Editor "Bon courage" asked them to please stop, the IP refused, calling it a "peaceful protest", so Bon courage raised the issue at AN/I. Administrator RickInBaltimore quickly blocked them, calling it "clear disruption" .Support good-faith IP editors: make WP administrators follow WP's own policies on keeping range-blocks as a last resort, with minimal breadth & duration, to reduce collateral damage; support more precisely targeted restrictions — e.g. protecting only articles, not Talk pages, or presenting pages as semi-protected when viewed from designated IP ranges.
Clear disruption is of course not strictly accurate. Believe it or not, there is no actual policy or guideline that specifies what an edit summary must be. So strictly speaking, editing in a way that goes against "Help:Edit summary" should not be met with a block.
It should be noted that the IP editor was actually even following that advice page in part, including his protest only after an actual explanation of their constructive edit. For example, "fixed punctuation". So even if the only reason they are editing is to protest, Wikipedia is apparently benefiting by way of punctuation fixes.
Being the opposite of helpful is not necessarily disruptive. Just distracting and perhaps even annoying. And if being annoying is now blockable on Wikipedia, oh wow!
As is standard practice on Wikipedia, RickInBaltimore only justified their block with a simple link to WP:DE ( "disruptive editing"), rather than the "clear and specific reason" required by the blocking policy. Usually they get away with it, because it is at least clear if not specific.
Unsurprisingly, the times they don't get away with it is when people are not seeing what the blocking Administrator apparently saw. Rick either can't or won't explain how those edit summaries "disrupts progress toward ... building the encyclopedia" in a specific way. He presumably just assumed it was obvious.
As an aside, to those who assume Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and so "Ignore All Rules" covers situations like this, you are unfortunately wrong. You can only "Ignore All Rules" provided two conditions are met. 1. You make it clear you are invoking IAR. 2. Your invocation doesn't meet with significant pushback. This is now Wikipedia makes sure that IAR is not a get out of jail free care and is instead merely a way to ensure common sense overrides the bureaucracy. (IAR dates back to when Jimmy Wales set the rules. He was a smart guy. Wikipedia will regret forcing him out forever.)
Neither condition applies here. Rick cleary thinks he is enforcing a rule, but Rick almost immediately got pushback at AN/I, where he made it even more obvious that while he is absolutely sure it is disruption, he still can't really explain how or why in terms of policy or guidance. He just knows it is.
So by now it seems pretty clear where he stands - using edit summaries for any kind of "peaceful protest" is going to be met with a block.Edit summaries are to be used for well, summarizing an edit. Using the field for a "campaign" to complain about the way range blocks are used is disruptive, or for any "peaceful protest" for that matter as the IP stated is disruptive. RickinBaltimore (talk) 13:28, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
And here is where we get to laugh at post-Jimmy Wikipedia.
Because clearly Rick has forgotten there is one editor out there who routinely uses edit summaries for peaceful protest.
For several years now, Yngvadottir has been appending this protest to her edit summaries.....
Like the IP editor, they only add it after an explanation of the edit.(This edit is not an endorsement of the WMF.)
As far as I can tell, by Rick's logic, other than the fact it is shorter, this is just as "clearly disruptive" as the IP's abuse of the edit summary for peaceful protest. It may even be more disruptive, because you can at least figure out what the IP is protesting by just reading it.
Very few people will know Yngvadottir's protest refers to Framgate, an internal controversy that, in Wikipedia time, happened decades ago. It may even mislead people into assuming it is somehow relevant to her specific edit, sending them down a rabbit hole.
Even as a protest, any possible policy changes her protest could have led to, have already happened, or been soundly rejected at the highest levels. The IP's cause is fresh and unaddressed.
Yngvadottir is never going to stop their protest, and nobody is ever going to block her for it.
What happens to the IP, is anyone's guess.
