On 4 December 2012 13:12, Powers LtPowers_Wiki@rochester.rr.com wrote:
Why do not you just block the ip and forget about them? It is clear that they are not going to contribute constructively.
Cheers Yaroslav
That's a good question.
Our blocking policy specifically states that blocking is a last resort, and represents a failure of the community. This is especially true with IP addresses, which may be shared; blocking them may also catch legitimate users.
I was first surprised when I read this policy, coming from the English Wikipedia where all the admins are trigger happy in terms of blocking. ;-) However, I see that there is currently a ban nomination for IBobi at http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:User_ban_nominations#Outstanding_no..., which I believe which appears to have support thus far in favour of banning IBobi.
And of course there's the technical issue of determining which IPs to block.
In terms of determining which IPs to block, as the ban nomination page states, on the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation sister projects we have an extension installed, "CheckUser" that allows a user with elevated permissions, i.e. "checkusers" to find the IPs of any user account that they can choose to perform a checkuser on. These users are highly trusted, having been appointed either by strong community consensus in communities with out an Arbritration Committee or by ArbCom for those that have one (such as the English Wikipedia). You can read more about our checkuser policies at Meta-Wiki, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_policy.
The checkuser user right exists on Wikivoyage at present, but no users (as far as I know) have been appointed as checkusers. A number of our checkusers (and indeed admins) are quite experienced in terms of knowing what IP ranges to block and what potential collateral damage there may be, if more information about the technicalities is required I can ask one of them to comment on the ban nomination page?