On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote:
The problem isn't straight up vandalism (IPBE is
no help there -- the
account'd get swiftly blocked) but socking. POV warriors know how to
misuse proxies and anonymity to multiply "their" consensus, and having
IPBE and editing through any sort of anonimizing proxy (including TOR)
defeats what little means checkuser have to curb socking.
I understand. Wikimedia's current abuse prevention strategies rely on
limits to user privacy being maintained, and any technical solution
that attempts to broaden access for Tor users is unlikely to be
successful at any significant scale unless this changes, no matter how
clever a solution it is.
The Board or global community could decide that protecting users'
right to anonymity is more important than having abuse prevention
tools relying on IP disclosure, but in the absence of such a
Board-level decision or community-wide vote, I don't think the
situation relative to Tor users will change. My personal view is that
we should transition away from tools relying on IP disclosure, given
the global state of Internet surveillance and censorship which makes
tools like Tor necessary.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation