Blocking policy

**Blocking** is the method by which **Administrators** prevent users from editing the **OSRune Wiki**. Blocks on this wiki are used in favor of the site to prevent unnecessary damage or disruption, not merely to punish users. Rather, blocks are sometimes used as a deterrent, to discourage whatever behavior led to the block and encourage a productive editing environment.

**Block Durations**

## **Bad Edits**

In practice, users are not to be blocked just because they've made a bad edit. Many users who come by the wiki are probably not aware of the various wiki policies in use so blocking just because of one edit is likely to create acrimony and bad feeling between the user and the administration.

If a user persists in reverting page revisions to show their bad edit or continually makes the same bad edit in multiple pages and ignores their message wall warnings to stop making such edits, a block is valid. The same holds true if a user makes a singular vandalism edit that was obviously done to disrupt the site (eg, replacing the contents of an article with expletives or pornographic material).

### **Repeat Edits**

A repeat edit can only be considered on a user if the contributions page indicates a fair gap in time between the edits or if another editor has sent the user a message telling them to stop making that edit which they've ignored or have been given plenty of time to not make that edit again.

## **Vandals**

The blocking of obvious vandals is pointless and achieves nothing. Some vandals simply come to make one bad edit and leave and shouldn't be blocked for just one instance of vandalism (a temporary 3 day block may be appropriate, depending on the severity of the vandalism).

## **Temporary Blocks**

If a user is ignoring warnings from admins to stop persisting in vandalism or ignorance of **OSRune Wiki** policies, a temporary block may be appropriate. This is useful when the user is currently making such edits while the temporary block is being applied.

It should be noted that the block reason will show up to the user when they try to edit pages, so this is a good place to put a message because it will be "in their face". Even though user message walls send out a notification to the user, they can be passively ignored by the recipient whereas a block cannot.

@Admins;- Please avoid making blocks of excessive length. A good practice is to block in incrementing lengths: an example would be 3 days -> 1 week -> 2 weeks -> 1 month -> 3 months -> infinite.

## **Civility**

The Wiki expects a certain level of civility between the editors and administrators. Users who do not show any kind of civility towards other users and ignore warnings to remain civil may be blocked.

## **Permanent Blocks**

Permanent blocks should not be applied without valid reasoning, nor for first time offences. Examples of reasoning which may warrant a permanent block include:

* Continued harassment and intimidation of other editors
* Repeated violations of our policies after constant warnings from an admin to stop
* Large scale vandalism which is intended to start an "interwiki" war
* Sockpuppet accounts that belong to a different user evading a block

## **User Profile & Message Wall Revocation**

Users should not be blocked from editing their own user profile or message wall for any reason. The only instance in which a user should have that privilege revoked is if the user has made contributions which abused this privilege or is a persistent vandal or troll who is very likely to abuse the privilege and would have no reason to be allowed to send messages.

## **Uploads**

A temporary block may be advised if a user makes a large batch of uploads which violate the Image policy and the user has not read the policy in detail. A permanent block should be used as a follow up if it is clear the violator has completely ignored the block and has not bothered to read the policy (in some cases, users may read the policy and just choose to deliberately ignore it)

**For more information, check out the other policies on our Wiki below.**