Wikipedia talk:General sanctions

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[edit] Armenia-Azerbaijan

Wikipedia:General sanctions sounds like a good idea. I have taken the liberty to add the second Armenia-Azerbaijan case (with some rewording, for consistency) to it. I submit it to your and other members of the Committee's approval. El_C 09:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Good catch, but keeping the actual wording is probably the better approach, to reduce potential confusion. Kirill 14:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Kirill. I take your point about confusion, but at the same time, this "Applicability to all disruptive editors" seemed to me as a de facto "General restriction" (or perhaps, proto-General restriction), which is why I went on to modify the wording to read something very similar, stylistically, with all the remedies remaining still quoted down to the word, of course. My question, then, is: whether you consider the distinction between "Applicability to..." and "General restriction" to go beyond simply being called different things...? El_C 14:29, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
There's little practical difference. Essentially, what we have:
  • Armenia-Azerbaijan: General civility parole, revert parole, probation
  • Digwuren: General civility parole
  • Macedonia: "Discretionary sanctions" (which allows a much broader set of measures than the other two cases)
So, in practice, we could rename the A-A remedy to "General restriction" and not lose any meaning. As a matter of ease-of-use, though, I think the page will be easier to deal with if the wording of the decision is copied exactly, to avoid people arguing over whether the meaning is different, and so forth. (I've been trying to move towards standard wording in remedies, incidentally, to avoid this sort of situation.) Kirill 15:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I see; I wasn't aware of the distinction between "GR" and "DS" — I don't know if they're actually defined anywhere (perhaps that's not even needed, at least at this stage, so long as it remains simply a matter of degrees and broad description, and limited to very few instances/arbitration cases; it is likely to increase though... and expect arguments about the meaning and scope of each "type," regardless of anything). At any event, I'm pleased to see you abandoned the "Applicability" confusion and just opted for "GR." I liked the uniformity of my wording, but I didn't realize that yours were whole (not fragmented and synthesized, as was mine) excerpts. Doesn't really matter. Latest additions look good. El_C 16:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article probation

Do we want to merge the list of articles under probation here in those cases where a broad class of articles are included? - Jehochman Talk 17:03, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I see no problems with merging the entire article probation page here; no sense in having multiple places for recording these when one will do. Just put the list of articles into the "Applicable area" column and "Article probation" in the "Type" column. Kirill 17:12, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I've merged the list of articles under probation, but not the description of article probation. - Jehochman Talk 00:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I've merged the (useful parts of the) definition. Some of these look like they need review, as they've been superseded by subsequent sanctions. Kirill 04:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admins?

"Editors making disruptive edits may be banned by an administrator from articles on probation and related articles or project pages." Is that correct? How would that be implemented? Would the admin just tell the person not to edit the article and threaten to block them if they did? 4.21.209.231 (talk) 10:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Generally it's uninvolved administrators, as well, following on from the principle in Wikipedia:Blocking policy. Daniel 10:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Scientology article probabtion

According to a banner on the talk page at Talk:William S. Burroughs, articles related to Scientology are under probation, yet this isn't listed here. Has it been missed, or has probation ended so the banner can be removed from the Burroughs article? 23skidoo (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It's here, under "COFS". Kirill 22:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] One missing?

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Israel-Lebanon appears to place 2006 Lebanon War under article probation - should this be here? Moreschi If you've written a quality article... 21:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it should (although it's been superseded now). Kirill 03:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Scope

Hiya, just checking, since this page specifically says that it applies to articles. However, that means that it applies to articles, and their respective talkpages, yes? I would also expect that there's some overlap such as "other talkpages where the article is being discussed"? --Elonka 21:46, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitrators may impose article probation without taking a case?

I have proposed a means by which arbitrators may impose article probation without necessarily taking a case, at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration policy#Arbitrators may impose article probation without taking a case?. I invite discussion there. MilesAgain (talk) 17:09, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sanctions template

A new Sanctions template has been developed which could tag articles and notify (otherwise uninformed) users about possible sanctions. Kudos to SEWilco for the template. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HG (talk • contribs) 18:23, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that could be useful. Kirill 23:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing - articles vs editors - Am I over-reacting?

