Wikipedia:Last Chance Saloon

WikiContributors are a mixed bunch, and some of us in our WikiYouth like to test the boundaries of the community, policies and guidelines, such as WikiCivilisation, vandalism, and fighting to win arguments like WikiBarbarians. Unfortunately, this can often lead to being "tarred with the same brush" by the WikiPolice before being brought to the attention of admin editors.

When an editor has been banned or blocked and would like to appeal their sentence;

• They can appeal on their talk page to the Admin Community, by using {{unblock}}
• They can appeal by using the Unblock Ticket Request System (not for bans)
• Further information: Guide to Appealing Blocks

Admins are dumb smart

The Admins, as well as the members of UTRS, are allowed to and do hear appeals to blocks and bans. They are however a clever bunch and they know about many of the conceivable tricks used by those who pretend to repent or falsely claim innocence about their actions merely to be released back into the Wiki editing environment. They may decline any appeal that uses these reasons due to current policies and guidelines that exist. The bad reasons for appeal can include the following, but there are many more.

The "Someone else was using my account" defence

Examples of this 'defence' can include:

• "My little sibling was using my account", and,
• "My flatmate/s were using my account"

If you weren't in control of your account, then it is safer to keep you either blocked or banned for both the safety of your account's reputation and the wider Wiki community as well as to avoid any sock-puppetry. Though, if you were in control of your account and did these edits, then you are unable to be trusted within the Wiki editing environment. However, these are often hard to reliably find out, and so allowing a "last chance" can easily verify the authenticity of the editor's sincerity since the editor will either not repeat the actions causing their original block/ban or they will be brought back to the Admins and should be more severely punished.

The "I'm just such a big fan of [[Article]] and I was only trying to include information" defence

Examples of this 'defence' can include:

• "There wasn't anything about [[Artist Article]]'s recent works and interpretations, so I used links from their artist account to list their works and then I put in my interpretation of them. I didn't think there was anything wrong with doing that."

Much like above, these claims are hard to distinguish between good-faith and bad-faith, and again the sincerity can be easily tested by keeping an eye on future edits and whether the editor ends up back at the Noticeboards for breaching policies and guidelines several times.

The Message

Editors may make good-faith edits and have simply run afoul of policies and guidelines and been blocked/banned, or they may well be a bad-faith editor attempting to mess around with or destroy Wikipedia; whatever the case, the editor has been banned and they are appealing the block/ban for whatever reason.

It is typically quite easy for an Admin to unblock/unban an editor and to keep an eye on them to see if they have changed. If they have, then all is well and good; if they haven't, then it is a simple and easy matter to re-block/re-ban an editor when they next pop up on an Admin's radar. This technique simply allows a chance for good editors to realise their mistakes and move on, while weeding out the bad-faith editors despite the extra resources and energy required.

When not to use this approach

Sometimes, it is better to not provide a last chance, for the reasons below though common sense should always be exercised:

• If a user has already been blocked numerous times for the same behavior, then they've already gotten all the chances they need; the admins are being either quite lenient or soft.
• If the user was justifiably blocked but is not giving any indication that they feel they did anything wrong, or understand what they did wrong to be blocked.
• Legal threats or threats of harm to themselves or others that have not been retracted should remain blocked to preserve WP:CIVIL
• In cases where the original block-admin has strong and reasonable objections to unblocking the accused user.
• Users that have been banned that have already been through ArbCom and had their appeal denied.
• Compromised accounts should remain blocked, at least until security has been restored to a satisfactory and verifiable level.