[Wikipedia-l] multi-headed VANDALS

[Neil Harris]

Imran Ghory wrote:

>Most EULAs are so broad that it's hard not to violate them, bring to 
>the ISP the exact sections of their AUP that has been violated, 
>include all IPs involved with timestamps of access.
>
>Also follow up with a phone call if neccassary.
>
>If that fails we should set up a mechanism such that anyone 
>accessing the webpage from that ISP has a note attached to the 
>top saying "Due to a failure by $ISPName$ to take action against 
>an attack against wikipedia we are considering removing write 
>access from user coming from this ISP. Please help us to avoid 
>doing this by contacting your ISPs abuse department and making 
>your views on the matter felt to them".
>
>When an ISPs users start complaing most ISPs buck up, I know a 
>few service sites which have used this technique succesfully.
>
>Imran
>  
>
Yes. Reverse DNS lookup could be used, assuming that the ISP has a clue.

Thinks:
It would be interesting to know what fraction of Wikipedia users come 
from ISPs with/without valid reverse DNS lookup set up for their IP 
addresses. If the fraction from clueless ISPs is small (and it should 
be), then we could

* ban customers of crap no-reverse-delegation ISPs from editing by 
default (which will capture a lot of "grey" IP addresses, too), and
* offer suitably privileged users the option to issue the appropriate 
warning (as above)  on a per-ISP basis, based on the reverse lookup domain.

Of course, things should never get this far in the first place, but 
having the tools in reserve would be nice.

Neil