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Dan Grey wrote:
On 16/08/05, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:>
This (Wikipedia endorsing a DDoS) will never happen, so its pointless to argue about, but I just wanted to go on the record saying I am totally against it. This isn't the wild west. Block their IP range if absolutely necessary, but DDoSing them is insane.
And couldn't happen. Remember - the BBC was serving 10Gb a *second* on the morning of July 7. Slashdot's influence is so small it doesn't even produce a noticeable blip in our requests per second.
How much do the combined Wikimedia servers serve? What would happen if all the Wikimedia sites were redirected to the BBC for a day?
Jimbo pretty much hits the nail on the head - for a small PR firm, the hullabaloo would be great for them, and far more effective than if their "viral" campaign had gone unnoticed.
It's like [[WP:BEANS]] - now that someone has tried, everyone else will too.
However if you want to start entertaining the idea of range-blocking the BBC or other big company - which would make the news wires, I'd imagine - you need a very high level of proof, or you're going to look stupid in front the world. Not good for image (but would sure drive WP a lot of traffic :-) ).
They are abusing our site for corporate gain! Surely we have every right to block them! They at least owe us an apology for misusing our resources like this.
I believe the Jamie Kane article was started by a username. It may be possible to get the devs to find out the IP address assoicated with that name (I believe the last-used IP for that address is recorded, but nothing more). If that IP resolves to the BBC... well, that's something. But the BBC has some 20,000+ employees and it could still all be a co-incidence, albeit a suspicious one.
Well, if they want to violate [[WP:POINT]], we can disrupt them back. To quote [[meta:Bash]]: You can, however, disrupt Encarta to make a point. I don't see why the same shouldn't hold for anyone who corporate entities who do the same to us.
Besides, if the BBC has 20,000+ employees on their side, how many more users do we have on *our* side? With the powers of Wikipedia and Slashdot combined...
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