[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia-wide global blocking mechanism?

[Andrew Gray]

On 31/01/2008, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at 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
:-)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk