Author: arnomane

Description:
Currently the MediaWiki interface lacks two important feedback information:

If a user gets blocked it is not directly visible to others that this user has been blocked, which is annoying if others try
to contact that person and wonder why there's no feedback or several admins blocking the same person as nobody did look into
the log files. ;-) Currently this direct feedback get's done occasionally by the blocking admin with a template like
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Blocked_User in order to increase transparency. But the need for such an template
insertion edit needs more avoidable work for an admin (especially if you need to block high speed sock puppets over open proxy
networks) and it also does not get applied in any case.

So an interface enhancement that displays a MediaWiki-namespace message (modeled after the message in the above linked
template) on top (or instead of the content) of a user page and user talk page of a blocked user would be extremly helpful for
everyone (less admin work, far better transparency, reduced frustration of third parties).

The second problem are fake user pages. Although an experienced user can check via the "toolbox" on the left side if that user
really exists (missing contributions link) this is not obvious enough. I have more than once seen people that wrote to talk
pages of fake users (for example guided there via wrong signatures) and thatfor never recieved a reply.

So a message similar in style to the blocked user's could be displayed on top of an existing user: and User_talk: pages of
nonexistant users. Like for example:

"A user with that page does not exist. So you probably won't be able contacting someone via that page. Perhapes there was a
user with that name that has been renamed to a new name, so have a lock at the rename log file [link to rename log with page
name as mask]. If so suggest to the user making a redirect to his new user page. If a user with that name never existed
consider marking this page for deletion in order to reduce confusion."

These two enhancements would greatly increase the usability of MediaWiki with regard to user to user interaction.

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement