On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
<nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> There must be a way that we can allow users to
work from Tor.
Not quite; if your _only_ means of access is Tor and you have no prior
editing history to point to (which may be a situation if you're in a
country where Internet access is heavily censored/monitored), this
process is currently quite restrictive in terms of actually granting
global exemptions as previously demonstrated. [1]
We've had this conversation a few times and I'd love to see creative
approaches to a trial/pilot with data driving future decisions. But
given that the global exemption process is entirely a community
(steward) process, it's not clear to me that WMF can/should do very
much here directly. I also don't think it's really a technical problem
first and foremost. It clearly is the kind of problem where people do
like to _look_ for clever technical fixes, which is why it's a
recurring topic on this list.
As a social problem, I stick with my original suggestion [2] to relax
the global exemption rules a bit, monitor globally exempt accounts for
abuse and constructive activity, and try to determine whether the
cost/benefit ratio of relaxed rules is worth it. This could be done as
a time-limited trial (say 30 days), and requires no new technology. If
the cost/benefit ratio actually is worse, there are many non-technical
ways to raise the barrier while still having a clearer path to success
for sufficiently motivated people than today (say, the well-worn tool
all bureaucracies use to manage intake, "fill out this form").
As Derric pointed out, as a policy issue it's a bit OT here, though it
requires people who understand the full technical complexity to make a
cogent case for a pilot on Meta and elsewhere. IOW -- I think many
people who've been talking on this list about this issue share the
right end goal, but it's the wrong target audience.
Erik
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-January/074049.html
[2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-January/074070.html
--
Erik Möller
VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation