Help:I'm blocked

Occasionally, good people get blocked from editing. Sometimes, bad people get banned. But let's assume that you're a good person. So what do you do when you've been blocked?

Blocking types
There are two or three types of block. It's important to figure out what kind of block is stopping you from editing. You can find out a lot of information about the block yourself by trying to edit a page and then looking at the notification which pops up. If you're editing in the monobook skin, the notification will be extremely obvious. But if you're in the default Oasis skin, then you'll have to hunt for it a bit. Begin editing a page and then look at the upper right-hand corner of the page. You'll see a line that says "Need help editing?", and under that will be a thing that says "Notification". Click on "Notification" and you'll see something that looks like this:

You have been blocked. As outlined at Help:I'm blocked, you can contact $1 or another Special:ListUsers to discuss the block. Please include all details in the above box — but especially the block id number in gold — in any queries you make.

The most important parts of this are the bits in yellow and green, so take special note of these.

Global
One kind of block happens at the global Fandom level. This can happen because a Wikia staff member has been alerted to your unhelpful editing practises, and has decided to do something about it. In such a case, there's nothing anyone here at Tardis can do about it. You'll likely need to ask a local admin to confirm whether you are indeed globally blocked. If so, your only recourse is to send a Special:Contact message and hope for the best.

Range IP
Another type of block that might be affecting you is the range IP block. These are rarely instituted, but they are helpful when a spam bot or vandal "hops" around from IP to IP, thereby mounting a sustained attack upon the website. The best tool for dealing with this is to establish a pattern to the attacks and block that whole pattern.

Unfortunately, this means that a lot of good users may very well be cut off from the wiki. You'll need to ask a local admin to investigate, but if your IP doesn't immediately pop up for the admin then they'll likely refer you on to — you guessed it! — a Special:Contact form.

Local
A local block is one imposed by a local admin here at Tardis. You'll be able to tell you're locally blocked by looking at the "blocking admin" section of the notification (as seen above), and noting the color of the name. If it's a deep purple, like this, then they're a local admin.

Local blocks are by far the most common type of block, and the rest of this document will be dedicated to giving you guidelines about how to go about dealing with local blocks.

How not to deal with a block
The first and most important thing is that while you're blocked, you must definitely not try any type of ban evasion, for example by using an IP address or another account to edit.

As opposed to global and IP range blocks, local blocks can be appealed locally without needing to get Fandom Staff involved. As per the Fandom-wide policy on this matter, you should only contact Staff if local administratos fail to respond to an appeal after a reasonable amount of time has elapsed. Unless you believe the admin to be violating Fandom-wide rules, do not escalate an appeal to Staff simply because the admin didn't respond in the way you hoped.

If you wish to appeal, you should also do it directly in your own name (see "Where to say it" below on how to do this), rather than getting a non-blocked user to speak for you. Involving more people than necessary is inadvisable.

How to respond to being blocked
If you were blocked locally and wish to be unblocked before your planned "time-out" elapses, somehow you need to get in touch with one or more local Tardis admin(s).

What to say
There are two pathways available to you if you wish to appeal your block, comparable to "pleading not guilty" and "pleading guilty".


 * "Pleading not guilty" means you believe the administrator was mistaken in blocking you. For example, they may accidentally have mistaken you for one of the culprits in an edit war — or they may have incorrectly blocked you for violating a "policy" which is not actually written down anywhere within our official policies. (Precedent, common practice and admin instructions can be used as guidelines in the absence of written policy, but contravening such rules, by Fandom decree, cannot be a blockable offence.)


 * Alternatively, you can "plead guilty" if you admit that you broke policy, and still ask to have your block lifted. In this case, you will be attempting to persuade the admin that you realise what you did was wrong, and that you pledge, if unblocked, not to commit similar errors again. While blocks are sometimes used to "make an example", most often they are a practical measure to ensure that a user whose erroneous edits were harming the Wiki will no longer threaten the Wiki. Thus, if you can convince the admin that you won't do it again, you will likely be unblocked.

In either case, you should be respectful and assume good faith. Don't complain about being blocked, even if you thought it was in error; just explain calmly why you think the admin should reconsider, showing that you understand their original rationale. Don't swear. Don't accuse.

Where to say it
A good "neutral ground" wiki is w:c:community. By definition, being blocked on Tardis prevents you from posting talk-page messages on Tardis. This means you will have go to another Fandom wiki — neutral ground as it were — and leave a message on the admins' wall/talk page there. This should preferably be done on the Community Central Wiki, but other Wikis where you know the admin to be active can also be of use.

Stage 1 - Contacting blocking admins
The first person you contact with a block appeal should be the admin who blocked you in the first place. After making one (again, one) polite and reasonable attempt at an appeal, step back and give them some time to get to your message. Administrators are human beings too; in the spirit of good faith, never assume, because they haven't replied to you as quickly as you'd like, that they're ignoring you.

You should, at minimum, give the admin a full twenty-four hours to reply before you move on to the next stage. Multiple days, and especially letting a week-end go by, are a more polite time to wait; even if you do believe your block to have been unjust, generally, the sky won't fall because you're kept away from the Wiki for five days or so.

Stage 2 - Contacting other admins
If the first admin you contacted fails to answer, or answers in the negative in a way which you do not think correctly addresses your appeal argument, you can then seek out a different local admin than the one who blocked you and plead your case, asking the "neutral" admin to perform an internal review of the case. This should be one of the "frequently active admins" listed at Tardis:Administrators, not just anyone with admin rights. You must make them aware that you already contacted the first admin, so that they can see the first admin's potential negative reply for themselves as part of the review.

If the second admin also fails to reply within reasonable delays, you can contact further admins, going through the list of "frequently-listed admins", until you either get a reply, or run out of admins.

However, you should stop at two negative answers to an appeal. This means that:
 * If the first admin you contacted refused to unblock you, and so did the second admin, you should not attempt to contact further admins.
 * If you contacted the second admin due to a lack of reply from the first admin you contacted, and they reply negatively, you can contact a third admin and get a second opinion — but if that third admin replies negatively, you should not attempt to contact further admins.

Remember: one attempt at pinging any given one admin, throughout this process, is all you get. Two or more attempts could be considered attempts to intimidate or annoy the admin into compliance, i.e. cyber-harrassment, and are thus inadvisable.

Stage 3 - Contacting FANDOM Staff
As laid out by the Fandom-wide policy, if you followed Stages 1 and 2 and still believe you are blocked unjustly (either because local admins failed to reply to your communication attempts, or — which is more unlikely — because you believe the negative answers you got to your appeals were in violation of actual policy), then and only then should you contact Fandom Staff.

Why do bad blocks happen to good people?
Most blocks done locally are enacted because the admin believes you've done something which is a violation of one of our policies, or because they're trying to save you time. In most cases, you should be given an explanation of why you've been blocked, and a good idea of when the block ends. That said, the blocking notification seen above should give you this information as well.

The best way to deal with most blocks is to read all this information and try to understand what they admin is saying to you. If the admin directs you to specific policy pages, go there and read them.

Above all, remember that being blocked does not actually mean you are a bad editor. Most of the time, blocks simply mean that you need to hold on a bit and read something before continue to edit around here.