OpenCircuits:Policy

block policy rough draft

The "Block user" dialog links here. I guess we are supposed to have some sort of "blocking policy" in place.

What I ( DavidCary ) have been doing recently is: When I see that someone has added more than 5 links in a single edit that have nothing to do with electronics, I block their IP address for 3 months (1 strike you're out). (The majority of such spammy edits add hundreds of links). Also I revert the entire edit -- all of the links added in that edit are deleted, even the links might arguably have something to do with electronics.

While it is tempting to block these spammers forever, I see that the wiki mentioned in the WikiIndex:Blocking_Policy ban for 1 month. The Wikipedia:Blocking policy is to ban for 24 hours on the first incident, longer for repeated incidents.

Is my randomly-chosen "3 months" on the first incident too long? Too short? What about on the second incident?

Your humble sysop, --DavidCary 23:25, 30 August 2007 (PDT)

how do I block a spammer?

(insert text here describing the protocol for normal people to ask a sysop to ban someone)

Ah, I see we have a bunch of sysops here at open circuits, and I've neglected to explain the mechanical details of how to ban someone.

When I notice a spammed page, I hit the "page history" link at the very top of the page. Then I hit the "compare selected versions" button (by default it compares the 2 most-recent versions, but you can play with the radio buttons to compare any 2 versions). That brings me to the "Difference between revisions" page, and shows me all the differences between those 2 versions. If it's a spam edit, I see a bunch of spam added on the right column. Some spammers also delete a bunch of stuff -- I see exactly what they deleted on the left side.

Here I confirm that it really is spam, not merely an opinion I disagree with.

Once I am certain it is spam, I do 2 different things from this "difference" page:

• block the spammer:
  • Near the top of the right column of the "difference" page is a "block" link. (This link only shows up if you are logged in, *and* you are a sysop). I click that to get to a "block user" page, with the "IP Address or username:" field already filled in for me. If some other sysop got here first, I'll see in the "Block log" at the bottom of the page the name of that other sysop, the time the block was placed, and the duration of the block. If I am the first, I fill in the other fields of the form. I set "Expiry:" to 3 months (see discussion above), "Reason:" to "Spamming links to external sites", and then there is "Other:" -- I don't know if I'm supposed to leave "Other:" blank, or if I fill in the name of the page that was spammed, or what. Then I hit the "block this user" button at the end of the form.
• revert to the most recent unspammed page:
  • Also near the top of the right column of the "difference" page is a "rollback" link and an "undo" link. Not sure what the difference is. How to delete spam should explain how to use those links.

(I've figured out a quick way to do both by opening each one in a new window, but I don't know how to explain it without making it sound far more complicated than it really is).

(Is there some other page that explains this better?)

--DavidCary 19:33, 11 March 2008 (PDT)