On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Aaron Adrignola <aaron.adrignola(a)gmail.com> wrote: These local blocks are made when the account has been globally locked by a steward (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SH#lock ). There can be no further undermining of local community autonomy, because the local account is blocked with or without an explicit local block. The local blocks are implemented automatically as a way for local communities to know the user is blocked, since there is no other local indication of the implicit block.

While I've had my own issues with Stewards reaching into local communities I actually think these blocks are important and very useful for our xwiki abusers. While the transparency reasoning that Pathoschild mentioned is true and important just as if not more important is the autoblocks (where at least a day or so block makes sense). Global locking does not have any autoblock like feature and we have a large portion of our xwiki abusers (and even a growing number of those who only attack only one or two sites and have figured out the global login system) who will take advantage of this and go to another wiki, create the account and SUL over to whatever project they want to attack. This is also the issue with abusive names (they often don't even edit, that isn't the point). If the stewards can't implement these autoblocks it is easier for abusers to use wikibooks as a starting point for abuse, just because they didn't edit there doesn't mean that they didn't use the project as a spring board or that they couldn't in the future since it is obvious they know the project exists and will now try it when they go trying to create new accounts. Globally locking active xwiki vandals is almost useless if they are able to just recreate accounts continually or at least until they SUL onto a wiki without local CUs so that a Steward can check and a global IP block can be implemented. James Alexander james.alexander(a)rochester.edu jamesofur(a)gmail.com On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com the _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I appreciate your detailed explanation. If a page at Meta could be created to explain this and linked to from the edit summaries this would do much to eliminate confusion amongst local administrators. I do have a concern, however. I've checked the SUL statuses for many of these accounts blocked locally and usually the local blocks only affect less than 20 wikis. What's to say that a mischievous individual couldn't register at one of the other 700 wikis without blocks/autoblock in place and do the same thing? This seems to be a problem in need of a technical solution rather than one that creates the situation that prompted my original message. As it is, it seems that even if local blocks for global locks are performed at Wikibooks (and elsewhere), you are still going to need to do a CU regardless. -- User:Adrignola

Global locking does not have any autoblock like feature and we have a large portion of our xwiki abusers (and even a growing number of those who only attack only one or two sites and have figured out the global login system) who will take advantage of this and go to another wiki, create the account and SUL over to whatever project they want to attack.