On 6/17/07, Blu Aardvark jeffrey.latham@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On April 13, 2006, the text of [[Wikipedia:No open proxies]] was changed from the descriptive "Users using open or anonymous proxies are currently not allowed to edit Wikipedia." to the prescriptive "Users are prohibited from editing Wikimedia projects through open or anonymous proxies." The edit was made by User:Pathoschild and the summary of the change was "Updated policy from the Meta-Wiki".
This was more or less the original version of the policy, which based on [[m:No open proxies]]. This is also the version that certain groups are striving to rigorously enforce, and they don't mind hanging a few adminship nominations out to dry in the process.
It should be noted that [[m:No open proxies]] is an outdated policy. It went live in 2004, although the meta policy page wasn't created until 2006. Softblocking of proxies was, when the policy was created, not possible.
Longstanding practice and consensus on the English Wikipedia appear to support the use of proxies, so long as those proxies are not being used abusively. The fact that some groups are striving to re-force an outdated policy onto the English Wikipedia for undisclosed reasons shouldn't have bearing on the longstanding practice and consensus.
"Undisclosed reasons". LOL! More dark conspiracies, no doubt.
Anyway, back in the real world there was no such practice or consensus on English Wikipedia; that's just something you've invented. The only reason proxies weren't all blocked were technical; not all proxies were known. Certainly all *known* proxies were blocked, and various technical means were devised from time to time to block all the rest. Unfortunately, none of them worked very well. It might be instructive to read Mackensen's comment on the CharlotteWebb RFA.