Hello,

The ability to block a user from uploading only would be unbelievably useful on the Commons. Blocking users alltogether is a bit silly for (suspected) copyright violators/repeat offenders, since we want them to still be able to add copyright info to image description pages.

EugeneZelenko just raised it again on the VP but I thought I would raise it here since maybe a few more 'dev-types' read the mailing list.

From my extremely limited knowledge of MediaWiki, it seems like the

solution would be to create a usergroup 'bannedupload', and the only different permission they have is ['upload'] = false.

But I don't know who has permission to change user groups (ie add/remove people). Probably Bureaucrats by default since they make sysops and bots. We would actually want this permission for administrators, since they can block users, blocking uploads is a lesser action. Seems like that might be trickier...

Any solution or comments are welcome here and/or at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4995 .

Brianna