User:D/Bollocking policy

In general, RationalWiki discourages blocking, especially for extended periods of time. Blocking should only be used if somebody is maliciously editing a page or pages, or is a massive fuckwit. If you block someone for being a massive fuckwit then you should be aware that if others think it's actually you being the fuckwit it may go badly for you.

RationalWiki has a special "vandal bin" feature, which restricts its members' edits to 1 edit per 30 minutes, making spamming and vandalism significantly less rewarding. Nobody seems to use this anymore, which is a shame. Never vandal bin IP editors.

Bans and blocks
At a glance


 * 1. Blocks are not bans
 * 2. Infinite blocks are kinda like bans

A "ban" is where a user is officially told by the RationalWiki community to fuck off and never come back.

A "block" is where a sysop places a technical restriction on someones ability to edit.

IP addresses
An IP address is not an account. With some increasingly rare exceptions an individual will only keep their IP address for a few hours or days, before it gets reallocated to somebody else by their internet service provider. For this reason blocks of IP addresses should be short. Additionally, you should never put IP addresses in the vandal bin. IP range blocks are possible but essentially pointless most the time, only use them in instances of necessity and keep the block shorter than a day unless there is a very good reason. If you don't know what an IP rangeblock is, then you don't need to be doing one.

Sockpuppets
Sockpuppets are allowed and thus blocking sockpuppets should only be done if the account owner is officially banned under a different account, or is blocked under a different account and is evading their block. If you are blocking a banned user an infinite block should be issued with the reason "ban evasion" and the common name of the banned user.

Commonly reoccurring banned trolls include:


 * User:Mikemikev - vaguely neo-Nazi troll, massive anti-Semite and commited white genocide advocate with an article
 * User:Conservapedian Troll - Floridian conservative fundie and general pest who mainly trolls for the sake of trolling
 * User:Aeschylus - comes to the wiki to write mostly good articles on his racist enemies but is easily upset and reactive
 * User:TK - occasionally his spirit rises from the grave to become disgusted at what we write but sadly he is unable to express this
 * User: - the worst troll RationalWiki has ever seen, block on sight with extreme prejudice
 * User:Logicnsuch - former winner of the world's worst unrecognized filmmaker and world's worst unrecognized comic artist awards
 * User:Elvis is King - Elvis Presley tribute act, unfortunately his moral compass got stuck in the 1950s and he is huge bigot
 * User:TheDarkMaster2 - general purpose prick with a raging boner for GrammarCommie.
 * this list is incomplete, you can help by banning more people expanding it

Other banned trolls may on occasion appear, and note this list will become outdated.

Vandals
Vandals are people making disruptive edits to articles, there are broadly three types of vandals, they should be dealt with differently to some extent.

Page Blankers are dumb people who come RationalWiki and hate it so much they want to delete the page they just read, generally they will press the edit button and blank either the entire page or an entire section, often replacing it with some snide remark about how we are "PROUGLY FUNGED BY GERG SOROS" or somesuch based statement. A short block is normally sufficient since they will see they failed to delete the article and forget about RationalWiki.

Whitewashers are a more intelligent version of page blankers, who rather than blanking the page will rewrite it to reflect their viewpoint. Unless they are edit warring to restore their version you can generally just argue with them on the talk page until they go away. Whitewashers are generally fanbois with an ideological bias, but note that they sometimes have a valid point to make. You can use the vandal bin to slow their editing down, but if you want to get rid of them make it a reasonably long block because they have a longer attention span and may return.

Common Vandals are people who just add random letters or rude words to articles, change parts of it for no reason, or just try to score points while playing RationalTroll. A short block or vandal binning will work.

Trolls
Unlike vandals, trolls target talk pages. Signs of trolls generally take the form of absurdly stupid talk page comments or Trumpist propaganda. Exactly how to deal with trolls depends on the severity of the trolling and is cheifly sysop discretion.

Spammers
Normally robots, sometimes the edit filter doesn't detect it and a new page about 101 Best Ways to Lose Weight and have a Huge Penis will appear. Block for 3.6 days like the edit filter does to the many thousands of robospammers that never manage to edit.

Litigants
If someone starts threatening to sue Rationalwiki and/or the editors and/or is complaining about defamation you may wish to consult the RationalWiki:Legal FAQ.