Okay - I have a couple of discussion points I'd like to cover:

[edit] Editors / Articles

The distinction between "editors placed on editing restrictions" vs "articles and subjects under sanctions" (my words). The way this page currently reads, it is very confusing. For instance, "Types of sanctions" talks mostly about editors, not articles. Also, the "Active sanctions" has as its first column an editor (as often as not).

The distinction is really "sanctions placed directly on a specific editor" versus "sanctions placed (or capable of being placed) on all editors of a specific article or topic". The sanctions here have a scope defined by articles rather than by editor names; but they still apply to editor conduct. Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Technical vs Subjective

Another confusion point: Dealing with editors that have restrictions is technical - they're blocked. Or the namespaces they are allowed to edit in are specifically defined.

Dealing with articles that have sanctions seems to be waay too subjective:

  • "Disruptive edits" has no definition. As an administrator, can I decide to block someone for editing a particular article? Or can I go beyond 3RR in reverting a particular editor?
  • "Administrators may impose one or more specific restrictions on editors." - that's not definitive at all. When can I impose them? And how far can I go? Do I have to have endorsement from any other administrators, or is my word fiat?
Each case may be different; you need to look at the specific sanction in question to determine what exactly you may or may not do under its provisions. (This is particularly true for the "General restriction"-type sanctions, which are very different from case to case, and are grouped together for convenience rather than due to true equivalence.) Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification

Finally, who is allowed to add articles and subject areas to this list? I assume ArbCom, and that's inferred by having "Imposed by the Committee" and "Imposed by the Community", but it's not specified anywhere.

That's right. Most of the sanctions are imposed by the Committee, but there has been some movement recently to have the community impose at least the lower-level ones directly; hence the two sections. Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I bring this up because I'm extremely worried about the subjectivity and possible power struggles involved in these issues. I'm only tangentially related to one of them, and I've seen how passionate editors can get on particular subjects. If a situation gets all the way to editing restrictions and/or article sanctions, we must be *very* clear about what can and cannot be done. Otherwise we're leaving ourselves open to even more disruption.

After writing all this, I realize I may be over-reacting - and I hope I am. But I would like to see some clarity on this page. BTW, is it a guideline? As it stands, I don't see how this has any weight behind it. Sigh. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 02:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

This has the weight of the imposing authority (generally the Committee, but sometimes the community) behind it. Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Block unregistred users from Articles on Probabation?

I know that the issue of denying access for unregistred users has been discussed before. However, if the WP community make a formal decision that a small number of articles are to be put on probabation, I think is fair enough to block anonomous users from these articles. If newcomers wants to edit highly controversial articles they can spend 60 seconds to register. It is also helpful for good faith editors when they don't have to exhaust their 3RR reverting semi-vandalism. MaxPont (talk) 08:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

It'd also prevent "cheating". This appears to be such a case, probably by an involved editor trying to avoid sanctions for making a controversial edit:[1] ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
If a controversial article is getting a lot of vandalism or inappropriate edits from anonymous accounts, I would have no trouble with putting it on semi-protected status. But if the controversy is coming from established users, semi-protection isn't going to do much. --Elonka 00:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Additional Template for Article Probation?

I'm returning to WP after a rather long hiatus, and this policy is new to me. I can't say I entirely agree with it, but that aside, shouldn't there be some sort of template for inclusion on the front page of the article, and not merely the talk page? Given the consequences of violating the rule (banning [!] people from participation), shouldn't every effort to advise people of the special nature of probationary articles without requiring them to tab over to the talk page, possibly further requiring that the editor sort through several other templates, in order to understand that they need to take special care in editing? Is this policy intended to be fair to all users, or to be used as a tool for a handful to play "Gotcha!"? Mael-Num (talk) 20:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)