Hi Flo.
Viewing the IP address involved is necessary. There's a reason why Stewards and CheckUsers are generally the ones involved in handling IPBE requests. There's differences between people trying to use open proxies to edit through the Great Firewall of China, people caught in IPv4 blocks from CGNAT-using ISPs, people whose residential ranges are blocked as p2p proxies, and people who just want to edit with a proxy. Often there are rangeblocks with specific circumstances behind it, such as usage by LTAs or being a specific type of proxy. Knowing this background is necessary.
It would be incredibly helpful if there was a way to send in IPBE requests on-wiki and for Stewards to be able to respond to it on-wiki, confidentially. Where those affected can input the affected IP address and reason, and Stewards can answer the queue there quickly and easily. We can handle the quantity of requests if the process is workable.
I'm also wondering who the people discussed with privately are. Your suggestion here is one of the most feasible I've seen, and as far as I can tell there are very few people asking Stewards directly for input on this. I've seen a lot of comments which are misinformed about what is happening, why, and what is a feasible fix.
My message on the Meta-Wiki page outlines my views on this. Optimally, the WMF would discuss with Stewards ways to create a better system for this, and implement it. New problems, old tech.
Best regards, Rae
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ User:Vermont https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Vermont on Wikimedia projects they/them/theirs (why pronouns matter https://www.mypronouns.org/what-and-why)
On Fri, Apr 22, 2022 at 8:43 AM Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com wrote:
I have read all the comments and discussed privately with a few people.
There are some elements of answers that are purely in the hands of stewards, they have to discuss and find common grounds, in particular to implementing blocks, so that they limit damage on good people, whilst preserving the projects from vandals.
However, the general observation is that the current system to report an unfair block to stewards and get unblocked by them is largely broken.
- process is not simple to understand by the user
- complicated to implement on the steward side (requires back and forth
discussion, checking legitimacy of request, copy pasting information etc.) 3) the steward pool of volunteers is limited, whilst the stewards willing to do that job is even smaller (I heard the VRT queue is overflowing) 4) the process reveals IP private info All this creates a bottleneck.
There is one path we could explore, a feature to simplify the process of "adding legitimate users" to the Global IPblock exemptions list, in a process inspired from the Global renamers one.
- new functionary role (eg Global IPblock exempters) : populated by
stewards, or people appointed by steward
- interface directly on wiki (bypass of VRT, bypass of copy pasting
between tools)
- a process which would NOT require revealing the IP address to the
functionary (it is sufficient that the system recognise the person is blocked in relationship with an Open Proxy/TOR stuff)
- a process which could provide info to the functionary to very quickly
assess whether the person is a legitimate editor or not (every person fighting vandalism know how to do that... display last contribs... block log... number of edits... etc. or simply direct links to those info to simplify the functionary job)
- a process allowing various "unblocking" options, day, weeks, indef
listing, pretty much as the blocking feature permit, so as to grant indef listing to the super trustworthy individuals, and a time limited listing to those more questionnable
- add a checkbox system where requesters can give pre-loaded reasons for
their asking (edit-a-thons etc.), which will help make the system multilingual and language neutral for the functionary (in most cases, no need to discuss with the user)
- add any feature necessary to limit the risk of vandals abusing the
feature (forced loging before submitting the request, capcha stuff)
In short, simply make the "add to the Global IP block exemption list" process fluid with removal of the current bottle neck (stewards), which in turn will be able to focus on more important security issues.
Is there any reasons why this would technically and socially not work ?
Flo
Le 22/04/2022 à 13:25, Rae Adimer via Wikimedia-l a écrit :
Hi all,
About unblocking IPs that geolocate to Africa, it’s not as though the blocked IPs are random. The problem with these affected ISPs are that they have many users on the same IP address. They aren’t traditional proxies (and traditional proxies will not be unblocked, that isn’t the issue here), they’re just poorly managed ISPs. I’m not even sure if there would be more vandalism from unblocking these ISPs, and I think it should be done.
“Smart blocking” would be a bad idea. It would take *a lot* of work to implement and would be a net harm to our ability to deal with abuse. I am strongly opposed to creating this. Also remember to a large extent the issue with these IPs isn’t a range, it’s that there’s multiple users on the *same* IP.
Regarding IPBE, the issue isn’t that we’re declining requests, it’s that we don’t get to them in a timely manner. There are a lot of requests.
I’ve tried to clear up a number of other misconceptions in a comment on the Meta-Wiki page as well.
Best regards, Rae
On Fri, Apr 22, 2022 at 07:03 WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
Yesterday I was on a conference call that included several Nigerian Wikipedians, I was surprised at how much of their problems editing Wikipedia were over blocks.
The English language Wikipedia doesn't have an overall problem with editing numbers, nearly eight years on, editing volumes are still clearly above the 2014 minima. But we do have huge geographic skews and in particular we badly underrepresent the English speaking parts of Africa in our community and in our Projects. I don't know if other languages have similar issues, but it would not surprise me.
I get that lowering our guard overall against IP vandals would increase the workload of those who'd rather be improving Wikipedia than clearing up after vandals. But there are a couple of things that could fairly easily be done if we want a more global community.
Firstly, unblock IPs that geolocate to countries where we lack contributors.Yes we will get more vandalism in those countries, but far far less than if we also unblocked all IPs in countries where we have lots of editors.
Secondly, implement "smart blocking", especially with range bocks. Yes there will still be lots of collateral damage where someone in the same range has the same sort of device/, O/S etc as the person who did the edit that prompted the block. But anyone in the same range who uses a different type of hardware operating system etc would not be caught by a smart block.
Thirdly, especially if we can't do the first two, be more liberal with IP block exemption for accounts in countries where we lack editors and have problems with a limited number of often blocked IPs.
WSC
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