Note: This essay is not complete.

Sanctions are a set of tools used by the Wikipedia community and the Arbitration Committee to resolve disputes and curtail disruptive behaviour. The sanctions system arose in ad hoc manner, resulting in an opaque patchwork of terms, policies, and guidelines that can be hard to understand. This page will explain the different types of sanctions, their origins, and their purposes.

Types of sanctions

There are two main types of sanctions, with each type having various sub-types. These main types are general sanctions and personal sanctions (usually known as "editing restrictions"). Both types of sanctions can be authorised by either the Arbitration Committee or through community consensus at the administrators' noticeboard, though all types of general sanctions originated with the Committee.

General sanctions

General sanctions (GS) are applied to particular topic area, affecting all editors that edit in such an area. The first use of the term "general sanctions" was in December 2007, by then Arbitration Committee member Kirill Lokshin. Kirill Lokshin created a page in the Wikipedia namespace titled "General sanctions" on 10 December 2007. Prior to the creation of this page, the Arbitration Committee had been enacting various measures (termed remedies in ArbCom jargon) to resolve disputes in controversial topic areas. However, these measures were not recorded in any central location, and were created on a case-by-case basis. This led to a general confusion about how such remedies worked, and culminated in confusion around a remedy enacted by the Digwuren case. Kirill Lokshin created the general sanctions page to track remedies, so as to make their enforcement easier.

Various types of existing remedies were incorporated into the new class of "general sanctions". The three main sub-types that exist today are article probation, discretionary sanctions, and revert restrictions (also called revert paroles).

Article probation

Article probation was much more common in the past than it is today, and was the first type of general sanction to arise. It was created by the Arbitration Committee as a means to address edit-warring, consistent violations of Wikipedia policies and guidelines (such as the policy requiring the maintenance of a neutral point-of-view), and other similar forms of disruption on a specific page. The first mention of "article probation" was in the creation of a draft Arbitration Committee remedy by then Arbitration Committee member Fred Bauder on 4 June 2006. This proposal was adopted by Committee in the "Election" arbitration case, which closed on 1 July 2006. Principle 7.1 of that case reads:

Where user conduct issues seem to revolve around a single or small set of articles, and where there are a large number of editors involved, and those editors are not disruptive otherwise, it may make more sense to put the article or articles themselves on probation rather than individual editors. Administrators are empowered to block or ban editors from editing the article(s) for misconduct like edit warring, incivility, original research, or other disruption relating to the article on probation.

Following this case, probation was an often-used Arbitration Committee remedy, documented at the page created by Mr Bauder. That page remained until the creation of the wider category of "general sanctions", when it was merged into the general sanctions page by Kirill Lokshin on 15 December 2007. The first instance of article probation authorised by the community, as opposed to by the Arbitration Committee, was the homeopathy probation, which dates to 30 January 2008. Today, article probation is little used, having been largely superseded by discretionary sanctions.

Discretionary sanctions

Today, discretionary sanctions (DS) are the most common type of general sanction. The founding principle of discretionary sanctions is that they allow uninvolved administrators who follow a specified procedure to take any measures necessary to curve disruption in a particular topic area. In other words, the sanctions imposed are done so at the discretion of the administrator doing the imposing. In this way, discretionary sanctions are like a more powerful and expansive version of article probation.

The first mention of discretionary sanctions was during the workshop phase of the "Macedonia" arbitration case. Arbitration Committee member Kirill Lokshin made the following proposal on 14 November 2007:

Any uninvolved administrator may, on their own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working in the area of conflict in this case that fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, the expected standards of behavior, or the normal editorial process. The sanctions imposed may include blocks of up to one month in length; bans from editing any page or set of pages within the scope of this remedy; restrictions on reverts; or any other measures which the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project. Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to this decision. All appeals regarding sanctions imposed under the provisions of this remedy shall be made to the Committee directly.

A version of this remedy was approved by the Committee as remedy 1 of that case on 2 December 2007. It reads:

Any uninvolved administrator may, on their own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working in the area of conflict if that editor fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, the expected standards of behavior, or the normal editorial process. The sanctions imposed may include blocks of up to one year in length; bans from editing any page or set of pages within the area of conflict; restrictions on reverts; or any other measures which the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project. Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to this decision.

This text continues to serve as the basis for modern discretionary sanctions. It was further refined during the "September 11 conspiracy theories" arbitration case, with another proposal made by Kirill Lokshin on 19 March 2008. A version of this proposal was approved by the Committee as remedy 1 of that case. Frustration with the failure of community article probation in the homeopathy topic area led to another proposal and approval of the application of discretionary sanctions during the "Homeopathy" arbitration case in April–June 2008. Following this, the use of discretionary sanctions began to increase, whilst the use of article probation by the Arbitration Committee declined, though the community continued to use article probation on a regular basis. As the use of discretionary sanctions increased, it became clear that a standardised DS regime was needed. This was created by Kirill Lokshin on 15 January 2010, and continues to be used today. DS continued to evolve. The first instance of discretionary sanctions imposed by the community, as opposed to by the Arbitration Committee, was the South Asian social groups discretionary sanctions regime, which dates to 11 February 2012.

The system was reviewed by the Arbitration Committee and community members from September 2013 to March 2014. Following this, an updated DS procedure was approved by the Committee on 3 May 2014. This was reported on in The Signpost, though that article got the origin of discretionary sanctions wrong.

Revert restrictions

A revert restriction is a limit on the number reverts per a given time period that editors can make on a given page. The most common page revert restriction is to apply "1RR", that is, a one revert per twenty-four hours rule, to a given page. In practice, this means that an editor can be blocked if he or she makes more than one revert of another editor's additions to a page within twenty-four hours. Revert restrictions can be applied to particular pages, or to all pages in a given topic area.

Personal sanctions

Personal sanctions (PS) are usually referred to as "editing restrictions". Despite this, the term "personal sanctions" (first introduced by Kirill Lokshin on 3 May 2009) is useful for the purposes of this essay, providing a contrast with general sanctions. Personal sanctions are applied to a particular editor, rather than a broad topic area as with general sanctions. The page that describes this type of sanctions was created as a "sister page" to the general sanctions page by Kirill Lokshin on 15 December 2007.

Types of personal sanctions include: account restrictions, civility restrictions (also called civility paroles), probation, move bans, revert restrictions (also called revert paroles), topic bans, page bans, and interaction bans. This list is not exhaustive, and personal sanctions are often individually-tailored to a particular editor. The history of personal sanctions is more difficult to trace than that of general sanctions. Unlike general sanctions, which generally originated with the Arbitration Committee, some personal restrictions originated in community discussions. Personal sanctions do not have any sort of standardised practice or regulation, other than that restrictions imposed are supposed to be logged at the editing restrictions page.

Authorisation of sanctions

All types of general sanctions can be authorised by either the Arbitration Committee or the community, whereas some types of personal sanctions can be imposed by administrators as conditions for an unblocking.

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