User:RansomTime/Autoblock

One of the things people tend to not understand very well on Wikia is an automatic block. It's just not something you really care to look up. Hopefully this changes that.

What is an automatic block?
When you block a user, you'll see a tickbox "Automatically block the last IP address used by this user, and any subsequent IP addresses they try to edit from" - this is what triggers the autoblock process.

When the blocked user tries to edit, the automatic block triggers and attempts to block the IP address for 1 day. In order to protect the user's personal information - this block is identified as a number.

If that user then tries to log out and edit from another username, the sock will also be blocked. Most of the time, that's what we want.

When doesn't it work so well

 * You're blocking a user for 1 hour. If they try to edit, they'll get autoblocked and they can't edit for a day.
 * You're blocking a user for an unacceptable username, if you autoblock they won't be able to come back with a good username.
 * You're blocking a user who edits in a public place, which has the knock-on affect of blocking everyone else there.

When doesn't it work at all
If there's already a ban in place for the IP address, then the autoblock won't do anything. This is most likely because you blocked an IP address "anonymous users only". Don't do that.

How to unblock
Unblocking an autoblock (probably because one of the 3 things above happened) is easy. It's a good thing to check this if you've done a short block, or ended a block early.

If you've been unblocked but still have an autoblock in place - you might want to link this blog to the blocking admin on their central wall.


 * 1) Go to Special:Blocklist on your wiki
 * 2) Search for the username of the blocked user (since automatic blocks expire in 1 day, it'll probably be close to the top of the list)
 * 3) Press unblock next to any of the autoblocks for that user
 * 4) The user can continue editing.

Sweet
Thanks for reading, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. To submit a correction, please add it (you're on a wiki :P)