Those who have been around since the "early days" may remember the nearly-routine blocks of AOL proxies on English Wikipedia, which were completely ineffective in blocking vandals (they got issued a new IP in seconds) and impeded good users.  It took a long time to persuade admins and checkusers to stop those blocks.

I've been a checkuser since 2009, well before global IP blocks became available in 2011.  I've argued against routinely blocking open proxies (with the exception of Tor) ever since. There are times when it's entirely appropriate to block them - there are a few that really are frequented by bad users and spammers.  But as a routine block, I've never really heard a good case presented.  There are rarely good reasons to globally block an IP range; usually, only one or two projects are actually affected by problem editors (whether logged-in or unregistered).  I know that if I wasn't an administrator myself, I would be affected by global or local proxy blocks on a regular basis.  For a long time, I was the main CU on English Wikipedia that granted local IP block exemption; Enwiki is one of the projects where global IPBE doesn't work.  I have never found a list of projects that require local IPBE.  

I've been unsuccessful in persuading my own project to liberalize the use of IPBE, or to decrease the routine (and often automatic) blocking of "proxies".  Those proxies being blocked include just about every VPN in the world (including the one I use), as well as huge swaths of IPs that provide service to African countries and other countries with less-developed internet access.  It is definitely having an impact on the adequacy of coverage of topics related to those regions, in my opinion. 

I'm less concerned about the "protected page" issue raised by SJ.  There are generally good reasons why those pages are protected.  They have either been the long- or short-term target of repeated vandalism (e.g., biographical articles of controversial people, pages where disruptive editing has required the application of Arbcom or other discretionary sanctions, articles about today's news or are being discussed in the dark corners of social media, articles that have been subject to significant disinformation).  In almost all cases, the person trying to edit is directed to the talk page. 


Risker/Anne


On Wed, 20 Apr 2022 at 18:53, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for mentioning this Florence.  It's affected me lately too. 
I'm not sure the Wikipedia we love is still accessible as a project to most of the world, including most of us.

-- Blocking mobile users:  I was blocked from editing on mobile twice in the past two weeks.  No solution I could find to make a new account and leave a comment.  No way to contact the blocking admin w/o logging in, either.
-- Permablocked IPs.  A friend told me they were permablocked from WP.  looking into it, they were covered by a small IP range that had been blocked for a decade.  
-- Blocking VPNs, with large unhelpful banners.  I was just on the phone an hour ago w/ someone who maintains another online encyclopedia, and their normal internet access [VPN] was blocked.  It took them a minute to realize they could get access by turning it off.  Then the first three pages they thought to visit were protected against editing. (some time ago, 14% of pageviews were to protected pages; may have increased since then)
-- Getting an IP block exemption for people trying to avoid surveillance is not easy. in theory email-for-access could work, in practice most people who reasonably an exemption may not end up getting one or even hearing back. A softer-security approach would be better.

Benjamin writes:
> We would do well to remember that it was the incredibly low barrier to entry that was the key to Wikipedia's early success. 

+++.  We are raising these barriers to [apparently] try to stave off vandalism and spam.  But hard security like this can put an end to the projects, for good.  There is no more definitive end than one that seems mandated from within.  We need better automation, MLl models, sandboxing, and triage to help us increase the number of people who can edit, and can propose edits to protected pages, while decreasing the amount of vandalism and spam that is visible to the world.


On Wed, Apr 20, 2022 at 4:22 PM Benjamin Ikuta <benjaminikuta@gmail.com> wrote:



We would do well to remember that it was the incredibly low barrier to entry that was the key to Wikipedia's early success. 

I expect that even IF there's some legitimate (perhaps not unreasonably difficult, even!) way around the block, it will still discourage editing to a significant, but hard to measure, degree. 



On Apr 20, 2022, at 3:59 PM, Bence Damokos <bdamokos@gmail.com> wrote:

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




_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/UU76SJ5LZI5MA5F3WC3NSY4UMGDQTGXR/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/DURG34YMOUDJZTAMY43W3QT4XOCEZTRZ/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/3MBP32CNIAS2XCL7IDVZX5FOQL6RIE7P/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
--
-- Bence Damokos Sent from Gmail Mobile
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/KYZKVCJTKCCO5DYJFQCYWYG5D67LLN5R/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org


--
Samuel Klein          @metasj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/WAS353FTQCHINCDHLFBSN7BKCAORI5ML/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org