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FrontPage RecentChanges AboutWikiFeatures WikiNode Most wiki Web sites depend on MeatBall:SoftSecurity to keep content on-topic, civil, and readable. Wiki engines tend to support soft security with features to MeatBall:LimitDamage. However, on some wiki sites, especially those that favor MeatBall:ContentOverCommunity, there’s limited patience and tolerance for soft security. The engines for these sites may include MeatBall:HardSecurity measures that enforce a technological solution for difficult editors.
One such feature is user banning. This means preventing certain users from editing any article – essentially exiling them from the community. Users can be banned either by their user name or by the IP address they post from.
This kind of ban prevents a named user from editing pages. The advantage is that the user is banned from editing on any client computer; the con is that they can (usually) just log out and edit anonymously.
This ban prevents a user from editing from a particular IP address. Of course, the user can just go to another computer, and edit from there.
It’s also possible to have temporary bans – bans that last for an hour or two. This can be useful for, say, IP addresses of public terminals.
A social construct on Wikipedia (e.g.) is the hard ban. This is an authorization to revert changes from a particular person under any user name, from any IP address. This tends to engender a witch-hunt mentality: is user “BillFreedman” the same as banned user “FredBillman”? The user from IP address 192.168.8.3 seems to be editing a lot of the same articles as “FredBillman” did… should he be banned, too?
One nice use of bans, however, is to reduce the effect of runaway or hostile scripts (or bots). Even the most simplistic of scripts can burn through a medium-sized wiki in no time flat – far faster than soft security can deal with. Putting a ban or block on the IP address the script is running from can limit damage from scripts until the inept or hostile script writer can be contacted.
| status | wiki engines |
|---|---|
| Implemented | MediaWiki, - |
| Developing | - |
| Intend to Develop | - |
| Considering | - |
| Rejected | - |
User banning is is a quite controversial and perhaps un-wiki feature. However, since it appears in some (one?) Wiki engines, it’s probably worth documenting and discussing.
One problem with user banning is that it’s very hard to have a security model based on open editing for the entire human population, minus a handful of troublemakers. (It’s much more easy to do if you have a security model based on only allowing edits by trusted users, but that’s not really all that wiki, is it?) Because it’s easy to get around, it tends to be more frustrating than effective, and may in fact take up a lot more energy than soft security measures would.