UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/Amnesty

The Problem

The vandal escalation has changed, yet many users still are still permanently banned for their doing before the change. Many users were also banned because of persecution from popular users (such as grim, sonny and myself). There is also a great deal of users who got their permanent record tainted for small issues, which now are easily dismissed.

The Policy

This policy, therefore, proposes a general amnesty to all users on this wiki that have received a vandal mark before june 2008 (or four months from the day this policy gets approved). This counts warnings (valid or unofficial ones) and ban periods.

In the case of a user having warnings forgiven, but still having warnings (because they were issued after the amnesty period), his vandal escalation will simply rollback to reflect the reminder of warnings the user has. If he is serving ban time, this time will also be changed to reflect the right amount of time the user must remain banned.

Permanently Banned Users

Permanently banned users (which were banned before the amnesty time) will be unbanned, and a fresh start for them should be allowed. They will not be directly contacted, leaving them able to return to the wiki because they were interested in coming back, not because they were summoned.

Since the administration team is also human, and prone to error, any user which remains perma-banned after this policy gets approved can contact a sysop (through email) and request his perma to be removed.

For the sake of accountability, any changes to A/VD because of this policy should be informed in this page, in a proper section that would be created afterwards. Unlike the current practice of striking escalations as they expire, this amnesty will remove them from the record, as if they never happened in the first place.