Marc Veillet wrote:
Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@...> writes:
I thought the procedure was to report it to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Live_mirrors
PS In fact, that page explicitly says *not* to report them to this mailing list. We definitely need to get our message straight.
I am the user who initiated this thread; it was kindly posted by Casey B, as I was unsure as what to do. Apparently we have two distinct issues to deal with: #1: Improve the FAQ and self-help messages so that folks who wish to report or act upon these "live mirrors" would know what to do (and not add noise to this group). #2: Figure out if some form of IP-based filtering or other deterrent should be used against this particular site, and/or "live mirrors" in general.
There IS such filtering. And I've seen live mirrors getting such block. My understanding was that we still filtered them.
To address #2 first:
... and generally the devs tell me that whenever they block one, it will spring up from another IP, and that they don't bother ...
This indicates that WP tech folks are generally discouraged about implementing any IP filtering as the sites tend to work around such measures. That's a fair position: "Let's not do anything unless it becomes too much of a resource drain".
There was a discussion about their workarounds, regarding a site mirroring wikipedia by proxy. We can deny access to wikipedia for any proxy they use. Problem is, this also affects proxies used by legitimate readers.
As a occasional contributor, I certainly won't try and tell more dedicated or permanent folks what to do. My only suggestion is to maybe mine the web usage logs/stats with the goal of identifying the worst offenders and possibly target these above a particular threshold for action (GFDL emails / propose them off-line mirroring / filter to deny service or to return "bogus" pages)
If not filtering them, having some list of them for usage comparing could be good.
We might serve them pages with a notice, or advertisements (as was proposed some time ago) but the mirrors will simply strip them.
If filtering is so much a trouble for sysadmins (is it?), it could be done by stewards/meta-admins. Add to a list synchronized each X time.
PS: the image section of http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Live_mirrors should be clearer about if the live mirrors 'hotlink' or 'proxy' the images.