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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