On dim, 2003-02-09 at 15:02, Pedro M.V. wrote:
On Saturday 08 February 2003 12:35 pm, Jimmy Wales wrote:
It sometimes happens that true vandals login. I give as an example Annetit on the [[Woman]] article. If this person was posting from an ip number, instead of a username, they would have been promptly and justly banned immediately.
Instead of ban, one could make a Prevent Suspension. The user could read, but not change the articles.
A ban on the wiki prevents only editing; a banned username or IP address can still be used to read articles.
Note that there is a _separate_ issue of completely banning an IP address from any access to the site; this is sometimes done to keep the system from being ground to a completele halt by a badly behaved "download every link on the site as fast as or faster than possible" bot, but not for editing behavior on the wiki.
Hint: if you're going to download somebody's entire site, allow several seconds between each hit. DO NOT download multiple links simulatenously. DO NOT run as rapidly as the requests can make their way down the pipe. Particularly if you know the site is dynamically generated!
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)