Last modified: 2011-05-21 03:43:52 UTC

Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Wikimedia migrated from Bugzilla to Phabricator. Bug reports are handled in Wikimedia Phabricator.
This static website is read-only and for historical purposes. It is not possible to log in and except for displaying bug reports and their history, links might be broken. See T31031, the corresponding Phabricator task for complete and up-to-date bug report information.
Bug 29031 - CheckUser: please use "infinite" rather than "indefinite" in the blocking system
CheckUser: please use "infinite" rather than "indefinite" in the blocking system
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: MediaWiki extensions
Classification: Unclassified
CheckUser (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Normal normal (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Aaron Schulz
: easy
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2011-05-18 07:24 UTC by MA
Modified: 2011-05-21 03:43 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description MA 2011-05-18 07:24:37 UTC
I think this will be easy to fix...

The CheckUser block interface when blocking accounts uses "indefinite" as the expiry time. Please change it to "infinite".

There's no difference between infinite and indefinite as the user is still permablocked; but if we use "infinite" when viewing the blocklog in a language different than English it will localize, otherwise not. Please see:

* Sock blocked via CU interface (in Spanish): <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=Dferg&page=User%3AOrangesms&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&uselang=es>

* Vandal blocked via the normal block interface (in Spanish too): <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=Dferg&page=User%3AFunguy77&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&uselang=es>

Other enhacements for the blocking thing are requested in bug 24894

Best regards.
Comment 1 Thor Malmjursson 2011-05-20 23:16:14 UTC
I'd disagree with this change. Indefinite simply means "for an undetermined period of time." - Indefinitely blocked users can be unblocked.  

Infinite means that it will exist for infinity, basically until hell freezes over and Satan himself goes to work on Skis.  

The two are very different, indefinite blocks are not permanent, although they are seen as such. An infinite block is just that. It never ends.
Comment 2 Sam Reed (reedy) 2011-05-20 23:18:46 UTC
All core messages use indefinite, so there is no point changing the usage in an extension, without changing core aswell...
Comment 3 MA 2011-05-20 23:31:21 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> I'd disagree with this change. Indefinite simply means "for an undetermined
> period of time." - Indefinitely blocked users can be unblocked.  
> 
> Infinite means that it will exist for infinity, basically until hell freezes
> over and Satan himself goes to work on Skis.  
> 
> The two are very different, indefinite blocks are not permanent, although they
> are seen as such. An infinite block is just that. It never ends.

No. There's no difference between those blocks but the system messages; and trying to make a difference is simply wrong IMHO. The "unblock" button works fine with both of them so none of them are irreversible. Regards.
Comment 4 Thor Malmjursson 2011-05-20 23:32:51 UTC
I was referring to the words Indefinite and Infinite.  They have entirely different meanings, and substituting one for the other does not work.
Comment 5 Bawolff (Brian Wolff) 2011-05-21 03:43:52 UTC
Ok, so here's what happens when displaying the block log:
* The block string is run through Language::translateBlockExpiry.
* This (in all languages except Finnish) looks at SpecialBlock::getSuggestedDurations which looks at the message 'ipboptions' - Which is the message used to give suggestion on the block page.
* In most languages, infinite is on this list, but indefinite is not, so infinite gets translated, while indefinite does not. (oddly enough on en, infinite is translated to indefnite, and indefinite is kept the same).

Since infinite, infinity, and indefinite are all taken to mean until the end of the world, I tend to agree they're equivalent. Furthermore we already translate infinite to indefinite, and so far no one has complained.

With that in mind I went ahead and made infinity/indefinite/infinite be treated as synonyms when translated in r88507 (1.19) [while not in Finnish, but every other lang]. I consider that much more the base issue than which word CheckUser uses.

Feel free to re-open if anyone thinks this is super-bad idea.

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.


Navigation
Links