[WikiEN-l] Should we block unregistered AOL users? (was: [Wikitech-l] User block changes)

[Andrew Gray]

On 11/07/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> As some of you may have noted, we now have a couple of new options to
> choose when blocking users.  Tim Starling, who implemented the feature,
> posted the following clarification on the wikitech-l list:
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > A couple of people asked me about interaction between various kinds of
> > blocks and block options, and indeed, in some cases the behaviour was
> > undefined or accidental. I've now implemented the following rules:
> >
> > * The "anon only" and "prevent account creation" options will be silently
> > ignored on username blocks.
> > * The precedence of blocks in cases of conflict, from highest to lowest, is:
> >    * Username block
> >    * Single IP block
> >    * Range block
> >    * Autoblock
> >
> > This holds regardless of the anon-only option. This means that anon-only
> > range blocks or IP blocks can be used to mitigate the effects of autoblocks
> > on shared IP addresses, because an anon-only block will allow logged in
> > users to edit regardless of the presence of a matching autoblock. This has a
> > potential to be counterintuitive -- unblocking someone's IP can in fact
> > cause them to be blocked. But I thought it was better than the other solutions.
>
> Given the above, would it now be advisable to block the entire AOL proxy
>   pool from editing by unregistered users?  This would have the side
> effect that AOL users would no longer be hit by random autoblocks.

It would also mean they wouldn't be continually bombarded by warning
messages... which is a great worry for a lot of them, judging by the
emails we get.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk