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.
1) process is not simple to understand by the user
2) 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
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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