Mipha's Admin Guidebook: Blocking Users

Hello, Admins and Bureaucrats, and welcome to Mipha's Admin Guidebook! This course is on Blocking and Unblocking Users. I will explain everything you need to know about blocking and unblocking to what to do if you get blocked. Knowing about FANDOM's blocking tool is quite handy for wikis of any size.

What is blocking?
If you don't know what blocking is on FANDOM, this section will explain.

Blocking, on any website, wiki, platform, or game, is a feature used by admins of the platform to restrict a user's abilities and rights on the platform. The term block is generally used when a user has their permissions revoked temporally, while the term ban should be used to refer to a infinite removal of a user's rights. On FANDOM, there are two kinds of blocks; what I call Local Level Blocks, where a user is blocked by admins on individual wikis. For say, a user blocked from editing on this wiki can still go to another wiki that they are not blocked on and edit there. The other kind is a global block. A global block occors when a user is blocked from editing across the entire Fandom network.

Global blocks are issued only when necessary. Problems in one community don't necessarily mean that a user should be blocked across all of Fandom. In general, a user is only globally blocked for:


 * advertisement spam,
 * large scale and/or persistent vandalism across several sites,
 * impersonating other users,
 * severe Terms of Use violations,
 * underage users reported to Fandom Staff.

If you need to globally block a user, you should contact Fandom Staff.

What can blocked users (not) do?
When an admin is blocking a user on their Fandom Wiki, they can set the block times, reasons, and restrictions. The block restrictions include preventing the user from editing (this feature is enabled by default and can't be removed.), creating more accounts, and editing their own talk page. As stated, a user that is blocked on Fandom can't edit, move, or create pages. If account creation is disabled for that user, they can't create accounts. Same goes for talk page editing. To put it in simple words, a blocked user cannot create, edit, or move pages. Account creation and talk page editing only apply if the blocking admin enabled those restrictions.

However, there is a line between these restrictions and what a blocked user can, but really shouldn't do.

For example, one common evasion technique is creating more Fandom accounts, and trying to evade their block on them. Doing so could result in a expansion of their existing block or permeant suspension of both (or all) of the accounts the blocked user is operating.

How to evade a block
Say you got blocked and you think you shouldn't've been blocked. In this situation, do not create more accounts to reason your way out of the block. This is against the policies and could get you blocked longer, if not forever. In this case, you can either wait out your block and not do anything on your Fandom account, or you could try to talk to the admin that blocked you or another admin in good faith. Give them some time and explain why you think your block was unfair. If they find that you were unfairly blocked, they should contact you and unblock you. If not, the admin should explain why they won't appeal your block.

If you are an admin and you were blocked, there is a reason for it. Sometimes, it could be as a joke where another admin banned you as a prank, and although you can unblock yourself, don't do it if it means that you will make bad faith edits to the wiki.

When and how to block
Admins and bureaucrats of the wiki, it is important to know when to block a user and the appropriate time to do so. The image shows the block page on Editing The Human Germline is Ethical Fandom Wiki. Every wiki has this page, but only admins and bureaucrats have access to it. To block a user, you first need to go to this page and type the target user's username in the username box. You can select weather you want to prevent this user from editing their own talk page and/or creating accounts and then you can set the expiration time for the block. The default block times are 2 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, indefinite, and Other Time. You can also type a custom time frame in the text box after selecting Other Time. Often, these are used for blocking underage users and humors block times. Some custom block times are, but are not limited to 1000 years, 4 months, and 6 years.

There are also block reasons. These tell the target user why they were blocked. The default block reasons are Other, Inserting false information, Removing content from pages, Spamming links to external sites, Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages, Intimidating behavior/harassment, abusing multiple accounts, and unacceptable username. Admins can add custom block reasons to this list by selecting 'edit block reasons' at the bottom of the page. This is the CSS for the block reasons.

* Common block reasons

** Inserting false information

** Removing content from pages

** Spamming links to external sites

** Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages

** Intimidating behavior/harassment

** Abusing multiple accounts

** Unacceptable username

You can add another category to this list by adding

* Custom block reasons

to the CSS. You can edit the text so it says anything you want.

Then, you can add

** Custom block reason

to the list. It would look like this:

* Custom block reasons

** Custom block reason

Now, save it and you can now block a user with the reason "Custom block reason".

You can also type on the text box under the block reason dropbox on the block page and give further reasons.

But, when should you block a user?

If a user is breaking any of the rules listed in the common block reasons list, then block them. Depending on how severe the offence is, you can adjust the block time.

Need more help?
If you need more help on this topic, feel free to reach out to me on my talk page!