Single login is said to be coming soon, but what about unifying other things beyond just logging in?
From my experience as sysop at several Wikipedia sister projects (Polish: Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary; English Wikibooks), significant part of vandals are coming from Wikipedia, just after being blocked there. Another problem is open proxies: English Wikipedia blocks many of them, but this process is not synchronised with other language editions and sister projects and as a result spammers and vandals can play cat and mouse with admins there using IPs that are infinitely blocked on English Wikipedia since a long time. In fact, Wikimedia's open proxy policy is not working at all - blacklist on for example Meta is available, but there is a separate one on English Wikipedia and people just don't have time to apply all these blocks everywhere.
For me, it is logical that block of IP number should be common to all Wikimedia projects. Allowing this would have a large impact on number of vandalisms in sister projects.
On 10/19/06, Piotr Derbeth Kubowicz derbeth@wp.pl wrote:
For me, it is logical that block of IP number should be common to all Wikimedia projects. Allowing this would have a large impact on number of vandalisms in sister projects.
It would also result in cross-wiki block/unblock wars with no central authority to realistically appeal to. Open proxies should be dealt with on the software level via DNSBL as discussed here a while back, and there's not so much reason to carry over other blocks. If this does occur, it needs to be a (bureaucrat-settable?) local option to inherit from one specific wiki, and blocks need to be locally overridable by local admins.
On 19/10/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
It would also result in cross-wiki block/unblock wars with no central authority to realistically appeal to. Open proxies should be dealt with on the software level via DNSBL as discussed here a while back, and there's not so much reason to carry over other blocks. If this does occur, it needs to be a (bureaucrat-settable?) local option to inherit from one specific wiki, and blocks need to be locally overridable by local admins.
Perhaps after single login it may be good to have a pan-Wikimedia user control space where blocks are discussed/controlled multilingually. I've no idea who could be a member of this space (all admins on any Wikimedia project?).
Hoi, For your amusement, I have won a bet that within a month of the launch of single login people would ask for exactly this kind of functionality. You will appreciate that the policies of when to block are not the same on all projects. Even the notion of what is NPOV and what is POV is not appreciated in the same way on all Wikipedias.. The fact that there was a holocaust for instance is not accepted fact everywhere.. :( There are already functions that have been implemented that work on all projects, the spam functionality is the first that comes to mind.
Mind you, dealing uniformly with open proxies is a good thing. A project should be able to unsubscribe to such a service, this is how you can give projects their "autonomy".
Thanks, GerardM
Oldak Quill wrote:
On 19/10/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
It would also result in cross-wiki block/unblock wars with no central authority to realistically appeal to. Open proxies should be dealt with on the software level via DNSBL as discussed here a while back, and there's not so much reason to carry over other blocks. If this does occur, it needs to be a (bureaucrat-settable?) local option to inherit from one specific wiki, and blocks need to be locally overridable by local admins.
Perhaps after single login it may be good to have a pan-Wikimedia user control space where blocks are discussed/controlled multilingually. I've no idea who could be a member of this space (all admins on any Wikimedia project?).
On 10/20/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Mind you, dealing uniformly with open proxies is a good thing.
Is it? Even in China where they may need to use open proxies to edit the Chinese Wikipedia (which is still blocked for some users there)?
Wikis should be informed of users who are editing and are blocked elsewhere, but I think automatically blocking a user or IP on every wiki is often going to cause more problems than it solves.
Angela.
Angela wrote:
On 10/20/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Mind you, dealing uniformly with open proxies is a good thing.
Is it? Even in China where they may need to use open proxies to edit the Chinese Wikipedia (which is still blocked for some users there)?
Surely this applies to all Wikimedia projects equally, not just the Chinese Wikipedia.
On 20/10/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
Given the competence of the average admin on enwiki, I think this is a phenomenally bad idea. Giving select admins the authority to impose all-project blocks for IP addresses or even named users is probably something that is needed, but this is a very powerful privilege and should be extended on a very limited basis with input from multiple projects. Passing a beauty contest on enwiki should not give one the power to block people on commons, dewikt, or frwikisource.
Thinking about it it probably is a bad idea although there are still other options to explore: pan-Wikimedia blockers drawn from the Wikimedia admin population based on history and whatnot.
I would support the Foundation providing an open proxy listing service
to which individual projects could subscribe to or not depending on their particular circumstances. Most projects would subscribe, perhaps with certain exclusions; some, like zhwiki, would probably not subscribe. It would be a project-by-project decision whether or not to subscribe. A DNSBL is the obvious way to do this. Selecting people to maintain this list should be done on a multiproject basis, similar to how stewards or meta admins are elected, or alternatively selected directly by the Foundation.
