The introduction of partial blocks was long overdue. However, admins are still limited to one or the other. When a user has, say, edit-warred on an article but contributes constructively elsewhere, we can either block sitewide for a short time or partial block for a long time. Both options present a tradeoff. The shorter sitewide block may seem unfair to the blocked user since it was only one article, and for other editors on the page it is entirely possible that once the block expires the blocked user just goes back to the edit warring because, y'know, they were right. But a longer partial block may seem too lenient if the edit warring on the one article was particularly egregious (i.e., one or two reverts a day, incivil edit summaries, etc.).
I was asked a while back by a user to block sitewide a range that was already under long-term partial block on several other articles; they may have been at the limit. I had to decline since changing to a sitewide block would completely wipe out the partial block ... i.e., once the sitewide block expired the range would be free.
Proposed solution: Allow blocks to be layered, with a partial block running concurrently with a shorter sitewide block. I've read that this is not possible technically at the moment. If it indeed isn't, perhaps we could set things up so that the partial block would begin only upon the expiration of the sitewide block, i.e., User X is blocked 24 hours for violating 3RR and then for a week from the article or articles where the violation occurred. Yes, you could do this all manually now, but it gets kind of messy.
Who would benefit: Editors who will know that there is a greater risk to edit warring or generally tendentious/disruptive behavior, facilitating more constructive collaboration; editors blocked for such conduct who will have the chance to show that they can edit constructively off a certain article/topic, and admins working to prevent such disruption.
More comments: It would also be useful to allow this same functionality for page protection ... i.e. page Foo will be extended-confirmed protected for, say, a month, and then automatically drop down to semi-protection for the next five or whatever. Daniel Case (talk) 05:09, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
