Okay, so I think there's a fair deal of confusion in a lot of minds as to
how this all is going to work. So let's take a fairly simple and common use case, and work out how we're going to keep these users editing.
The use case I suggest we work out is "English Wikipedia editor who lives in China and wants to edit English Wikipedia using his logged-in account."
So:
- Can this user log in on English Wikipedia? (based on this discussion, no) - Can this user log in on an HTTPS-exempt Wikipedia (based on this discussion, any Chinese or Farsi project, yes) - How will they know that they have to go there? - When they try to go from Chinese Wikipedia to English Wikipedia, what happens? - Do they get an HTTP page, or an HTTPS one? (the latter of which is not accessible) - Do they remain logged in as HTTP? or do they get logged out because the enwp page is HTTPS by default? - If they manage to get as far as English Wikipedia, they can change their user preference to HTTP once that is enabled. Will that also allow them to log in under HTTP so they don't have to go to another project?
Now, I can personally think of a dozen editors to whom this *specific* user case applies, and I know at least another dozen to whom similar user cases apply in relation to other projects - and I really don't know that many people.
I get the importance and value of this action plan. At the same time, there is no benefit to the movement to de facto block existing contributors or ghettoize new ones. Essentially banning Iranian Wikimedians from editing anything but Farsi projects is contrary to the core principles of the Wikimedia movement; deliberately creating a situation where editors need to break the law of their land to participate on Commons or Meta is a significant problem. It's bad enough when that is caused by external forces outside of WMF control; it's disturbing when it is being caused by WMF itself.
Risker