User:Robchurch/Blocking Mechanism/Notes
Blocking edit
When a user is blocked, we should do two main steps:
- Block the user
- Block their IP addresses
These are refined below.
Block the user edit
This is simple. Add an explicit block on said user to the blocks table, expiring at X with reason Y.
Block their IP addresses edit
If recent changes has IP addresses in it, i.e. if $wgPutIPinRC is on, then obtain all the IP addresses a user has edited from within the past 24 hours and add explicit blocks on each, expiring at X (where X is 24 hours or less, otherwise we need to expire in 24 hours) with reason Z (something like the current autoblocker reason).
The IP address block isn't logged in Special:Log and is marked as an autoblock within the blocks table. When viewing the block list, the block identifier is used as normal.
There's scope for improving this; we could extend the time period to check IP addresses in to 48 hours, although this could cause collateral damage.
Effects edit
We'd replace the current User::isBlocked() function set in such a manner that the effects of a block depend upon the existence of a hard or a soft block.
Hard block edit
A user is hard blocked if:
- Logged on; explicit block on account present
OR
- Logged on; explicit block on IP address present (and the block is marked as hard)
OR
- Not logged on; explicit block on IP address present
A user cannot edit while a hard block is in effect.
Soft block edit
A user is soft blocked if
- Not hard blocked
BUT
- Logged on and autoconfirmed; explicit block on IP address present
In these cases, we can control what happens in a number of ways. In core code, we could make it so that a block can be marked as hard (selected when blocking, defaults to soft, and is perhaps out of the control of normal administrators).
We could, for example
- Throttle soft-blocked edits
- Require soft-blocked edits to pass a captcha (using ConfirmEdit extension if available)
I'd suggest that the default effects of a soft block would be allowing the user to edit, but
- Informing the user of the soft block at the top of the edit form
- Not marking the edit as patrolled (when patrolling is on, with respect to the autopatrol UPO)