaces should be possible using edit filters?! → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 19:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Edit filters have a condition limit that can be hit, so one cannot run an arbitrary amount of them. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:45, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
User:Man77 and User:Donald Trung: Your proposals (this and 2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Admins and stewards/Allow further user block options ("can edit XY" etc.) are similar enough that we probably shouldn't have both in the voting phase, because you might get less support for each proposal instead of everyone who thinks this is a good idea voting for the same proposal. Are you fine with the team merging your proposals? /Johan (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Totally, → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 17:59, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - Not one of the proposers, but it'd make sense to merge them. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:23, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - Well, sure though I am sad that I didn't see this earlier so I could've let this merger earlier so I could've re-proposed my Wikimedia Commons UploadWizard for Mobile. 😅 Anyhow you may merge them, just archive this one and link 🔗 this as "a similar proposal". --Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) 09:17, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This has been merged with 2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Admins and stewards/Allow further user block options ("can edit XY" etc.). /Johan (WMF) (talk) 02:34, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]