https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... ing_blocks
Not the concept of a ratchet mechanism to inhibit single Admins just unblocking their friends, his has been suggested many times.If, in the opinion of an uninvolved administrator, BrownHairedGirl violates WP:CIVIL, she may be subject to escalating blocks, beginning with a 12-hour block. These blocks will have the weight of a community-imposed sanction, i.e. they may not be lifted without a successful appeal to the community at an admin noticeboard. The restriction is indefinite, and may be appealed at WP:AN in six months.
The new thing is that it's getting support. It's always failed in the past on other users because people didn't like the jeopardy factor, or the gotcha flavour, or the simple fact that a community consensus rarely looks at the facts, and is usually also just an alternative means of judging a person's popularity.
This mechanism would see an unpopular editor banished quickly, because there will always be an Administrator watching them, willing to place a marginal block, in the sure fire knowledge that a swell of support will follow, drowning out any opposition.
The jeopardy factor is real. One or two disputed edge cases, and before you know it, you're on egg shells trying to avoid 30 day blocks. Which is beyond unhealthy. And there's never usually any appetite to even reset the ratchet back to level 1 after say six months without a block, the mere existence of the ratchet and past blocks being used to justify it continuing, forever.
In stark terms, if the Wikipedia community wanted to push someone to suicide by codifying and amplifying already existing feelings of being ignored and helpless that their ineffectual dispute resolution system already induces, this would be a great tool.
The Wikipedia community is sick and sexist, so I don't think it's an accident that the first succesful application of this ratchet, is a single minded strong willed women who has made it plain, she is sick to death of being forced by the Wikipedia community to eat shit and suffer the abuses of bullies. She's done. No apologies or retractions from her, unless she's sees some parity. Some fairness. Some justice.
An uppity woman is what they all fear. Needs to be put back in her box, stat.
Expecting fairness and justice is a male privilege. People like the habitually toxic and woman hating Eric Corbett, who was just as single minded and strong willed and unwilling to eat shit, were never subjected to a sanction that meant escalating blocks that had wide support could actually stick, because of course there was always one Administrator around prepared to argue that poor little Eric had been provoked. And if that wasn't possible, to argue that he just got mad, and everyone is entitled to a bad day. And if even that wasn't possible, it would just be pointed out that blocking Eric never changed him, so why do it a all, least of all in a way that guarantees his eventual exit.
Woman on Wikipedia are not afforded these allowances. Nor their day in court, to prove or disprove once and for all, whether all the flare ups that involve them because they are the root cause. This sanction is being mooted as an alternative to a trip to ArbCom, which, while unlikely, could theoretically see all of BHG's harassers identified and sanctioned and BHG let off with a warning, given she has been thoroughly mobbed and trolled and gaslighted.