Wikipedia:Rehabilitation of offenders

Short blocks are often considered to be very serious punishments even though their direct impact is very small. They serve as little more than clips round the ear to drive home the point that you've done something wrong. One reason for this disproportionate opinion of them is that they are a permanent black mark on your block log. Therefore, a version of a UK law, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, is proposed. The basic principle is that minor convictions a long time ago aren't important and shouldn't count against you. The proposal is this:


 * Blocks of less than 24 hours should be considered "spent" and removed from the block log after 6 months.
 * Blocks of less than 7 days should be considered "spent" and removed from the block log after 1 year.
 * There should be a log of spent blocks visible to checkusers. (Something might come up where it is important to have records of old blocks, so somebody needs to be able to see them.)

This would allow short blocks to be used more widely to deal with minor breaches of policy. This requires someone to write an extension to the software, but that can be done if there is enough support for it. The exact numbers are, as always, negotiable. All comments are welcome on the talk page.