Wikipedia

Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Ambiguous phrasing


Blocking someone who commands or suggests another take action

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A user who directly performs an action that violates Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, or any Wikimedia project's policies and guidelines (such as Meta-Wiki's), is blockable as a principal. By this reasoning, any user (or person in general) who advises, commands, comforts, counsels, or suggests another disrupt Wikipedia in some way would also be blockable as a principal. However, we also have a provision for meatpuppetry.

Suppose, for example, Example1 commanded Example2 to vandalize encyclopedia articles and harass other users. Consequently, an administrator would block Example2 for vandalism and harassment. Example2 would then note in the unblock request that they were commanded by another user to vandalize and harass.

1. In this example, would the administrator block Example1 for the violations (vandalism and harassment) as if that user had done them directly, or would the administrator block Example1 for meatpuppetry?
2. If Example1 did not have an account on the English Wikipedia, would an administrator ask a steward on Meta-Wiki to globally lock the account?

Unless the meatpuppetry provision in Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry covers this topic, I think we need a provision for users who command or suggest other users disrupt Wikipedia in the blocking policy. I considered writing about these users in the policy, but it is a good idea for me to discuss here first. Z. Patterson (talk) 04:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your second question first, global locks and blocks are intended for cross-wiki disruption. I doubt anyone would request a global action, or that stewards would take action, without a global problem. Answering the first question, it sounds to me like the hypothetical actions of User:Example1 might be considered to be disruptive. Disruption, as defined by this policy (and probably also the stewards), has a broad definition. -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:54, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Zzuuzz: I understand. Thank you. Z. Patterson (talk) 21:30, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Deployment of Multiblocks on this wiki on June 2-4

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Hello all! We want to introduce you a new feature called Multiblocks, #14 wish in Community Wishlist Survey 2023, that was also supported widely by your community. Please see the relative announcement on the administrators' noticeboard. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:36, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indefinite block may actually be meaningless on wikis with a long history

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As time passes, active users change and blocked users are forgotten; data for CheckUser are deleted and people use new devices.

So even if an already indefinitely blocked user starts editing again after a very long time, no one would notice that they were actually indefinitely blocked in the past. CheckUser won't work either.

In other words, an indefinite block may actually be meaningless on wikis with a long history (Wikipedia is already more than 20 years old). The blocking policy should admit this. 85.173.127.133 (talk) 00:08, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are you evading an old block, by any chance?
I'm not sure what the point of this is. It seems like a WP:BEANS thing. If people figure this out themselves, that's one thing, we don't need to be the ones telling them. 331dot (talk) 00:27, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If someone returns after a long time with a new identity and makes good contributions nobody will care. If they return and are disruptive they'll be blocked either for block evasion or as a new disruptive user. We don't need to say this in policy. Thryduulf (talk) 00:48, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with 331dot and Thryduulf. Policies are an authoritative description of how things are done on Wikipedia. The blocking policy should describe the blocking process and what may be expected by users receiving blocks. Philosophical discussion of blocks would be better done in a user essay. Arcticocean ■ 16:05, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Blocking temporary accounts

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mw:Temporary accounts are coming soon (maybe September 2025). This is where any time an IP tries to make an edit, a temporary account that looks like User:~2025~12345 is created for them, they are auto logged into that account, and a cookie is placed in their browser linking them to that account. The cookie lasts months or a year or something. The idea is to stop posting people's IP addresses publicly for privacy and legal reasons, while still keeping the "anyone can edit" ethos.

Block length

This has some repercussions for blocking. This probably means that if we're blocking a temporary account, instead of treating it like an IP block where we're only supposed to block for 36 hours or whatever, we can now indef instead.

Some thought should also be given to whether autoblock should be turned on when blocking temporary accounts. Using autoblock ("Block the last IP address used by this account, and any subsequent IP addresses they try to edit from, for 1 day") may have the same set of problems as blocking IPs: collateral damage unless the blocks are made really short.

User talk notifications

In my testing, temporary accounts get an orange bar notification, which is good for communication.

In my testing environment, I turned temporary accounts off and tested posting a talk page message to User talk:172.18.0.1 and I didn't get any notification at all. I wonder if WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU is back for IPs, or if it is some different issue related to my settings.

Blocking IPs / range blocks

I imagine it will still be possible to block IPs and IP ranges, but I am not sure the details of how that works, and how many hoops will need to be jumped through to do that. I don't see a link to "block IP instead" on the Special:Block screen when I try to block a temporary account in my test environment. Does this mean to block a temporary account, that we'll have to go to some screen where we can pull up their IP, then click a couple times to get to the block screen for that IP?

Anyway, food for thought. If you are an admin on other wikis that use the temporary accounts feature and have any pro tips, feel free to share. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:19, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note to our checkusers that TA provides new challenges regarding information disclosure. Please make sure you read meta:Ombuds commission/2025/Temporary Accounts before turning your bits loose on these new creatures. TLDR: avoid connecting temporary accounts to a registered account. RoySmith (talk) 11:33, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]