On 31/01/2008, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
Would logging it in the local block-log system be an acceptable method of notification?
I was more thinking first about a notification that this ability even *exists* before addressing notification individual blocks. However regarding individual blocks what language are you proposing the local log entry be written in?
It's sort of half a solution. The "entry" is pretty much translated for you - it's the message that's the problem.
Let's look at two logs, frwp and dewp, to demonstrate what I mean:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/block http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/block
1 février 2008 à 11:47 DocteurCosmos (Discuter | Contributions) a bloqué « 195.78.4.166 (Discuter) » - durée : 1 jour (utilisateurs anonymes seulement, création de compte interdite) (Vandalisme)
11:46, 1. Feb. 2008 Sinn (Diskussion | Beiträge) sperrte „217.228.228.94 (Diskussion)" für einen Zeitraum von: 2 Stunden (nur Anonyme, Erstellung von Benutzerkonten gesperrt) (Unsinnige Bearbeitungen eines anonymen Benutzers von dieser IP-Adresse)
Everything in there, except the comment ("Unsinnige..."), is generated automatically - it's MediaWiki taking internally stored data and displaying it here in French, there in German. So the *log entry* per se is going to be comprehensible ("X was blocked, four days") - it means there will be something there, even if we can't leave a coherent comment.
How to do the comment is, of course, a problem. What do stewards currently do *now* in this sort of situation, where they don't speak the project language but have to step in? English? A guess at what language is most likely to be understood by the local community?
The URL of a specific meta page about sitewide blocks might be a good idea - we can concentrate translations there, and it means that any particular block can run with a single comment without having to adapt for each project. And a URL as a summary is pretty clear for "go here" ;-)
Seriously make a system to handle these blocks and require every wiki wishing to join the system file a bug and things will go much more smoothly. If the stewards find they are doing tedious manual blocks on a certain wiki, they can encourage the that wiki to file the bug.
It really depends what we're looking at this to do - if it's mostly for the benefit of the small wikis without heavily active communities, to protect them against passing vandalbots, it seems to me that opt-out is better than opt-in, simply because of the difficulty of getting every project organised to say "yes, we want this" - a problem which will be most grave for the smallest ones.
On the plus side, though, I think we both agree that some kind of project-by-project ability to not be included would keep people happy :-)