Hi,
I agree with your concerns. However, currently a similar system is already active, proxyblocker. This system blocks some (I dont know how many) proxies, detected somewhere in 2005. Dont worry, no new blocks are being added, but some are still in place. The user just gets a message that he is blocked by proxyblocker. We could pick a logical name to appear in the message, that would point to meta. Maybe CrosswikiBlocker, or VandalbotBlocker or something.
Opt-in is not workable. This new thing is mainly for wiki's with no community. You can only opt in if you have a community. Hence, opt in would not work. After all, the stewards mainly have to block bots on wiki's with no or almost no normal edits. when there are people around, and they have sysops and a community, they can handle it themselves generally. However, I would plea for opt-out.
For the unblocking, I do not think that should be a major issue, if we would choose for a maximum of a block in the range of 1 day-1week. In that case, the chance that someone is affected by that block, but is not the person who was doing the malicious edits, is quite slim. Furthermore, that person will survive to wait a day or a week, no big harm done. If it proofs to be a major blocker for a specific community, ie they would only have one IP for a whole country or something, they could opt out.
BR, Eia
2008/1/31, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com:
--- Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/01/2008, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
This is the key problem. I think that unless we
are
capable of notifing all wikis of about the
workings of
this process in a language they are proficient
taking
blocks Wikimedia wide will cause a lot of harm.
Of
course an opt-in system would be very workable.
Would logging it in the local block-log system be an acceptable method of notification?
I was more thinking first about a notification that this ability even *exists* before addressing notification individual blocks. However regarding individual blocks what language are you proposing the local log entry be written in?
The only reasonable way to do this is to have the log entries be a consistent pre-arranged formula that links to a local page explaining the system in the local language. The best way to ensure that all this is set-up is to use an opt-in system that requires these things be set-up before blocks .
Anything else means some wiki(s) will wake up one day to realize there are inexplicable blocks in place. Likely with logs entries they cannot read. And very likely when they start making inquiries no one will be able to explain what has happened to them own language leading to further misunderstandings.
Seriously make a system to handle these blocks and require every wiki wishing to join the system file a bug and things will go much more smoothly. If the stewards find they are doing tedious manual blocks on a certain wiki, they can encourage the that wiki to file the bug.
Birgitte SB
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