-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 sorry, I didn't know that was the situation for people there, in that case I think we need to come up with a better alternative solution, what, I don't know yet Walter van Kalken wrote: | kylelutze wrote: | |> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- |> Hash: SHA1 |> |> |> well, here's my question then, if you don't want to block proxies, then |> what is your suggestion to take care of the massive ammount of spam? |> wikipedia isn't ment to be an opinion based site for people to express |> their views, it's meant to be an encyclopedia, stating only the facts, |> so why would people need to be anonymous when editing or adding new |> articles, unless trolling? |> |> On another point, for blocking proxies, it may be nice to somehow take |> advantage of the abusive host blocking list (ahbl.org, hosted by |> sosdg.org). I believe that's the one for blocking proxies, etc. or there |> may be another one on that site. I personally believe that proxies |> shouldn't be used for going to wikipedia as you can hide your IP by |> creating an account. |> |> Kyle |> | Well if you propose blocking these you propose blocking ME and a couple | of hundred thousand Thai's who are with True / Asia internet as the | provider forces us to use open proxies. I am one of the most active | editors on nl.wikipedia. So they will be glad to hear you think that. | For your info I cannot change internet ISP. I wonder how many other | people this is the case for! | | Walter van Kalken (Waerth) | _______________________________________________ | foundation-l mailing list | foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org | http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l |

It took some but for today I am unblocked do not know for how long though :( I placed this on Japanese wikipedia today Walter van Kalken My name is Waerth, or in real life Walter. I am a Dutch person living in Thailand. I am active on the nl:, en:, af: and th: wikimedia projects. In the last two months everytime I try to do something here I am blocked ... at least my ip address is blocked not my username. Now I heard japanese wikipedia has a blocking policy for open proxies. I understand they give problems. But I also know some people are forced by their ISP's to use them. Like myself. My ISP uses it and I have no choice. I cannot break contract because it would cost me 6000 Thai baht. And my provider gives a good service, I get a discount of 20% on my mobile and home telephone because I use them and they are one company. This provider ... Asianet is used by more than 300.000 people in Thailand. Many Thai people are genuinely interested in Japan and learning Japanese. Also there are many Japanese in Thailand. Some of which will use Asianet as well! By blocking open proxies you are shutting out millions of people of enjoying the Japanese wikipedia. And you are directly violating one of the wikimedia projects goals,,.. to be accessable to everybody. I can complain about this policy because I know how wikipedia works. Many people can not complain because they do not know how to do that. So they go away frustrated and you loose potential contributors. How do I think you can solve this? On dutch nl: I am a sysop and a proponent of hard blocking policies. If somebody vandalizes they get blocked for 24 hours, period. I heard there are problems on Japanese wikipedia with getting sysops and there is a shortage of hands so that is why Japanese as the only wikipedia decided to block open proxies. So you need to get more sysops. Being a sysop doesn't mean much. You just help to keep wikipedia clean. It is not about power!! All you get is some extra buttons to revert vandalism, secure a page and block a vandal. I want to urge on all active users to ask for sysop status to solve this problem! You see if everybody is a sysop, there are no problems with power! because everybody is the same .... a sysop. And everybody can spend 10 minutes a week on cleaning. It is not much extra work really. And than it is easy to unblock the open proxies. Because you have a big group of sysops to stop the vandals! And welcome the people that couldn't use Japanese wikipedia before now.

Does anyone have to say anything about this? Or should I just start to collect Japanese IP-addresses to block them on nl: to get a reaction? Andre Engels On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:35:02 +0700, Walter van Kalken <walter(a)vankalken.net> wrote:

David Gerard wrote: This is not my responsibility. Wikipedia is an open project and it should be open for anyone. Waerth/Walter

If they constituted a problem on all wikipedia's they were blocked on all wiki's it is clear you do not know the situation in other countries. The provider will laugh. If I cancel my contract I have to pay 150 dollars and loose my 20% discount on my telephone lines. I do not have this kind of money. This is food for 3 weeks for me!!! Japanese wikipedia should not block them. I am not a vandal. I wrote over 500 articles on nl. I started nl.wikinews partly. I contributed articles in other languages and you give me this bull?????? Walter van Kalken

Ypu really are an ignorant DICKHEAD aren't you??

Walter van Kalken wrote: As I've been saying to Waerth on IRC - David was really trying to give advice here and not to offend. I've been hearing about this situation for a while now, and understand Waerth's deep frustration and anger. But it's new and rather peculiar sounding to most here I think. This situation with his provider is quite different from the one most people will have - but perhaps can be compared with a random user trying to persuade AOL to change its whole system because the user can't access a site they want to see. His provider simply isn't going to listen - however much sense he makes with reasons that proxies are a Bad Thing. And, as Waerth has said, he has no option of changing provider. Waerth has had to put up with regular blocks for a long time through no fault of his own. I think any of us wiki-addicts would be as upset at this. I don't know what the solution is, except for ja. being asked to change their policy here. I don't see why the blocking system cannot be told to ignore this particular set (although I don't know the technicalities of course). Note that these blocks are *not* in response to vandalism - proxies are blocked automatically even if no bad edits have come from that address. Waerth is an excellent contributor, active in foundation issues as well as local issues, it's a real shame to see him distressed by this problem. --sannse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.8 - Release Date: 14/02/05

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 07:51:46 +1100, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: He got blocked. He complained. He got unblocked and got blocked again. He complained again. He got unblocked again. He got blocked again. He complained at this list. No reaction. He complained and got unblocked and got blocked and complained and got unblocked and complained and.... And then you come and you tell him it's all his own fault for not having told some big corporation that they did wrong. I have become abusive over less than that. Andre Engels

Could we perhaps come up with some temporary work-arounds for Waerth until something more can be done? For instance, would one of the anonymizer services help? If he went through one of those, would he still show up as a open proxy? Are anonymized IP's accepted if there is no vandalism? Also, don't we allow signed-in users access even from a banned IP? Couldn't something like this be implemented? Finally, perhaps a letter from the Wikimedia Foundation to the open proxy provider would carry more weight than one from a single user. Rich Holton (en.wikipedia:User:Rholton) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

In any cases Aphaia, thanks a lot for your trying to help and being a confort for Waerth. It is great you can help communication with japanese editors. Especially after your recent problems over there. Ja is a quite faraway community and it is very hard for any of us to understand how things are going on there and how we could discuss all this with editors. Do you have suggestions ? Ant Aphaia a écrit:

David Gerard wrote: I'll vouch for both Waerth and David here. Good people, both of them among my favorites in wikipedia. Waerth was just really frustrated, and David just responded to that. I doubt very much if either of them will be mad for long. :-)

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 12:23:41 -0500, Chad Perrin <perrin(a)apotheon.com> wrote: As if that wasn't clear from the onset. It was to me. Basically, he was being told, "Change the policy of some big firm you are a little customer to, because Wikipedia isn't going to change its policy." Maybe being nice is also better than offending the very people you are supposed to be helping. I found David's posts at least as offending as Waerth's reaction to them. Andre Engels

For now I want to apologize to David Gerard. I am under a lot of stress. And since I felt that I had given the reason for me not to contact my provider nor to change it. Plus external reasons nothing to do with wikipedia I just blew up. I had no right to address him with the words I did. I am sorry for making an ass out of myself. I still stay with the words that in Thailand thinks work totally different from the west (I would say most of this part of Asia). Basicaly if you life over here and want to survive like I am doing forget about everything you learned in the west and start over. There is no such thing as consumerrights here and this really is the best deal. I pay 1.350 baht a month for a 2.5 mbps/256 kbps unlimited connection. A friend of mine pays 2.099 baht for a 256/128 kbps 100 hrs a month connection. I also get a 20% duscount on both my mobile and housephonebills as they are the same company, Thailands second biggest phone company (formerly Telecom Asia now True). The only bad thing about the deal is I cannot break contract in the first 2 years (and they do not rise the price) because then I have to pay 6000 baht. For comparison 6.000 baht is almost what I spend in a month on food. For me that is a lot of money, as I am earning Thai wages, not Western expatriate wages. With kind regards, Walter van Kalken

David Gerard a écrit: Excuse me ? I do not think such comments are very helpful. We know the power of users of internet lines in front of their isps, it is non existent, we should not expect Waerth to be able to fix this anytime soon. On the other hand, WE, as an international project, insist on being open to everyone editing. If we claim to be open, we need to just be, regardless of the inconveniences. In 4 years, we have shown that security could be ensured by a good community, in a much more efficient and positive way that any barrier. Giving up using community strength to fight vandals and replacing it by physical barriers, is somehow just giving up the concept which made our success. Till now, we have used human strength. And it works. Why should Ja fail to go on using human strength ? I do not think japanese editors should block ips preemptively, to protect themselves, just in case there might be some abuse, and consequently block good editors. It is very very very wrong.

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:13:42 +0700, Walter van Kalken <walter(a)vankalken.net> wrote: I find it rather strange for you to call for hard blocking policy. Apparently you don't mind blocking someone because there are 2 vandals on the same computer or same IP-address, and yet you are complaining for being blocked because there are 50 in the same country. Is there that much difference? Andre Engels

Tietew wrote: When we do port scans on thousands of hosts a day, other peoples' internet providers complain to our hosting provider, and we risk being shut down. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

And again I am blocked on the Japanese wikipedia. You almost think they do not want to have editors who actually make usefull edits. I might start removing interwiki links to Japanese wikipedia from nl: as they do now want strangers to edit and thus directly violate the spirit of wikipedia. Frustrated, Waerth