User blog comment:IvyLover/How to give users infinite blocks./@comment-452-20141013015032/@comment-452-20141015040223

You're welcome. Unfortunately, nothing anyone can say is likely to change the minds of those people.

With any power comes responsibility. In most cases, responsibility takes the form of knowing when not to exercise that power. Good people should exercise power because they must, not exercise power because they can.

Wikia Staff allow admins to choose how they behave, and it's up to each admin whether they choose to exercise restraint, or to exercise their "power" in each situation.

See also: All of Sannse's posts about being a good admin, and all of the posts about not caring what bad admins do. (Does anyone recall if Sannse has ever mentioned block durations?)

I agree that there's no functional difference between blocking or not blocking someone who was not going to return anyway. The only real difference is the length of Special:BlockList.
 * It does no harm

Both ways get the job done, but being excessive harms that admin's reputation in the eyes of people who care about the difference between "responsible" and "excessive". If all admins on a wiki behave this way, then it also harms the reputation of the wiki. (Thanks to Sannse for that concept)

Good admins should care that they are seen as responsible and not excessive. This applies to good people in general - but it occurs to me that cultural differences may colour many people's opinion of this.

Which proves that it was not necessary to infinitely block them - they would have ended up globally blocked regardless of the length of the block. :)
 * most of the users I indef end up getting globally blocked as cross wiki vandals.

Thanks for the great example. In that specific case, I don't think anyone would think the infinite block was excessive, because he's proven that he will continue to return. Hopefully this is an edge case which you do not encounter often.
 * I've been dealing with a serial vandal [...] for at least 6 months

I hope that my own 6-month vandal isn't counting down the days to the new year. I should probably just reset it to a year since he last evaded the block, but I want to see if he returns before making a speculative block which may not be necessary.

5 range blocks and 1 single IP block targeting that vandal are set to "anon only", meaning that he is free to create an account from those blocked IP ranges at any time, but hasn't.

The vandal has been effectively prevented from editing, while others from the blocked ranges can still sign up and edit.

While it is likely most people would agree with an infinite block restricting account creation and existing accounts from those ranges - this has proven unnecessary, and therefore it would have been irresponsible for me to do that without cause.

Due to this evidence, I will likely uncheck those boxes when blocking IPs in future.

Not really. I never wanted it, and for this entire time I've wanted someone else to take over.
 * Being an admin for 3 years is cool

The intention of stating that I have been an admin for 3 years was to communicate that I have been experimenting with blocks for that long, so that you would know my opinion is based on facts and not speculation. An admin of 1 month could come to the same conclusion, but it wouldn't mean much.

You mentioned that you have been an admin for 5 years, but you have not shared what you have learned during that time.

I notice that your blocks here are not typically excessive. Well done!

Since experience is more relevant than time, and numbers are more relevant than words, here are some quick stats: Going strictly by the numbers, this shows: "fewer than 10% of anons re-offend", and "''Up to 25% of registered users may re-offend".
 * I have made 1195 blocks, changed 100 blocks, and unblocked 33 times.
 * 218x accounts, the rest anons.
 * 150x 1 sec/min warnings, 180x 1-2 hour, 354x 1 day. 233x 1 week, 180x 1 month.
 * 66x 1 year - 2 in 2014, 3 in 2013, 15 in 2012.
 * 21x 1 year blocks were accounts, the rest anons.
 * Reblocked anons = 76x
 * Reblocked users = 52x
 * I have made 2 infinite blocks, both of which I removed within a year.

A quick visual inspection shows that a few users were blocked several times and threw the percentage off. The fact that I give 1 month blocks for harassment/abuse also inflated the number of those. I'm sure if I processed the log properly instead of just sorting the list, those percentages would go down. It would likely also show that as time progressed, my block durations have decreased.

My overall impression from these has been that blocks longer than 1 day are rarely necessary, and that out of 64 expired/removed 1 year blocks, 0 vandals returned. (Some evaded, but were re-blocked.)

Since my last question was ignored, here's another:
 * Has anyone ever blocked someone for a year and had them return afterwards?

I highly doubt the 500 users infinitely blocked in 2005-2010 would be likely to return now.