On Saturday I blocked 212.138.47.12 after this person deleted content from at
least three Islam related articles ([[Qur'an]], [[Dialect]], & [[Muslim
language]]).
It would be nice if I could have stated my reason why as part of the blocking
process and for [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] to show up in Recent Changes with
my explanation automatically in an edit comment.
I really don't think the current seemingly hush-hush setup will alleviate
fears in some that a secretive cabal has taken over the 'pedia. I know that
this is not the case and not the intention of the current setup, but others
don't.
We should be completely open with everything we do and the software needs to
be tweaked to make this natural and easy. There should also be a notice on
[[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] telling the world just how long an IP is blocked
and there should eventually be the ability for other sysops to undue an IP
ban if a mistake has been made.
On a related front: Is it possible to block the IP of a logged in user? There
is nothing stopping a vandal from logging in and doing harm. Although I am
not aware of any logged in user actually performing a systematic assault on
articles there have been several logged in users uploading copyrighted or
inappropriate material.
BTW it also would be nice to be able to more easily track what these vandals
have done so that the other damage these people have probably done can be
fixed. Otherwise many of the less obvious changes these people have made will
be obscured by someone else editing a vandalized article in order to improve
it -- thus removing their IP/user name from Recent Changes. Could
"contributions of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" automatically be generated and placed on
[[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] when xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is blocked?
As soon as we decide what to do with these issues in general this discussion
should be switched to the developer mailing list to work out the details.
maveric