"Brion Vibber" wrote in message news:4294D865.4050108@pobox.com...
Phil Boswell wrote:
Does blocking an open proxy stop logged-in users as well?
Sounds like a bug to me: surely this isn't how it's **meant** to happen?
You *do* realize it's trivial to create an account, and that not blocking logins would completely nullify any benefit of blocking the IP, right?
Not exactly: it would transform the problem of an anonymous user hitting-and-running through what I presume would be a series of IP addresses into the different problem of a logged-in user who can be blocked individually.
OK, so they could create a whole load of them, but in the meantime the well-behaved users using that range of IP addresses would still be able to gain access to the wiki. And the process of detecting sock-puppets and blocking them is well-known...a pain-in-the-fundament but well-known.
Maybe there could be some sort of alarm when a new account is created through an IP address known to be a problem?
Is there a log of new accounts? Is it possible for someone **somewhere** to note which IP address was used to create an account?
SideNote: I just looked at [[en:Special:Listusers]]. The first 15 entries have names which the wiki apparently can't parse since they just show as "User:" with no linking. From there up to #225 the names begin with punctuation and several are IMNSHO clear candidates for WP:RFC (I'm not alone, the first one I checked has been blocked :-). Are there tools for clearing this sort of thing up? Also, this page would be more useful if it listed, for example, first edit and most recent edit...possibly "blocked" status also. Are these data which would be available if someone yelled "write it yourself" at me?