Max Semenik wrote:
On 30.06.2008, 1:47 Thomas wrote:
2008/6/29 Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org:
Voice of All wrote:
I'd keep it. Some site admins may not feel comfortable with sysops being able to block large portions of internet users, especially if they don't know what they are doing. But, yes, not used much.
$wgSysopUserBans controls the ability to block individual user accounts.
Is there any difference at all between
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['block'] = true;
and
$wgSysopUserBans = true;
?
If not, then it should certainly be deprecated (and should have been as soon as the current user rights system was implemented, really).
The first permits sysops to block in principle, the second - to block registered users. It's enabled everywhere and I haven't heard about a single wiki where it's currently set to false. The only reason for its existence in the first place was lack of policy[1] and absense of such a feature in UseMod. Apparently, after everyone came to agreement that blocking users is OK[2], this setting stopped making any sense.
Actually it was Anthere who championed the idea of making $wgSysopUserBans the subject of per-wiki policy. She campaigned to have $wgSysopUserBans=false on fr.wikipedia.org, and argued with me on IRC about general policy. Eventually, compromises were made, opinions changed and the value of the feature became evident.
The setting obviously doesn't make sense now that we have groups and rights. But I think it would make sense to split the block permission into block-user, block-ip and block-range, to maintain the same configurability.
$wgSysopUserBans was not intended to make user blocks impossible. Rather, the procedure was to ask a sysadmin to insert the block into the database manually, or to determine the user's IP address so that it can be blocked. It's a model where sysops are trusted with the ability to block anonymous users, but require approval to block logged-in users. I think it makes sense to allow a similar permissions model using the web interface alone.
-- Tim Starling