Wikipedia:Community sanction

see Editing restrictions

Users may be placed under probation, or instructed to refrain from editing a particular article or subject area. Such a sanction may be imposed by the Arbitration Committee or by the Wikipedia community through a discussion at a central noticeboard such as Administrators' noticeboard. A consensus of administrators may impose topic bans, revert limitations or probation upon users, or article probation upon articles.

Community sanctions may have a time limit or be indefinite. As Wikipedia currently has no technical mechanism to block a particular user from a particular article, community sanctions are a social construction. Any uninvolved administrator can block a user who violates the terms of community sanctions.

Common types of community sanctions
The following is a list of the most common types of restrictions. Unique restrictions that have been imposed in unusual situations are not listed.


 * Account restriction : The user is limited to editing with a single account.


 * Civility restriction : The user may be blocked if they make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith.


 * Probation (Supervised editing) : Generally, editors on probation may be banned from pages they edit disruptively, either for a set period of time or indefinitely, by action of an uninvolved administrator. (Although the wording of probation remedies sometimes varies, so be sure to check the specific case.)  Probation is used as an alternative to an outright topic ban in cases where the editor shows some promise of learning better behavior.


 * Revert limitation : The user is limited to one revert per page per week (excepting obvious vandalism), and is required to discuss any content reversions on the page's talk page. They may be blocked if they exceed this limit or fail to discuss a content reversion.


 * Topic ban : The user is prohibited from editing any page related to a particular topic, and may be blocked if they do so.

Imposing community sanctions
Community sanctions, like community bans, are proposed and discussed on the Administrators' noticeboard. Sanctions may be proposed by any editor, and they take effect if there is a consensus. Discussions typically last a minimum of 48 hours, and are closed by an uninvolved administrator who has not participated in the discussion. For the purpose of placing community sanctions, the community has rejected the idea of "votes for banning." Therefore, the standard for determining consensus is "no uninvolved administrator objects". When there is significant disagreement amongst administrators over how to handle a matter, a request for arbitration is often the result.

Community sanctions are logged at Editing restrictions (for remedies applied to specific editors) or General sanctions (for remedies applicable to all editors). Remedies directed at specific users are announced to the users on their talk pages. Any blocks placed by administrators for violations of a community sanction should also be logged, normally on a subpage created for this purpose.

Appealing community sanctions
Community sanctions may be appealed to the Administrators' noticeboard, or to the Arbitration Committee. The Arbitration Committee may accept or decline the request. If they accept, they may reduce or change the sanctions, or may even enlarge upon them.

Historical links

 * Community sanctions noticeboard is closed and marked historical.
 * Community sanction/Log lists a few that were apparently decided on WP:AN.