Define Cynical Fan Forums

The community may impose various types of bans, by consensus, upon other editors who have exhausted the community's patience:

* If a user has proven to be repeatedly disruptive in a certain area of Wikipedia, the community may engage in a discussion at a relevant noticeboard such as the administrators' noticeboard.[1] Topic bans may be implemented by a consensus of editors who are not involved in the underlying dispute.
* If a user has exhausted the community's patience to the point where an administrator has blocked the user long term or even indefinitely, and where no uninvolved administrator is willing to unblock him or her, the user is considered to be community-banned.
* In some cases the community may have discussed the block on a relevant noticeboard, and reached a consensus not to unblock the user. Users who remain indefinitely blocked after due consideration by the community are considered "banned by the Wikipedia community" and listed on Wikipedia:List of banned users.

Bans imposed by the community may be appealed to the Arbitration Committee (arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org). Banned users should not create sockpuppets to file an appeal. Rather, they should contact a member of the committee or an Arbitration clerk by email and ask that a request be filed on their behalf. Generally speaking, the banned user will make the request on his or her talk page, which will be copied to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration by a clerk. In some cases, a banned user may be unblocked for the purpose of filing an appeal. In such cases, editing of unrelated pages is grounds for immediate re-blocking.

Users who have been banned indefinitely by the Arbitration Committee may appeal to the Committee after one year.

While any arbitration decision may be nominally appealed to Jimbo Wales or the Wikimedia Foundation, historically, it is rare for either to intervene.

The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee has designated several topic areas where uninvolved administrators are authorized to impose discretionary sanctions. These sanctions include bans on editing.

For example, articles within the topic area of Israel-Palestine issues are often the subject of edit wars and other disruption which resulted in a great deal of community disruption, and multiple arbitration cases. In January 2008, the Arbitration Committee, as part of the Palestine-Israel articles case, stated that any uninvolved administrator could take necessary measures on articles within that topic area, to ensure the smooth functioning of the project. If an administrator identified that a certain editor was being disruptive in this area, the administrator could warn them, and then if necessary ban the editor from work within that the topic area.

Sample bans might be:

* "You are not allowed to edit articles in this topic area for one month, though you can still participate at discussion pages," or
* "You cannot edit or engage on the talkpage of this one article for the next week," or
* "You are not allowed to post at the talkpages of these three users for one month", and so forth

In November 2008, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion which stated that administrators are prohibited from reversing or overturning (explicitly or in substance) any action taken by another administrator pursuant to the terms of an active arbitration remedy, and explicitly noted as being taken to enforce said remedy, except:

(a) with the written authorization of the Committee, or
(b) following a clear, substantial, and active community consensus to do so.

Administrator-imposed bans should be appealed at the administrators' noticeboard, or the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. If there is no consensus on how to deal with the situation, then a request for clarification or appeal may be filed to the Arbitration Committee.

Wikipedia's hope for banned users is that they will leave Wikipedia or the affected area with their pride and dignity intact, whether permanently or for the duration of their ban. As such, it is inappropriate to bait banned users, or to take advantage of their ban to mock them.

Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called "proxying," unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them. Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to that effect may be reverted. Wikipedia's sock puppetry policy defines "meatpuppetry" as the recruitment of new editors to Wikipedia for the purpose of influencing a survey, performing reverts, or otherwise attempting to give the appearance of consensus. It strongly discourages this form of editing, and new users who engage in the same behavior as a banned or blocked user in the same context, and who appear to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose, are subject to the remedies applied to the user whose behavior they are joining.

Wikipedia's approach to enforcing bans balances a number of competing concerns:

* Maximizing the quality of the encyclopedia
* Avoiding inconvenience or aggravation to any victims of mistaken identity
* Maximizing the number of users who can edit Wikipedia
* Avoiding conflict within the community over banned users
* Dissuading or preventing banned users from editing Wikipedia or the relevant area of the ban

As a result, enforcement has a number of aspects. As with enforcement of other Wikipedia policies, no individual editor is obligated to help enforce any ban.

Source (Barring Aeron's post):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy

What have you done, balokiloki?

ALSO, POST #500, HUZZAH.

Has your mind suffered some kind of BSOD?


And yet I still find myself agreeing with you...

it looks like loki's playing tricks again.