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.
It would be nice if sysops could just as easily obtain and ban the ip number for a username.
There *are* some potential political problems with this, obviously. One of the most important "checks" against sysop "power" is that by logging in, people are immune to banning unless we go through a whole political process of deciding to ban them, which is always a big deal.
And that's a good thing, I think, as uncomfortable as it is sometimes.
So, ideas?
--Jimbo
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 (thanks for doing the blocking BTW - I /really/ needed some sleep by that point). 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.
This would prevent an Admin from doing preemptive blocks of IP ranges but some users might not be comfortable with exposing their IP - even if it is only to Admins. A wealth of information can be obtained on a person once you have their IP and even though I trust that this information would not be abused by the Admins I know of several people on the en.wiki who would make more of this than it really is.
So the blocked user page could say:
14:02 Feb 8, 2003, [[SeanAvery941]] blocked 'IP1_used_by_User:Annetit' ([[contribs]]) ([[unblock]]) (Vandalized a series of pages by reverting to earlier versions. Annetit did not stop after being asked to do so and then did not stop after being warned)
Developers, of course, would still be able to see the actual IP so that the person's ISP can be notified if needed. Developers would also be the only ones with the ability to actually ban a /user name/ from being used at any IP.
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 (wikinl-l, wikifr-l, wikipl-l, wikien-l, wikieo-l, intlwiki-l - for languages without their own mailing list) or all ban notifications go to wikipedia-l (probably the best option in terms of accountability).
That would be another check on Admin power especially since it creates a permanent record of bans in a forum that can debate the merits of the ban.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
WikiKarma: I was up all night helping to clean-up after the MIT Vandal.
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)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 12:02 AM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: ips for usernames
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.
Late, the list could deciede.
But this is for important infractions.
Regards.
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)
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