Global blocks

Template:Other languages/Global bans Currently there is no global banning policy for the Wikimedia movement. While the Stewards do facilitate the application of global blocks and locks upon community request, these differ from a Wikimedia-wide ban in a variety of aspects.

There are many unanswered questions on this topic. These open issues are both social and technical in form, and there is a rough list below that you should edit freely and translate.

What is the current state of related global and local policy?

In to order to write any good global policy there should be a deep understanding of the policies and procedures that are related on all the projects – not just in English or Wikipedia. Points of consensus and disagreement between various community polices and processes should be identified. An initial list of harassment policies from all the projects has been compiled, but harassment is only one issue that could result in a ban under current local policies.

What would the criteria for a global ban be?

Obviously the idea of a global ban is a measure of last resort that would only be desirable under rare and extremely limited circumstances. But what exactly are those circumstances? How can we preserve community independence (which is absolutely necessary for the healthy functioning of the projects) and still deal with cross-wiki disruption?

How would decisions about global bans be made and enforced?

• What venue would be the required one for requesting, documenting, and appealing a global ban?
• How would global bans be technically implemented? Currently the Stewards-only function of global blocks and locks is driven by the SUL, which merely locks a user out of their account. A global blocking mechanism does not really exist at the moment, see: Bug 15294 - Allow blocking of global accounts.

Who would ideally be responsible for enforcing global bans?

• Stewards currently respond to and enforce global blocks of IPs and accounts under a very specific set of criteria that are similar to but not the same as a global ban concept.
• Global sysops do not generally operate under a remit that would include enforcing bans.
• Should local sysops be the first point of contact for enforcing such a ban, especially if no global block mechanism exists?

How can collaboration between the projects be improved?

Lack of communication and collaboration between the projects is a root cause of our current vulnerability to persistent cases of cross-wiki abuse. How can we better share information (both public and private) between communities on governance and dispute resolution issues?