Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2015-11/Short blocking policy

• Voting on:

1. Removing all non-policy contents from Wiktionary:Blocking policy, leaving it only with policy contents.

The non-policy contents are already available at Help:Blocking and are free for editing, like any help page.

The full policy contents consist of exactly 2 lines, as previously voted on Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-01/New blocking policy:

# The block tool should only be used to prevent edits that will, directly or indirectly, hinder or harm the progress of the English Wiktionary.
# The block tool should not be used unless less drastic means of stopping these edits are, by the assessment of the blocking administrator, highly unlikely to succeed.

2. Editing the policy box.

Current text:

Proposed text:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

  Vote extended to: 23:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

  Vote extended to: 23:59, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

• Vote created: --Daniel Carrero (talk) 22:23, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2015/November#Blocking policy clarification
• Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2015-11/Short blocking policy

Previous vote and related discussion:

• Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-01/New blocking policy
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2010/January#Pulling our act together

1. Support --Daniel Carrero (talk) 03:06, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
2. Support. Let's make the page clearer, less complex and less open to abuse. Let's remove avoidable complexities including (a) the need to say "The portion of it which is policy may not be modified without a VOTE" in the box at the top of the page, (b) the text "This policy page consists of two sections. ...", and (c) the Policy heading and "The blocking policy itself is as follows". Let's remove the temptation for an admin to treat the non-policy part as if it were policy. Let's remove the inaccurate "Explanation" heading; I do not believe the text under that heading is an explanation of what is above the heading; it is rather the former text of the policy. Also, if there should be a further guideline for blocking, let that be made part of policy, introduced with such keywords as "usually" and other softening words. Let the complete text of the page be vote-controlled in the same way as WT:CFI and WT:ELE. As for Help:Blocking, that should only really contain how-tos; it should not contain anything that looks like a policy or guideline. Again, sentences that are to act as a guideline can be part of the policy, and contain softening words such as "usually", "most often" and the like. ---Dan Polansky (talk) 11:16, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
3. Support — I.S.M.E.T.A. 01:11, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
4. Support -Xbony2 (talk) 01:18, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Oppose SimonP45 (talk) 02:39, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Permablocked user. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:42, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

1. Oppose. Instead, unprotect Wiktionary:Blocking policy and rename it to Wiktionary:Blocking or something similar. I know it is custom for policy pages to be fully protected – but look! There is some policy on this page (WT:V) that is not protected. So it doesn't have to be that way. The focus of Wiktionary:Blocking should shift from being a policy page that happens to contain some non-policy information, to an informational page that happens to contain some policy – just like WT:V. This, that and the other (talk) 05:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

   I'd prefer if Wiktionary:Voting was created as the actual voting policy page. I'd like to officially write somewhere that the 2/3 supermajority is required for votes to pass, for example. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 05:08, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

2. Oppose The rest of the verbage needs to be somewhere. Also, blocking isn't a precise science, probably better to have it governed by guidelines rather than policy. Purplebackpack89 00:18, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

   @User:Purplebackpack89: 'Again, sentences that are to act as a guideline can be part of the policy, and contain softening words such as "usually", "most often" and the like.' --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:50, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

   That sentence doesn't make sense. Either call it a guideline or call it policy. Don't try to make something both. Purplebackpack89 16:38, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

   @User:Purplebackpack89 In fact, it can be a policy that contains guide-sentences. An example of a guide-sentence, an invented example, is "The first block against a user should usually be no longer than 3 days." Since the sentence contains the word "usually", it contains the flexibility of a guideline, but is still a policy. In a policy, any "usually" has to be explicit; in a non-policy guideline, all sentences contains the built-in "usually" or "unless deemed inapplicable" implicitly. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:19, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

   Oppose per SimonP45 --Ce mot-ci (talk) 08:43, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

   Permablocked user. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

3. Oppose. No real consensus, nor broad participation, on this, probably a result of too many tedious votes being proposed at once. We may need guidelines. But where is the participation from those who are most knowledgeable about the behavior that leads to blocking? DCDuring TALK 23:02, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
4. Oppose. I have no strong feelings about this, for which reason I didn't vote until now, but I think the page is broadly OK as it is. - -sche (discuss) 00:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

1. Note: (1) ] was created only a week ago, seemingly in order to get this vote to pass. A more neutral course of action would be to include "and spin off the non-policy part into ]" as part of the proposal here and await passage of this vote before creating that page. Indeed, were this vote necessary, I'd say that the early creation of ] would smack of bad faith. However: (2) This vote is not necessary: the part of ] that's not policy can be edited without a vote (and of course so can ]).

   Because this vote is not necessary and because ] is a fine-looking' page, I cannot bring myself to vote against the proposal here. Because the page we're voting on is also fine as is and is not improved by the proposal (cf. my comments on this vote's talkpage), I certainly cannot bring myself to vote for the proposal. I abstain.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:15, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

   Even if this vote is possibly not strictly necessary, it can serve as a stronger evidence of consensus about the proposed action concerning a page that contains, among other things, policy. And having stronger evidence in such a case seems a good thing to me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:08, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

   One case where this vote would have been useful is in the block log of Purplebackpack89, from 1 November 2015. The blocking summary says this: 'Per WT:BLOCK: "1-7 days - Primary blocks for behavior which is counter to policy, productivity or community." '. Therefore, the blocking summary uses the non-policy parts of WT:BLOCK as if they were policy. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:27, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

   That case is not actually a good example: see this vote's talkpage for more discussion on that.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:57, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• Fails due to no consensus (4–2).​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I disagree. This is 2/3 in support and this 2/3 was supported by quite many people in various discussions to be consensus, although we have no formal decision that 2/3 is good enough. This is a perfect vote to be extended to gain more votes and a clearer decision. Does anyone object extending this vote? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:21, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Support extending. I believe msh210 closed the vote in good faith, but he did it approximately 2h and 30min before the actual scheduled time of 23:59 (UTC), denying the possibility of other people to cast their votes in the metaphorical last minute. People rushing to cast their votes in the last day of voting seems to be a common occurrence in my experience, and is probably related to the fact that in the last day of voting, the end date is highlighted red in the vote box that appears in our watchlists. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 12:01, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
      • I usually like to wait for the end date to at least be yellow before voting, to see what other users say before formulating an opinion. -Xbony2 (talk) 14:18, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
        • Extended. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:43, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
      • People extend a vote before it's up. Therefore, it only makes sense for a closing admin who thinks the vote should not be extended to be able to close it then also. Otherwise, he is allowing anyone who thinks it should be extended to do so without recourse.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
    • I do, but that's water under the bridge now.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
• Fails due to no consensus (4-4). --WikiTiki89 22:47, 7 March 2016 (UTC)