Today I was removing some expired underaged bans, and happened to notice an expired ban that hadn't been removed. This eventually led to me checking every existing ban. Many of them were expired and been left up.
01. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-2026050/disciplinary-fyre18-endingq
02. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1745749/disciplinary-anonimoose
03. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-2015477/disciplinary-dr-reinhowler
04. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1972059/disciplinary-abrasque
05. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1937325/non-disc-record-doctorathir
06. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1927094/disciplinary-5tr4
07. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1937350/non-disc-record-dr-routt
08. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1932001/age-record-nekokuruki
09. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1800563/disciplinary-solarok-chaos
10. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1027008/disciplinary-aristheides
11. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1450818/disciplinary-zeroxforty-dwasdwas
12. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1208912/disciplinary-tomode
13. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1147534/disciplinary-t-baiter
14. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1051719/non-disc-record-unownphantump
15. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-862282/age-record-someoneelsethanme
16. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-840323/age-record-awesomeness157
17. http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-2047454/abranduser
In every case but one, the user was entered with no note as to why they were blocked. This means (as I posted in each thread) that other admins assumed the block was permanent.
There's already a thread on this here from February of nearly a year ago. However, nine of the seventeen bans listed were from this year after Drewbear's post — more than half.
(A tenth would have been Edrobot, whose ban luckily had not expired yet, but who was also unmarked. There have also been other bans that users complained about and got removed, which I don't address in this post.)
In two situations… the user was supposed to be revoked and instead was permanently banned with no one able to catch the error. (Most likely a misclick on the Abuse page.)
I'd also like to note here that this isn't a callout post. Every single administrator who regularly handles bans is responsible for at least one case on the list above, including me.
However, this is serious and needs to be dealt with. My suggestion is that admins should give all future blocks a specific note in the control panel which includes the length, even if it's just "perma" or "13 as of December 2016."
This is somewhat less convenient because Wikidot makes the process of adding a pain (unless you use the simple button press from a different part of the admin panel), but I think it would resolve most of this issue.
A few other notes:
- I've now gone through every single ban and verified it as having either a note of explanation (typically underage bans), or a record on O5, or both.
- The sole exception is the third-oldest ban on the list, from 2009: McBrayer. I didn't remove that guy because ban explanations weren't standardized (as this thread from around the same time period demonstrates).
- I think some of this will be resolved once we promote more admins (which is still coming, but people who are necessary to the process are on vacation; it's that time of the year).
- There were an additional nine users who were banned for being underaged, but had no note listed for their name, making the ban effectively permanent when it was explicitly intended to be temporary. Since these bans had not actually expired yet, I didn't log these in their threads, I just removed and re-added the bans with a note.
Additionally, there were many, many recent threads (within the past year in particular) that did not have enough people (three) actually voting on the ban. In some cases, this was due to the third vote being from someone who was not either a member of Disciplinary, nor of Administration.
I did not mark these, because they would have been permanent bans anyway and because the process I did go through took several hours and I did not have time. I made an exception for the following thread (because I didn't think the permaban was justified): http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1745739/disciplinary-the-holy-xenomorph
However, this is still going against our Site Charter, and we need to be more careful about this. I would request that any person voting on any ban vote, who does not have an official say in the matter (and therefore not an official vote) clarify this in their posts.