On 8/11/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
The only bug relating to Tor that I can find in Bugzilla is one relating to using a Tor DNSBL to block all Tor exit nodes, I'm guessing you're not referring to that one.
I believe the bug being referred to is "9862 Separate group for ipblock-exempt on en.wikipedia".
AB provided a patch which added an ipblock-exempt group, which a user could be added to to be exempt from IP blocks (but not from username blocks), but this was rejected because the power wouldn't be available to bureaucrats (the software only allowed stewards to perform such a feat). Then Simetrical made a patch to implement Special:MakeIPExempt which would allow bureaucrats to put users in the group, but this patch was rejected because it was considered too messy to use yet another Special: extension. Bug 6711 addressed this, and is now resolved. It adds a Special:Userrights page and exactly who has the power to do what can be configured on a site by site basis. So now that 6711 is resolved it seems to me that AB's patch should now be accepted. Then, any wiki running the new version of the software can allow assignments to the ipblock-exempt group using Special:Userrights, so long as the appropriate $wgAddGroups line is added to the config file.
Once the patch is accepted, it'd be up to the individual projects to decide who, if anyone, should be allowed to assign users to this group. Presumably for wikien it'll be the bureaucrats, who will assign/remove users to the group after a successful !vote. Alternatively, sysops could be trusted to assign/remove users to the group, either after a successful !vote, or under their own judgment.