Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11100467-20140629193855/@comment-452-20140630175003

DEmersonJMFM wrote: Really five to ten years is a good infinite. It's likely they won't remember the wiki in that time anyway or they'd have matured in their behavior. The same could be said for 1 month in most cases.

Personally, I block vandals for 1 hour for a first offense, if they return, I block for 1 day, then 1 week, then 1 month. In 3 years, I have only ever encountered 2-3 vandals who bothered to return after 1 month, so their block was upped to a year.

3cooldog92 wrote: I figured 50000 wouldn't be large enough. Can you set your computer year to 52014? A safe rule of thumb is to not use dates you can't use on your computer.

I took a look at Block.php, but I can't find any documentation regarding highest supported value. However, I would expect that blocking up to the year 9999 might work, but 10000 might not. I decided to test this, and when I went to block my testing account, I discovered I have already tested this exact situation. There is no error given if you say "10000 years", but there is an error given if you specify an exact date in the year 10000.

In this specific case, the original 10 year block worked, and the user probably encountered the block on that day, but when it was changed the next day to 10000 years, it effectively removed the block, but he didn't return until recently.

If you insist on using pseudo-infinite blocks, why not just use "infinite"?