Hello fellow Nukapedians. I would like to bring up a discussion centered around abolishing perma-bans as standard ban progression. In the majority of cases, perma-bans are handed out as the culmination of standard ban progression. This means that users that frequently break the rules are eventually subject to permanent removal from the wiki. I believe that this is an inappropriate punishment in most cases. For standard ban progression, I suggest that punishments should culminate in a 1 year ban. There are a couple exceptions, as COPPA violations should continue to run until the user is 13 years old, and spambot bans can still extend until the Great War. The full progression, which should be adhered to in most - if not all other cases - would then follow as:
Standard ban progression
- Warning (in chat for chat punishments, on talk page for wiki punishments, within discussion post for discussion punishments)
- Kick (for chat punishments)
- One day
- Three days
- One week
- One month
- One year
At the end of the year, the offending user is allowed to return in all cases following normal ban progression. The onus is on the staff members to prove that the user has not changed in the Nukapedia setting in order for a ban to continue, in which case an additional year-long ban will be applied. This is in opposition to our current policy (the "SaintPain rule"), where the responsibility is on the offending user to prove that they have changed. This is often a futile endeavor, as staff members are typically biased against prior rulebreakers and have the tendency to ignore SaintPain appeals and disregard all but the most influential evidence. This has the consequence of unfairly punishing people that may have genuinely improved.
While the perma-ban is an easy and efficient way to cull very problematic users, it often catches less problematic users and sweeps them under the rug, where the wiki forgets about them entirely. As such, although abolishing the perma-ban as standard ban progression may lead to more work for the current staff roster, I do not believe it will be a noticeable increase in the long run. Assuming a user even returns after one year, staff need only to reapply a ban once a year, at most, and theoretically they will actually spend less administrative time analyzing potential appeals. Only in the immediate short-term will there be more work, where staff will need to rescind current perma-bans applied more than one year ago under these circumstances.
Up until this point, I have been clear to state that this applies only to standard ban progression. Perma-bans should still be available (along with their appeals) in special cases, but these cases must be codified in an exhaustive list of perma-bannable offenses. I encourage users to discuss additional offenses to be added to this list, but I again emphasize that this list should be codified readily on the wiki and in the Discord server and exhausts the full list of offenses. If another offense is to be added to this list, it must be discussed prior to addition and cannot be applied ex post facto. Additionally, these rules can only be enforced if they occur in DMs or on the server itself. If someone breaks one of the below listed rules on another server, it is not Nukapedia's responsibility or authority to punish said user on Nukapedia.
Exhaustive permaban offenses
- Grievous threat of injury, sexual assault, or death
- Distributing information relating to another user's personal life, including addresses, names, pictures, workplace/school information, phone numbers, email addresses, and other social media accounts
- Uploading explicit materials directly to the wiki (does not include Discord/Discussion links)
- Inciting large-scale raids against Nukapedia
You may have noticed that I left out certain common offenses. I do not believe that spam, even mass spam, is worthy of a permaban as that is typically an isolated incident well within the confines of standard ban progression. Raids against other servers outside of Nukapedia is still a banworthy offense, but it can readily be handled via standard ban progression since those users still show an effort to be a member of the Nukapedia community. Homophobia, transphobia, racism, posting Nazi imagery, etc. should all remain to be handled via standard ban progression, as they have in the past. I think explicit content appearing in Discord/Discussion posts can be handled under standard ban progression. All of these are typical inappropriate posts that are quick and easy to post and similarly quick and easy to take care of. It is highly likely that the offending user will grow out of this offensive behavior after a year, without the necessity of a perma-ban. Certain steps in the progression can still be "jumped," such as in the case of mass spam or pornography, but they still cannot pass the year mark and I further opine that first offenses should not expand beyond 3 days.
That covers everything I have to introduce about this topic. Let the discussions commence! - Sigmund Fraud Talk Contributions 20:13, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
Discussion
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