I think there should also be better communication between projects about vandals. At the moment there is not much warning that a particular IP/username has raised problems on other projects. With single login it will be easier to vandalise from project-to-project. Some kind of meta communication would help tackle these kinds of vandals far more quickly and effectively.
On 21/10/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Would a "two strikes and you're out" policy (get blocked on two of the sites, get blocked on them all) help?
Two strikes would probably be too few. Admins on one project (say en.wikipedia) are often admins on another (commons). Problem admins having a issues with a user they are more likely to track them down on the other project and block them (particularly if they know that doing so will block the user across Wikimedia). Taking into account who has blocked the user on each project would help.
On 21/10/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Surely this applies to all Wikimedia projects equally, not just the Chinese Wikipedia.
Of course people should be able to edit from open proxies for this reason (ie. just block anon editing).
I am talking only about common block for IP numbers, not users. Moreover, I am strongly against blocking user's account on one project for things he has done on another project. So please do not make off topic and discuss what NPOV is and what it is not, because we are on technical list.
With IP numbers the situation is completely different. Common behaviour of occasional vandals on English Wikipedia is switching to (for example) Wikibooks immediately after having IP blocked and going on with vandalising random pages. This is really hard to catch by sysops and could be very easily stopped by automated propagating IP number block to all available Wikimedia projects. Whether it would be done by creating common database (similar to Commons) or by a bot similar to CommonsTicker - it's irrelevant for administrators of projects suffering from vandals coming directly from Wikipedia. In most cases 2-hour block restricted to anonymous users is just enough to stop vandal.
Given the competence of the average admin on enwiki, I think this is a phenomenally bad idea. Giving select admins the authority to impose all-project blocks for IP addresses or even named users is probably something that is needed, but this is a very powerful privilege and should be extended on a very limited basis with input from multiple projects. Passing a beauty contest on enwiki should not give one the power to block people on commons, dewikt, or frwikisource.
I would support the Foundation providing an open proxy listing service to which individual projects could subscribe to or not depending on their particular circumstances. Most projects would subscribe, perhaps with certain exclusions; some, like zhwiki, would probably not subscribe. It would be a project-by-project decision whether or not to subscribe. A DNSBL is the obvious way to do this. Selecting people to maintain this list should be done on a multiproject basis, similar to how stewards or meta admins are elected, or alternatively selected directly by the Foundation.
In any case, this is 10% technical and 90% policy, which suggests that some other mailing list is more appropriate for the discussion.
Kelly
On 10/20/06, Piotr Derbeth Kubowicz derbeth@wp.pl wrote:
I am talking only about common block for IP numbers, not users. Moreover, I am strongly against blocking user's account on one project for things he has done on another project. So please do not make off topic and discuss what NPOV is and what it is not, because we are on technical list.
With IP numbers the situation is completely different. Common behaviour of occasional vandals on English Wikipedia is switching to (for example) Wikibooks immediately after having IP blocked and going on with vandalising random pages. This is really hard to catch by sysops and could be very easily stopped by automated propagating IP number block to all available Wikimedia projects. Whether it would be done by creating common database (similar to Commons) or by a bot similar to CommonsTicker - it's irrelevant for administrators of projects suffering from vandals coming directly from Wikipedia. In most cases 2-hour block restricted to anonymous users is just enough to stop vandal.
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On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:40:53 +0200, Kelly Martin wrote:
I would support the Foundation providing an open proxy listing service to which individual projects could subscribe to or not depending on their particular circumstances.
Ok, but this is not a solution for problem of occasional vandals from shared IP (like AOL) that are blocked for a short time on Wikipedia, then come to Wikibooks, are blocked, so go to Wikinews, got blocked again, so switch to Wiktionary and so on - everything from the same IP in a few minutes. If the first block on Wikipedia was working on another projects, such situations would not happen. For me, the current state is pathological - an IP gets blocked on Wikipedia due to vandalism, but the guy behind it has still possibility to devastate any other project.
On 10/20/06, Derbeth derbeth@wp.pl wrote:
Ok, but this is not a solution for problem of occasional vandals from shared IP (like AOL) that are blocked for a short time on Wikipedia, then come to Wikibooks, are blocked, so go to Wikinews, got blocked again, so switch to Wiktionary and so on - everything from the same IP in a few minutes. If the first block on Wikipedia
Would a "two strikes and you're out" policy (get blocked on two of the sites, get blocked on them all) help?
Steve
Dnia Sat, 21 Oct 2006 08:21:27 +0200, Steve Bennett napisał(a):
Would a "two strikes and you're out" policy (get blocked on two of the sites, get blocked on them all) help?
Steve
I would prefer another option: block for two hours or less with only anonymous users blocked applies to all projects. Large part of acts of vandalism fall under this criterium.
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