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Problem with how software deals with multiple concurrent blocks.
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Description

When there is a short and long block on the same user concurrently, the user
becomes unblocked when the shorter time period expires, when it should be the
longer time period(or possibly the sum). See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Blocks_washing_off_in_the_rain.3F

, which is below:

"Blocks washing off in the rain?

I have a feeling that users are becoming unblocked without any admin action. For
example, I know that an account of the Willy on Wheels vandal were blocked
indefinitely several months ago, yet it was able to vandalize recently.

Also, on en-Wiktionary, the vandal "ConneI MacKenzie" (impersonating user Connel
MacKenzie) was blocked indefinitely, yet he disappeared from the IP block list,
and no record of him being unblocked could be found in the block log. --Ixfd64
22:23, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

When an account or IP is blocked more than once with differing lengths, it
becomes unblocked when the shortest one expires. ConneI MacKenzie was blocked
for one week and indefinitely; therefore his block ran out after one week.
—Cryptic (talk) 23:19, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

That sounds backwards. Shouldn't it be when the longest one expires? —

Nowhither 23:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

That's what I thought too. --Ixfd64 00:03, 2005 August 17 (UTC)

You'd think, but the software probably checks the database every x

amount of time for expired blocks, and then unblocks those cases, causing this
behavior. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:06, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I should probably fix Wikipedia:Blocking policy then. --Ixfd64

01:15, 2005 August 18 (UTC)

No. This is a bug. I'm posting it to Zilla. Superm401 | Talk

04:13, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

"


Version: 1.5.x
Severity: normal
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Blocks_washing_off_in_the_rain.3F

Details

Reference
bz3206

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 21 2014, 8:47 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz3206.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

I've since learned that this is the known state of affairs. Please remove the bug.

robchur wrote:

We can't remove the bug. However, I'm working on improvements to the blocking
page, e.g. bug 1496, and the cause of this will be reduced as a result, since
users will not be double or triple blocked by admins who don't know that a block
exists, and block with varying lengths of time.

robchur wrote:

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 2492 ***