I've always thought this justification fraught with bias.
Vandalism is highly visible: you can point to it and say it's a problem. And it's
true!
But the *lack* of contributions is of course, by nature, invisible.
On Apr 20, 2022, at 2:33 PM, "Amir E. Aharoni"
<amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
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(a)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
stewardswikimedia.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#Request…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking
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