“the block message only shows up when I try to save the page”

That is just inexcusable. Symbolic of complete indifference to other people’s time wasted. Why would a new editor treated like this ever bother to try again?  Block message with explanation and alternatives (with links) should come up when the person tries to open to edit, and page should not open to edit.

 

Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that “anyone” can edit if:

*very long list of conditions that apply…

*list of hoops that you must jump through to get access…

 

Cheers, Peter

 

From: Bence Damokos [mailto:bdamokos@gmail.com]
Sent: 20 April 2022 21:59
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

 

Beyond the mentioned countries, this is also affecting those who have opted in to Apple’s Private Relay, which I expect will be somewhat popular/default once out of beta status. I myself am unable to edit for example - and half the time I am not bothered to workaround the issue and just give up the edit. 

 

Also, annoyingly, the block message only shows up when I try to save the page (at least on mobile), not when I start the edit, again, leading to unnecessary frustration.

 

Best regards,

Bence

On Wed, 20 Apr 2022 at 20:42, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

Yes, it's getting frequent and not only from people in Africa.

 

I ended up to trouble-shoot these problems by mails or direct messaging on Facebook more and and more frequently, maybe with simple users who just know me or have my contact. Sometimes it looks like sharing the duties of a sysop or a steward with no power.

 

It's getting less and less clear how pros and cons are calculated exactly, but you just get the feeling that some users really care a lot about this policy and you just have to deal with the consequences, no matter how time-consuming it's getting.

 

A.M.

 

Il mercoledì 20 aprile 2022, 20:34:36 CEST, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> ha scritto:

 

 

I don't have a solution, but I just wanted to confirm that I agree fully with the description of the problem. I hear that this happens to people from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and some other countries almost every day.

 

The first time I heard about it was actually around 2018 or so, but during the last year it has become unbearably frequent.

 

A smarter solution is needed. I tried talking to stewards about this several times, and they always say something like "we know that this affects certain countries badly, and we know that the technology has changed since the mid-2000s, but we absolutely cannot allow open proxies because it would immediately unleash horrible vandalism on all the wikis". I'm sure they mean well, but this is not sustainable.


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore

 

 

‫בתאריך יום ד׳, 20 באפר׳ 2022 ב-21:21 מאת ‪Florence Devouard‏ <‪fdevouard@gmail.com‏>:

Hello friends

Short version : We need to find solutions to avoid so many africans being globally IP blocked due to our No Open Proxies policy.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking

 

Long version :

I'd like to raise attention on an issue, which has been getting worse in the past couple of weeks/months.

Increasing number of editors getting blocked due to the No Open Proxies policy [1]
In particular africans.

In February 2004, the decision was made to block open proxies on Meta and all other Wikimedia projects. 

According to the no open proxies policy : Publicly available proxies (including paid proxies) may be blocked for any period at any time. While this may affect legitimate users, they are not the intended targets and may freely use proxies until those are blocked [...]

Non-static IP addresses or hosts that are otherwise not permanent proxies should typically be blocked for a shorter period of time, as it is likely the IP address will eventually be transferred or dynamically reassigned, or the open proxy closed. Once closed, the IP address should be unblocked.

According to the policy page, « the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of an open proxy with the IP block exempt flag. This is granted on local projects by administrators and globally by stewards. »

 

I repeat -----> ... legitimate users... may freely use proxies until those are blocked. the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of an open proxy with the IP block exempt flag <------ it is not illegal to edit using an open proxy


Most editors though... have no idea whatsoever what an open proxy is. They do not understand well what to do when they are blocked.

In the past few weeks, the number of African editors reporting being blocked due to open proxy has been VERY significantly increasing.
New editors just as old timers.
Unexperienced editors but also staff members, president of usergroups, organizers of edit-a-thons and various wikimedia initiatives.
At home, but also during events organized with usergroup members or trainees, during edit-a-thons, photo uploads sessions etc.

It is NOT the occasional highly unlikely situation. This has become a regular occurence.
There are cases and complains every week. Not one complaint per week. Several complaints per week.
This is irritating. This is offending. This is stressful. This is disrupting activities organized in good faith by good people, activities set-up with our donors funds. And the disruption is primarlly taking place in a geographical region supposingly to be nurtured (per our strategy for diversity, equity, inclusion blahblahblah).

 

The open proxy policy page suggests that, should a person be unfairly blocked, it is recommended

·     * to privately email stewards(_AT_)wikimedia.org.

·     * or alternatively, to post a request (if able to edit, if the editor doesn't mind sharing their IP for global blocks or their reasons to desire privacy (for Tor usage)).

·     * the current message displayed to the blocked editor also suggest contacting User:Tks4Fish. This editor is involved in vandalism fighting and is probably the user blocking open proxies IPs the most. See log

 

So...
Option 1: contacting stewards : it seems that they are not answering. Or not quickly. Or requesting lengthy justifications before adding people to IP block exemption list.
Option 2: posting a request for unblock on meta. For those who want to look at the process, I suggest looking at it [3] and think hard about how a new editor would feel. This is simply incredibly complicated
Option 3 : user:TksFish answers... sometimes...

As a consequence, most editors concerned with those global blocks... stay blocked several days.

We do not know know why the situation has rapidly got worse recently. But it got worse. And the reports are spilling all over.

We started collecting negative experiences on this page [4].
Please note that people who added their names here are not random newbies. They are known and respected members of our community, often leaders of activities and/or representant of their usergroups, who are confronted to this situation on a REGULAR basis.

I do not know how this can be fixed. Should we slow down open proxy blocking ? Should we add a mecanism and process for an easier and quicker IP block exemption process post-blocking ? Should we improve a process for our editors to pre-emptively be added to this IP block exemption list ? Or what ? I do not know what's the strategy to fix that. But there is a problem. Who should that problem be addressed to ? Who has solutions ?

Flo 

 

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/Tks4Fish

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global_permissions#Requests_for_global_IP_block_exemption

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking

 

 

 

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-- Bence Damokos Sent from Gmail Mobile

 

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