PLEASE DESYSOP MORWEN!
MARWEN BANNED ME WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION WHEN I USED THE VOTES FOR DELETION PAGE TO VOTE FOR THE DELETION OF A BUSINESS ADVERTISEMENT PAGE IN WIKIPEDIA.
ADVERTISEMENTS SHOULD BE DELETED IN WIKIPIDIA. WHY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA NEEDS PAGES ON FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES?
WIKI IS NOT YELLOW PAGES. IT IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. THOSE WHO WANT TO FIND A COMPANY AND LEARN ABOUT IT CAN VISIT ITS WEBSITE AND READ THEIR PROPAGANDA.
ANTICAPITALIST
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On Sat, 2004-02-14 at 20:33, anti anti wrote:
PLEASE DESYSOP MORWEN!
MARWEN BANNED ME WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION WHEN I USED THE VOTES FOR DELETION PAGE TO VOTE FOR THE DELETION OF A BUSINESS ADVERTISEMENT PAGE IN WIKIPEDIA.
ADVERTISEMENTS SHOULD BE DELETED IN WIKIPIDIA. WHY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA NEEDS PAGES ON FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES?
WIKI IS NOT YELLOW PAGES. IT IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. THOSE WHO WANT TO FIND A COMPANY AND LEARN ABOUT IT CAN VISIT ITS WEBSITE AND READ THEIR PROPAGANDA.
ANTICAPITALIST
The 'Anticapitalist' is referring to [[Canon (company)]], which they repeatedly blanked and replaced with 'Please delete this advertisement! wikipidia is not yellow pages! wikipedia is encyclopedia!'.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Canon_(company)&action=histor...
I'm not sure this contributor is a vandal - they might just be seriously deranged, either way I am confident I acted properly.
I'm only joking, so no one take me too seriously here, but I think writing an ALLCAPS LETTER DEMANDING IMMEDIATE ACTION is a bannable offense in and of itself.
It's very difficult to imagine that this person is really serious, or just trying to be a pain in the ass. No one needs to apologize for disregarding completely lunatic positions.
Anticapitalist, Wikipedia is not anticapitalist. It's an encyclopedia. Canon is a famous company, and it is therefore deserving of an encyclopedia article.
--Jimbo
anti anti wrote:
PLEASE DESYSOP MORWEN!
MARWEN BANNED ME WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION WHEN I USED THE VOTES FOR DELETION PAGE TO VOTE FOR THE DELETION OF A BUSINESS ADVERTISEMENT PAGE IN WIKIPEDIA.
ADVERTISEMENTS SHOULD BE DELETED IN WIKIPIDIA. WHY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA NEEDS PAGES ON FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES?
WIKI IS NOT YELLOW PAGES. IT IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. THOSE WHO WANT TO FIND A COMPANY AND LEARN ABOUT IT CAN VISIT ITS WEBSITE AND READ THEIR PROPAGANDA.
ANTICAPITALIST
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anti anti wrote:
PLEASE DESYSOP MORWEN!
MARWEN BANNED ME WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION WHEN I USED THE VOTES FOR DELETION PAGE TO VOTE FOR THE DELETION OF A BUSINESS ADVERTISEMENT PAGE IN WIKIPEDIA.
ADVERTISEMENTS SHOULD BE DELETED IN WIKIPIDIA. WHY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA NEEDS PAGES ON FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES?
WIKI IS NOT YELLOW PAGES. IT IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. THOSE WHO WANT TO FIND A COMPANY AND LEARN ABOUT IT CAN VISIT ITS WEBSITE AND READ THEIR PROPAGANDA.
Just to add information: by the tone and content of this post and the sorts of articles he was "removing advertisements" from, this is almost certainly the same user that has been blocked so far under 2 or 3 different IPs, one of them an anonymizing proxy (207.44.154.35). The edit summaries are usually all caps and somewhat abusive, along the lines of "THE WIKIPEDIA RULES SAY NO FUCKING COMMERCIALIZATION! STOP PUTTING IT IN ASSHOLES!" (from [[Atlantic City, New Jersey]]).
-Mark
In message 402E91AE.4070602@rufus.d2g.com, Delirium delirium@rufus.d2g.com writes
anti anti wrote:
PLEASE DESYSOP MORWEN!
MARWEN BANNED ME WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION WHEN I USED THE VOTES FOR DELETION PAGE TO VOTE FOR THE DELETION OF A BUSINESS ADVERTISEMENT PAGE IN WIKIPEDIA.
ADVERTISEMENTS SHOULD BE DELETED IN WIKIPIDIA. WHY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA NEEDS PAGES ON FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES?
WIKI IS NOT YELLOW PAGES. IT IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. THOSE WHO WANT TO FIND A COMPANY AND LEARN ABOUT IT CAN VISIT ITS WEBSITE AND READ THEIR PROPAGANDA.
Just to add information: by the tone and content of this post and the sorts of articles he was "removing advertisements" from, this is almost certainly the same user that has been blocked so far under 2 or 3 different IPs, one of them an anonymizing proxy (207.44.154.35). The edit summaries are usually all caps and somewhat abusive, along the lines of "THE WIKIPEDIA RULES SAY NO FUCKING COMMERCIALIZATION! STOP PUTTING IT IN ASSHOLES!" (from [[Atlantic City, New Jersey]]).
207.44.154.35? Hell, I blocked him on the Welsh Wikipedia last Wednesday for vandalising [[cy:Hafan]], the Main Page to promote some "NESARA" rubbish (it wasn't even in Welsh, which might be a little more forgivable!). He was back today doing a minor bit of vandalism to one of the date entries, and got blocked again. Is there any way to permanently block an IP address?
Arwel Parry wrote
207.44.154.35? Hell, I blocked him on the Welsh Wikipedia last Wednesday for vandalising [[cy:Hafan]], the Main Page to promote some "NESARA" rubbish (it wasn't even in Welsh, which might be a little more forgivable!). He was back today doing a minor bit of vandalism to one of the date entries, and got blocked again. Is there any way to permanently block an IP address?
207.44.154.35 is the popular anonymous proxy http://www.anonymization.net, and as such is used by lots of different vandals. Anonymous proxies are regularly used for vandalism, and once we block one, the vandal just moves to another one. On meta recently we've had a bot operating to vandalise tens of articles, via an anonymous proxy.
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
-- Tim Starling
In message c0mj8b$jh3$1@sea.gmane.org, Tim Starling ts4294967296-PkbjNfxxIARBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org writes
Arwel Parry wrote
207.44.154.35? Hell, I blocked him on the Welsh Wikipedia last Wednesday for vandalising [[cy:Hafan]], the Main Page to promote some "NESARA" rubbish (it wasn't even in Welsh, which might be a little more forgivable!). He was back today doing a minor bit of vandalism to one of the date entries, and got blocked again. Is there any way to permanently block an IP address?
207.44.154.35 is the popular anonymous proxy http://www.anonymization.net, and as such is used by lots of different vandals. Anonymous proxies are regularly used for vandalism, and once we block one, the vandal just moves to another one. On meta recently we've had a bot operating to vandalise tens of articles, via an anonymous proxy.
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
No objection from me!
Tim Starling wrote:
207.44.154.35 is the popular anonymous proxy http://www.anonymization.net,
and as such is used by lots of different vandals. Anonymous proxies are regularly used for vandalism, and once we block one, the vandal just moves to another one. On meta recently we've had a bot operating to vandalise tens of articles, via an anonymous proxy.
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
-- Tim Starling
Are there any *valid* uses for anonymizing proxies, or are they used only to vandalize, troll, and dodge hard bans? Can anyone think of a situation in which someone might have a legitimate purpose for such a tool? Since I can't, I wouldn't object to a permanent block of any and all anonymous proxy services.
--Charles Podles (en:User:Mirv)
On Sat, 2004-02-14 at 21:07, Charles Podles wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
207.44.154.35 is the popular anonymous proxy http://www.anonymization.net,
and as such is used by lots of different vandals. Anonymous proxies are regularly used for vandalism, and once we block one, the vandal just moves to another one. On meta recently we've had a bot operating to vandalise tens of articles, via an anonymous proxy.
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
Are there any *valid* uses for anonymizing proxies, or are they used only to vandalize, troll, and dodge hard bans? Can anyone think of a situation in which someone might have a legitimate purpose for such a tool? Since I can't, I wouldn't object to a permanent block of any and all anonymous proxy services.
--Charles Podles (en:User:Mirv)
At the absolute least, people using an anonymous proxy should get a read-only version of the Wikipedia with a notice saying that they're missing the full functionality through using their proxy. Perhaps they could also edit talk pages, although those can also be abused.
Replying to two related comments at once. =]
Rich Holton wrote:
How about requiring users from known anonymizers to login? This still allows for legitimate uses of the anonymizers, but helps to restrict vandals.
This is already how it works: if a user is IP-banned, he or she can still log in by creating an account.
cprompt wrote:
At the absolute least, people using an anonymous proxy should get a read-only version of the Wikipedia with a notice saying that they're missing the full functionality through using their proxy. Perhaps they could also edit talk pages, although those can also be abused.
This is already how it works for all banned users: there's no facility, as far as I know, for banning people from *reading* Wikipedia, only one to ban them from *editing* it. So all our banned users can still make use of the content.
-Mark
Charles Podles wrote:
Are there any *valid* uses for anonymizing proxies, or are they used only to vandalize, troll, and dodge hard bans? Can anyone think of a situation in which someone might have a legitimate purpose for such a tool? Since I can't, I wouldn't object to a permanent block of any and all anonymous proxy services.
Some people who are engaged in controversial conversation that may endanger their lives may very well feel the need for the protection of an anonymous proxy. An example might be a Chinese dissident operating secretly from within China to rally pro-democracy, pro-freedom support overseas.
Another example might be users of a message board dealing with sensitive personal issues like rape, incest. The victims may fear further victimization if their identity is known.
None of those kind of uses applies in the case of Wikipedia. If you have such a severe personal situation that editing Wikipedia with the level of anonymity provided by an ip number is dangerous to you, well, I guess you shouldn't edit wikipedia.
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Some people who are engaged in controversial conversation that may endanger their lives may very well feel the need for the protection of an anonymous proxy. An example might be a Chinese dissident operating secretly from within China to rally pro-democracy, pro-freedom support overseas.
None of those kind of uses applies in the case of Wikipedia.
This is an incorrect argument. In fact, for someone living in a typical repressive regime, writing articles that we would all agree are NPOV is quite good enough reason to get into trouble.
Let me now reveal my personal interest in this issue. While I'm at home I use my family ISP with no special anonomity except a made-up username. When I'm at work, I use an anonymizer. I can't claim that this is seriously important, but for reasons I don't choose to explain I think I would stop writing from work if this method became unavailable. I'd be surprised if I'm alone in this.
In addition, I have not yet seen a case being made that an anonymizer is essentially different from an ISP that assigns dynamic IP numbers. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, what distinguises someone editing through an anonymizer and someone with an IP randomly assigned from a pool of IPs belonging to a large ISP? In the latter case it may be possible to determine the approximate geographical location, but why does that matter? I suggest that there is no essential difference at all.
Zero.
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--- Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Anonymous proxies are regularly used for vandalism, and once we block one, the vandal just moves to another one. On meta recently we've had a bot operating to vandalise tens of articles, via an anonymous proxy.
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
I would object to it being done without a study to determine how many genuine editors use anonymizers. There are quite legitimate possible reasons. One is an editor who writes in Wikipedia from work but doesn't want his/her employer's IP to be associated with it. Another is someone who wants to be anonymous on Wikipedia but has a fixed IP address that uniquely identifies him/her. We should not ban this practice unless we have a global policy that anonymity is forbidden.
That's not to say that I don't sympathize with the problem you describe. On the other hand, how much of this problem would exist if it wasn't for the practice of allowing people to edit articles without logging in? Every time this matter is raised there are screams about the sky falling in, but I have yet to see a single convincing reason why we can't restrict editing to logged-in users.
Zero.
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zero 0000 wrote:
--- Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com
wrote:
Anonymous proxies are regularly used for vandalism, and once we block one, the vandal just moves to another one. On meta recently we've had a bot operating to vandalise tens of articles, via an anonymous proxy.
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
I would object to it being done without a study to determine how many genuine editors use anonymizers. There are quite legitimate possible reasons. One is an editor who writes in Wikipedia from work but doesn't want his/her employer's IP to be associated with it. Another is someone who wants to be anonymous on Wikipedia but has a fixed IP address that uniquely identifies him/her.
An editor who wants to obscure their IP address can always use a transparent proxy. If the user accidentally (or by choice) edits when logged out, the address displayed publicly will be the address of the proxy. However, a sufficiently motivated developer could capture the "forwarded for" header and determine the actual address, thereby thwarting any vandalism. Developers already have a policy of not giving out IP addresses without a very good reason.
Perhaps a tutorial on transparent proxies would be helpful, if people want to do this.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who want to write exposes about their employers, of the kind that the employers would want to follow up with a subpoena for logs. Wikipedia is not the place for original research or unverifiable insider information.
We should not ban this practice unless we have a global policy that anonymity is forbidden.
There are varying degrees of anonymity. The kind of anonymity which holds up under legal requests or vandalism prevention actions by developers should be forbidden. The costs are far too high, and easily outweigh the negligible benefits. However, we should continue to allow people to keep their IP addresses hidden from the general public.
That's not to say that I don't sympathize with the problem you describe. On the other hand, how much of this problem would exist if it wasn't for the practice of allowing people to edit articles without logging in? Every time this matter is raised there are screams about the sky falling in, but I have yet to see a single convincing reason why we can't restrict editing to logged-in users.
Sunir Shah has suggested a method for making it blindingly obvious that a user is about to edit anonymously. Specifically, if the user is logged out, a username/password box is shown on the edit page. I made a mockup of this for demostration purposes, at:
http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~tstarling/EditPage_with_login.html
-- Tim Starling
How about requiring users from known anonymizers to login? This still allows for legitimate uses of the anonymizers, but helps to restrict vandals.
