[WikiEN-l] Why not selective blocks?

[George Herbert]

On 8/22/07, Adrian <aldebaer at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I'm sure this idea has already been kicked around, but why aren't there
> selective blocks, i.e. blocks restricted to one or more certain pages? I
> don't mean temporary bans on articles or article groups as occasionally
> imposed by the ArbCom, but a block-button block.
>
> It could e.g. give users with specific conflicts of interest (not
> necessarily in a corporate sense, also like strong personal bias/POV
> etc.) the opportunity and even an incentive to work on completely
> different areas, as they would be working to actively restore the
> community's trust in their willingness to contribute to the encyclopedia
> as a whole. Wouldn't that be a lot more constructive than temporarily
> revoking '''all''' editing privileges for things like an 3RR violation
> on a certain page, or personal attacks in some heated debate on a
> certain talk page? If it later turned out that the user in question is
> generally intolerable, s/he could accordingly be fully blocked (as
> usual) to give them a stronger warning.
>
> So, well, nevermind if the idea has already been discussed and rejected.
>
> Adrian

There's no good general purpose access control mechanism in MediaWiki
right now, to build such a tool upon.

It might be useful, but we can't do it right now.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com