Global bans

A global ban is a formal revocation of editing or other access privileges (use of "Special:EmailUser" for example) across all Wikimedia projects. It reflects a broad and clear community consensus. A global ban is not a form of punishment, nor is it meant to provide a “cool down” period. A global ban's purpose is to prevent harm to Wikimedia projects when a problem cannot be addressed by the community through less restrictive means, and consequently is usually permanent.

Global bans are exclusively applied where multiple independent communities have previously elected to ban a user for a pattern of abuse. Wikimedia projects are entirely self-governing. Typically, good faith is assumed when a user chooses to become a member of a new community, regardless of their history on other projects. Consequently, global bans are not a possibility where a user is only temporarily blocked, or only banned on a single project. Please remember, global bans are intentionally very infrequent.

Global bans should not be confused with global blocking, a technical mechanism to prevent IP addresses or ranges of them (i.e. unregistered users) from editing any Wikimedia project, except for Meta-Wiki. This policy covers only community-issued global bans. The Wikimedia Foundation also has the right to unilaterally globally ban anyone, and those global bans are covered by the WMF Global Ban Policy.