On sab, 2003-02-08 at 15:02, Daniel Mayer wrote:
After I spent at least 4 hours fighting this clown when I should have been sleeping you already know where my opinion resides on the issue of whether or not to allow Admins to block the IPs of logged-in vandals ... It would be nice, if easy to implement, for an Admin to be able to block the IP a logged-in user is using without exposing their IP to the Admin.
Hmm, that would require a couple changes:
1) A column in the user table listing the last IP address used by the account (recorded with the account, not the edit, so that users' IPs aren't publicly shown or recorded in the downloadable database dumps)
2) A "secret" IP column on the ip blocks table, from which the IP addresses would be blocked but not shown.
These two columns would be blocked from sysops' SQL access, as the email and passwords are now.
I'm not sure I like it, but it is technically doable.
Another thought, I believe it's been suggested in the past, is an "IP probation" list that highlights edits from "suspicious" IPs or users. Combining this with the above (and subnet matching) would make it easier to keep track of shape-shifting troublemakers without banning legitimate edits from entire networks.
And, of course, automatic expiration of old bans. Some kid at a library who defaced a few pages shouldn't cause us to ban the whole library forever.
But of course, blocking the IP of a logged-in user needs at least a good mention on the mailing list. Perhaps whenever /any ban/ is enacted a message indicating the IP/ user name banned, the Admin doing the banning and the stated reason why the ban was implemented would be sent to either the corresponding language-specific mailing list
That's also doable, and probably a good idea in any case.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)