On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 1:38 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
End of the day, though, absent blocking problematic IP
addresses and ranges
(which really can't be done unless the person blocking actually knows the
IP address or range), the socks and spammers just keep coming. This
problem isn't unique to WMF projects, and I don't believe anyone has come
up with a solution that allows open/unregistered editing without also using
IP information for blocking or limiting access.
I'm not arguing for open editing from Tor. I do think it would be nice
if global exemptions could in fact be obtained reasonably easily be
emailing stewards(a)wikimedia.org. While it's true that such requests
could be misused, the following are also true:
- We regulate the influx of requests and the exemptions we grant. This
means that we can use wait periods, interview questions, and other
mechanisms to avoid it turning into a free-for-all. This is
effectively the same mechanism
riseup.net uses to grant anonymous
email addresses.
- We know all the accounts that we have granted global exemptions to
and therefore can investigate behavior _across the group_ of Tor users
fairly easily, or even subsets of that group such as exemptions
granted in a certain time window, by a certain user, etc.
It would allow a motivated person to reset their identity and go
undetected provided they avoid the kind of articles and behaviors they
got in trouble over in the first place. It's not clear to me that the
consequences would be particularly severe or unmanageable beyond that.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation