dcv wrote:

Now, what about the selective blocking. How does THAT happen -- being able to edit one page and not another, when the article I can't edit is open for editing? I've been told that such a thing is "impossible," but it's happened to me many times. Does anyone have an explanation?

That's the bit I mentioned about how each individual *page view* might come from a different AOL proxy. You're at the same address, Wikipedia's at the same address, but AOL uses a different proxy in the middle and Wikipedia sees the proxy's IP, which may be the same or may be different each time.

(Is it actually completely consistent behaviour per page? i.e., a given page is always either editable or blocked from editing? If so, that's something I didn't know before about how AOL does its thing ...)

AOL is a Headache. It's 22% of the US Internet, and that's a LOT of people. And Wikipedia, being (like AOL) one of those marvellous pieces of technology that people who can't work computers but are good at other stuff can use effectively, does in fact want those people in the pool of possible contributors. But AOL was developed as a completely separate and unrelated creature to the Internet, and you can still see the hooks and stitches and bolts and gaffa tape joining the two, and the way they do things technically looks ... weird.

- d.