Global bans

Global bans are formal restrictions placed on people (not user accounts or IP addresses) to prevent their access to certain aspects of Miraheze (such as access or editing). Global bans differ from Global blocks and Global locks in that global bans are more severe than a global block or lock as they affect actual people (unlike blocks and locks which are technical restrictions placed only on accounts or IPs) and as such, are not given out liberally.

Global bans may only be applied by the community, Site Reliability Engineering (in extreme cases where such a ban is critical to Miraheze infrastructure), or Trust and Safety when the Terms of Use have been violated. Global bans are enforced on-wiki via a global lock of the master account and all other alternative accounts. All accounts created subsequently will be automatically locked upon detection. Verifiable IP addresses may be blocked globally by global functionaries as part of global ban enforcement, in the same way global locks are enforced.

Community bans
A community-imposed global ban is a full revocation of all privileges for a user who has caused issues across multiple communities. It is a measure of last resort, reflecting broad community consensus should other measures fail. Other measures include multiple specific advisories based in policy or best practice to the user and contacting Stewards or Trust and Safety as appropriate to resolve the problem.

Requirements
For a user to be a eligible for a global ban, they must meet the following requirements:
 * The user must have persistently disrupted various Miraheze wikis; and,
 * The user must exhibit conduct issues and remediation attempts to address such conduct have failed.

If these conditions are met, a user is eligible for a global ban. If a user does not meet these requirements, the Request for Comments will be closed.

Nominators must meet the following requirements to request a global ban:
 * Their Miraheze account which is at least 6 months old; and,
 * They must have least 1,000 global edits. These edits may not consist of directly copy/pasting content from other wikis, they must be edits done by the user.

If a nominator does not meet these requirements, the Request for Comments will be closed.

Procedure
To request a global ban, a Request for Comments must be started here on Miraheze Meta. Criteria, as established in the previous section, must be met.

Once a Request for Comments requesting a global ban has been filed on Miraheze Meta, the nominator must post a notice on all wikis where the user is active informing them that a Request for Comments regarding that user has been stated. This notice should be posted in a high-visibility venue such as a central discussion forum or the talk page of the main page if none exists. Nominators may ask Stewards for assistance in sending the message via MassMessage.

If the nominated user is locally blocked on Meta, they may be temporarily unblocked to defend themselves. If the user begins to engage in disruptive behaviors or behavior that goes against the Code of Conduct, they will be re-blocked.

Request for Comments dealing with a global ban proposals must stay opened for a minimum of seven (7) calendar days, beginning after the notification process defined in this section is complete

Closure
A Request for Comments requesting a global ban proposal can be closed by a Steward before seven (7) days have passed if the Request is malformed or if it there is overwhelming consensus against the proposal.

A Request for Comments can also be closed before seven (7) days have passed if there is overwhelming consensus for it and the nominated user agrees to be globally banned.

If either the nominee or nominator do not fulfill the requirements outlined in the previous section, the Request for Comments may also close early.

Trust and Safety ban
Trust and Safety is tasked by the Board of Directors with the responsibility of investigating any potential violations and enforcing the Terms of Use. If they determine a user has violated the Terms of Use, they may move to globally ban the user (this action may be referred to as a Trust and Safety ban or a Terms of Use ban). In these cases, the user will be notified and their account will be locked. They may appeal to Trust and Safety.

SRE ban
Historically, Site Reliability Engineering (whose members are more commonly known as system administrators) used to enforce, investigate potential violations, and ban users who violated the Terms of Use. Since May 2021, that responsibility has been passed on to Trust and Safety and any global ban issued by system administrators is now overseen by Trust and Safety. Nowadays, Site Reliability Engineering may only issue a global ban in extreme cases where a ban is critical to Miraheze infrastructure, pursuant to Section 8 of the Terms of Use. These bans may been overturned or modified by Trust and Safety if they are unsatisfied by Site Reliability Engineering's reason for banning.

Community bans
An appeal to a global ban may submitted by contacting Stewards. Stewards will then forward the appeal to the community by means of another Request for Comments. Stewards, as a group, may exercise discretion in appeals and choose not to forward an appeal if they feel that they lack merit and/or are frivolous in nature.

If a global ban RfC doesn't specify a minimum time before appeals may be considered, the minimum time before an appeal can be considered will be of 3 months, so as to (a) allow the user sufficient time to reflect on their behaviour, (b) establish a good-faith initial attempt to illustrate to the community they have the capacity to exercise restraint (by not engaging in illegitimate sockpuppetry), and (c) not waste the community's time with repeated and frivolous requests.

Trust and Safety/SRE bans
To appeal a ban issued by Site Reliability Engineering or Trust and Safety, please email ts@undefinedmiraheze.org. Please make sure to include any relevant information in your appeal.

For a list of globally banned users, see this list of globally banned users.

Background
The following Requests for Comment have shaped this policy:


 * Requests for Comment/Global bans - Formally codified and established the procedure for a community-imposed global ban.