--- Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
(Was Ipblock exempt proposal for en wiki)
This seems like something that, while it affects primarily en.wiki, should be run by the Foundation because of the potentially serious PR consequences (Wikipedia makes it impossible to edit from China etc.).
Hi, forgive me, but I don't quite see how you got there from here.
First, problems with editing Wikipedia from China are primarily the fault of China itself, which blocks access to Wikipedia.
Second, anonymizing proxies are not the only way in which these blocks may be bypassed.
Third, and most importantly, open proxies are *already* indefinitely hard-blocked, abuse or otherwise. It would be nice to think that they are only blocked in case of abuse, but this is not the case. All this proposal would do would allow exemptions from such hard-blocks for individual users. If this sounds controversial, bear in mind that all administrators are alrady exempt from hard-blocks. Any administrator on any project could already be editing through any hard-block blocked proxy and (short of a checkuser) nobody would be any the wiser.
In short, this proposal makes it no more "impossible to edit from China" than it is already.
-Gurch