Wikipedia talk:Banning policy

I think that users indefinitely banned by ArbCom should also have their permissions revoked, like what is the case with users indefinitely banned by the community since 2023. It feels odd that a community ban results in the removal of permissions but not an ArbCom one per WP:BANNEDRIGHTS. The discussion of Aligning community CTOPs with ArbCom CTOPs makes me think of this idea. JuniperChill (talk) 23:45, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I can't see any reason why the two should be handled differently. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:08, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

• I assume the difference is because ArbCom already has the ability to remove advanced permissions if they want to do so, so there's never been any compelling pressure to have their bans automatically remove them; whereas the community can't just directly remove them with a simple consensus (WP:RECALL is fairly new and much more complex), so having bans remove advanced permissions automatically was necessary. That said there's probably no harm in this proposal. --Aquillion (talk) 13:38, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

  Other perms were already removable by consensus at WP:AN (see WP:PERM#Review and removal of permissions) or in some cases by a single admin (see, e.g., WP:PMRR). ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 20:26, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

  True, but the impetus for changing BANNEDRIGHTS was more about the rights the community otherwise couldn't touch. A proposal focused just on non-admin rights failed only a few years before. Per Aquillion, it's not necessarily necessary to make this change, but also would be harmless and there's an arguable benefit in having the policies match up. In the very unlikely event that ArbCom explicitly wants to ban someone but not to pull a certain right or rights, they can always specify this, which would override this policy. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 20:41, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

BANEX says this:

Reverting obvious vandalism (such as page content being replaced by obscenities) or obvious violations of the policy about biographies of living persons. The key word is "obvious" – that is, cases in which no reasonable person could disagree.

Why do we need an example for one but not the other? Seems to me that we could move the obscenities to the end ("could disagree, e.g. replacing page content with obscenities") or give an example for the BLP item ("living persons, e.g. calling a person a criminal with no evidence"). I can understand why we need a comment on the vandalism, since it's so tempting to say "X is vandalism" when it's not and easy to misunderstand what is and isn't vandalism, but it's likewise tempting to call something a BLP violation and easy to misunderstood what's meant. And if we need exactly one example, the sentence flows more easily if we don't put the example in the middle. Nyttend (talk) 00:58, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

The vandalism example is to make it clear that only sensationally obvious vandalism would be accepted as warranting a revert from a topic-banned editor. BLP violations are much more subtle and giving an example would be too open to wikilawyering. Rather than cleaning up WP:BANEX I would seriously think about replacing that paragraph with something saying that it was ok for a topic-banned editor to report the problem rather than take action. Johnuniq (talk) 02:17, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Suppose that user A regularly makes posts on user B's talk page and elsewhere in response to their comments. User B does not engage with user A.

If user B requested an interaction ban, under what circumstances could they receive that and have it enforced? Is it trivial for a user to say "Please do not contact me" and then actually get protection from being contacted, or is it a big deal to be granted an interaction ban?

I have the idea that there are lots of cases in Wikipedia where one user wishes to not receive messages from another, but I do not see much documentation about this at Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Interaction_ban.

Are there good reasons to compel users to receive talk page messages from users whom they tell to quit contacting them? Bluerasberry (talk) 16:54, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

• My 2c. Generally, if an editor asks someone to stop interacting with them, and the request is reasonable, it is expected the person will honor it insofar as they can. If they fail to, in a way that is disruptive to the project (WP:DE), then at ANI or AN, the community can impose an interaction ban. Arb can as well, and theoretically admin can in contentious topics but generally, it is the community that imposes it IF the interaction becomes disruptive. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 03:50, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: To me that seems reasonable.

I know that all amendments here are to be discussed and wordsmithed, but I gave a go at editing this at special:diff/1323895006/1325352876.

My intent here is to match our practice with interaction bans with what other social media websites would call "blocking other users", which is a common and well understood feature in popular platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others. I am aware that Wikipedia uses the word "block" in a different way, as Wikipedia:Blocking policy prevents people from editing Wikipedia and is not designed to prevent user interaction. The meta:Community Wishlist has explored some blocking processes but I do not think those ever matched with what is here called interaction bans, and which is close to the spirit of what many other platforms call user blocking.

The end result that I want is preventing what I think is a common situation, of one user wishing to prevent 1 or a small number of other users from directly, personally, communicating with them on Wikipedia. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:58, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it is actually that common, but I have no problem defining a bit in policy. There are always exceptions, like necessary notifications, that would not be breaching a request to be left alone. This could include ANI, AFD, as well as automated notifications. These are rare, but every admin understands it is an exception to any interaction ban. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 05:30, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

The passage shown below confused me when I read it for the first time. I'm a new editor, though, so I don't just want to edit a policy. I think it might be good to change this:

If the discussion appears to have reached a consensus for a particular sanction, an uninvolved administrator closes the discussion, notifies the subject accordingly, and enacts any blocks called for.

to this, changing from present tense to future:

If the discussion appears to have reached a consensus for a particular sanction, an uninvolved administrator should close the discussion, notify the subject accordingly, and enact any blocks called for.

Hope someone can comment. I can see how it works in the present, but I still found it confusing the first time I read through, so a simply change like this might help someone else. Thanks. Rockethead293 (talk) 16:08, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

On a grammatical note, shifting to the future tense requires something like "will close", not "should close". Within the context of the paragraph (located in Wikipedia:Banning policy § Community bans and restrictions), because the rest of the paragraph is written as instructions to the closer in the present tense, I think keeping the actions in the present tense to match would be better. Instead, the tense of the if clause could be moved to the past tense, such as: "If the discussion has reached a consensus for a particular sanction..." isaacl (talk) 17:40, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Okay, something like this, then? (Hope I understood the meaning of your message.)

If the discussion has reached a consensus for a particular sanction, an uninvolved administrator closes the discussion, notifies the subject accordingly, and enacts any blocks called for.

Changing "appears to have reached" to "has reached" (which, I think, could subtly change meaning?), but leaving everything else as it is.

Otherwise, I'm okay with how it is right now.

Rockethead293 (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

The sentence is eliding steps for conciseness, which leads to its somewhat convoluted start. The result of a discussion is only known once someone has evaluated it, which is generally considered part of closing a discussion. My suggestion is to simplify the sentence by explicitly only covering the case where consensus has been established for a sanction. isaacl (talk) 02:15, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

• My 2¢ says the current version is fine as is. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:52, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Alright, this has been open for about 24 hours. I'll leave as-is. Thanks, folks. Rockethead293 (talk) 16:30, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

What is the difference between a block and a ban? It seems unclear to me whether it is for repeated offenses or typically from Wikipedia foundation or arbitration?Wikbehere (talk) 22:15, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Please see WP:BLOCKBANDIFF. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:29, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Is it okay to put the link somewhere where it isn’t disruptive. Wikbehere (talk) 02:33, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Sure, it would be fine to link to that somewhere. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 10 April 2026 (UTC)