-Rholton (aka Anthropos)
--- zero 0000 nought_0000@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Anonymous proxies are regularly used for vandalism, and once we block
one, the vandal just
moves to another one. On meta recently we've had a
bot operating to
vandalise tens of articles, via an anonymous
proxy.
Would there be any objections to systematically
blocking all
anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
I would object to it being done without a study to determine how many genuine editors use anonymizers. There are quite legitimate possible reasons. One is an editor who writes in Wikipedia from work but doesn't want his/her employer's IP to be associated with it. Another is someone who wants to be anonymous on Wikipedia but has a fixed IP address that uniquely identifies him/her. We should not ban this practice unless we have a global policy that anonymity is forbidden.
That's not to say that I don't sympathize with the problem you describe. On the other hand, how much of this problem would exist if it wasn't for the practice of allowing people to edit articles without logging in? Every time this matter is raised there are screams about the sky falling in, but I have yet to see a single convincing reason why we can't restrict editing to logged-in users.
Zero.
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Rich Holton a écrit:
How about requiring users from known anonymizers to login? This still allows for legitimate uses of the anonymizers, but helps to restrict vandals.
I like this idea. I sometimes use anonymous proxies, sometimes transparent ones. I do not always remember to switch back to regular connection. What usually makes me think to switch is that a proxy slows down the connection quite a bit. If the proxy is good, I just forget.
I use anonymous proxies, but I am not a vandal.
If it is vandalism we are afraid of, we must admit that usually the risk is higher with anonymous editors. If the editor has an editor name, he can be banned through his name. So, the idea of restricting use of proxy only when the editor is anonymous appears to me bright. We reduce the risk of vandalism, whilst we authorized anymous proxy use for good editors.
zero 0000 wrote:
I would object to it being done without a study to determine how many genuine editors use anonymizers. There are quite legitimate possible reasons. One is an editor who writes in Wikipedia from work but doesn't want his/her employer's IP to be associated with it. Another is someone who wants to be anonymous on Wikipedia but has a fixed IP address that uniquely identifies him/her. We should not ban this practice unless we have a global policy that anonymity is forbidden.
That's not to say that I don't sympathize with the problem you describe. On the other hand, how much of this problem would exist if it wasn't for the practice of allowing people to edit articles without logging in? Every time this matter is raised there are screams about the sky falling in, but I have yet to see a single convincing reason why we can't restrict editing to logged-in users.
In this particular case, the case of "anti-capitalist", the user in question did log in.
The most convincing reason why we ought not to restrict editing to logged-in users is that it doesn't appear to solve any problems that we actually have.
--Jimbo
Tim-
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
Yes, from me. We need knowledgeable people in countries like China to be able to write about the facts without fear of ending up in a labor camp. Of course we do not allow original research -- but we do allow NPOV contributions from anyone, and blocking all anonymizers threatens to lock out certain persons from editing.
I know that these anon proxies are annoying. But I would prefer if we continued our curent whack-a-mole game in the interest of freedom of speech. Most sock puppet users don't know about anonymizers anyway.
Let's implement ways to filter out vandalism more effectively instead. The login box on the edit screen is also a good idea.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
I know that these anon proxies are annoying. But I would prefer if we continued our curent whack-a-mole game in the interest of freedom of speech. Most sock puppet users don't know about anonymizers anyway.
I agree with that, and suggest that perhaps we can set up something short of banning all anon. proxies to make the whack-a-mole game easier. Perhaps even extended to all anon. vandalism, not just anon. proxies.
One suggestion is a "Recent changes from all IPs that have, at one point or another, been banned". Would make it easy to see if any of them have returned after the expiry of the IP ban, and would make any damage they cause very transient.
-Mark
Tim Starling wrote:
Would there be any objections to systematically blocking all anonymous proxies on a site-wide basis?
There are absolutely no objections from me. I'm all for it.
In general, I like living in a world with anonymous proxies. I wish them well. There are many valid uses for them. But, writing on Wikipedia is not one of the valid uses.
--Jimbo
[[User:Alexandros]] is publishing purported private information about other users on his user page.
RickK
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This is exactly what Viajero did to me and no one batted an eyebrow. --- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
[[User:Alexandros]] is publishing purported private information about other users on his user page.
RickK
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Viajero was pointing out that you were creating multiple accounts and treating them as sock puppets for various suspect reasons. And this response is not in keeping with the apologies you're posting all over the User pages. ~~~~
Edward Senft edwardsenft@yahoo.com wrote:This is exactly what Viajero did to me and no one batted an eyebrow. --- Rick wrote:
[[User:Alexandros]] is publishing purported private information about other users on his user page.
RickK
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