Wikipedia:Self-limiting sanctions

When considering how to deal with a disruptive editor who has not responded to warnings, there are times when one may be faced with the question:

Is it truly necessary to block this user to prevent future disruption, or would a more narrowly tailored limited ban work and be appropriate here?

Many topic bans, interaction bans, revert restrictions, and several other sorts of limited bans can be though of as self-limiting sanctions—that is, these are sanctions that require a contributor to limit their own editing.

The ability for a self-limiting sanction to succeed, without later requiring the use of more blunt technical enforcement measures and additional sanctions, rests in part upon the sanctioned party's own ability to understand what sorts of edits would be in that restriction's scope. For example, when a user does not understand the scope of a proposed topic ban, the basic principles of what constitutes a revert, or what consensus is, then topic bans, revert restrictions, and consensus-required restrictions, respectively, are unlikely to work well.

Self-limiting sanctions also require an editor to be willing to abide by them, even if begrudgingly, for sanctions to end there. If an editor is given a topic ban, for example, that editor needs to make decisions to not edit within the area of the topic ban's scope, lest more broadly restrictive sanctions (such as temporary or indefinite blocks) be required. An editor who states that they will not comply with a self-limiting sanction as a narrowly tailored alternative to a block should not be given a self-limiting sanction with the hope that it will work; they should simply be blocked instead.

There are of course other considerations, such as the scope and extent of disruption. But something key to remember is that self-limiting sanctions are dubious unless the editor understands the sanction and is, at some level, willing to abide by the sanction should it be imposed upon them.