UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/Altered Ban Lengths

Few A/VD related policies have passed as Accepted Policies on UDWiki. One of the better ones, Better Vandal Data, comprehensively fixed what many users found was wrong with UDWiki's vandal escalation system, and how it was run. The only community concern it didn't address was the prominence of career vandals who manipulate the de-escalation system our wiki has. One of the suggestions was removing de-escalations altogether. Being rather harsh, there is another option that is a bit more fair to all.

This policy attempts to change the escalation system on A/VD so it is harsher for those subjected to it. This is done by increasing the length of the ban time vandals will be banned by each escalation.

If this policy passes, the following changes will be made to the relevant part of A/G:

Current Escalations System Warning (first) Warning (second) 24 Hours 48 Hours 1 Week 1 Month 1 Month + Permaban Vote

Proposition Warning (first) Warning (second) 48 Hours 1 Week 1 Fortnight (2 weeks) 1 Month 1 Month + Permaban Vote

Some points of note

Whilst everyone who is banned will be affected by this, Career vandals are the target. They will find themselves in a more difficult boat, since they will have to work harder to work up required edits to work off previous escalations with the unban time they have. Long story short: Short-term de-escalations will be harder to achieve.

Even though the ban times have been increased, you will notice the amount of escalations have remained the same. This means that every user still has the same amount of escalations before they face the potential permaban vote. A user will be banned the same amount of times, just for longer periods. It just makes the bans more difficult to deal with when looking for short-term de-escalations.

Users on UDWiki rarely get banned, and those who do, deserve it. This isn't the sort of thing that will negatively affect a normal user.

Voting Section

Voting Rules

Votes must be numbered, signed, and timestamped. They can take one of two forms: # comments ~~~~ or # ~~~~ Votes that do not conform to the above will be struck by a sysop.

The only valid voting sections are For and Against. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.

For

1. I hear what Iscariot's saying, but I cordially disagree. While the intended purpose of the policies may be to reform, reform clearly does not work well enough as it is. Reformation occurs as a result of incentives or disincentive in an environment. The current disincentives are not strong enough, and we cannot provide further incentives. Strengthening the disincentives is the clear choice. —Aichon— 08:27, 14 April 2010 (BST)
2. Regarding what Iscariot said, reform will always be the ultimate goal. But it is achieved through the privilege of de-escalations, not by giving watered-down punishments which they don't learn from. Because of this, the system is easily abused by those who attempt to and since reform is only as effective as the subject's willingness to reform, the system is too easily abuseable. One has to keep in mind that 99% of normal users doing what is deemed generally right on a wiki never get escalated, let alone banned, so the wrath of a policy like this only ever affects those who need it. --
    
    
    
    
   08:33, 14 April 2010 (BST)
3. As a regular on a couple of other wikis (including Wikipedia where I'm an admin) I'm all too familiar with what a pain in the ass vandalism can be, so I'm all for anything that would help discourage long-term vandals and keep them off the other people's backs so we can concentrate on improving this wiki. Chief Seagull squawk ^{don't mess with the Seagull!} 09:13, 14 April 2010 (BST)
4. As DDR. --VVV ^RPMBG 09:39, 14 April 2010 (BST)
5. If you spare the rod, you spoil the child.--_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 12:07, 14 April 2010 (BST)
6. Ban the witch! 15:20, 14 April 2010 (BST)

Against

1. As I said on the talk page, UD is played daily, hence why the removal of the privilege to edit it for 24 hours should be the first step. Just about everyone who's supported this seems to have failed to read basic wiki policy, bans aren't there to punish, this isn't system of retribution but of reform. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 07:37, 14 April 2010 (BST)
2. There will always be career vandals until there are serious changes made to the de-escalation system. This would only affect the ones stupid enough to let themselves rack up too many escalations in a row. It's a nice thought but ban lengths aren't the problem here. Cyberbob  Talk  09:30, 14 April 2010 (BST)
3. As Bob. That feels wrong. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 10:21, 14 April 2010 (BST)
4. I just can't see this addressing any of the current flaws. --Honestmistake 12:49, 14 April 2010 (BST)