[Foundation-l] Blocking on Japan

[Walter van Kalken]

It took some but for today I am unblocked do not know for how long though :(

I placed this on Japanese wikipedia today

Walter van Kalken


My name is Waerth, or in real life Walter. I am a Dutch person living in 
Thailand. I am active on the nl:, en:, af: and th: wikimedia projects. 
In the last two months everytime I try to do something here I am blocked 
... at least my ip address is blocked not my username.

Now I heard japanese wikipedia has a blocking policy for open proxies. I 
understand they give problems. But I also know some people are forced by 
their ISP's to use them. Like myself. My ISP uses it and I have no 
choice. I cannot break contract because it would cost me 6000 Thai baht. 
And my provider gives a good service, I get a discount of 20% on my 
mobile and home telephone because I use them and they are one company. 
This provider ... Asianet is used by more than 300.000 people in Thailand.

Many Thai people are genuinely interested in Japan and learning 
Japanese. Also there are many Japanese in Thailand. Some of which will 
use Asianet as well! By blocking open proxies you are shutting out 
millions of people of enjoying the Japanese wikipedia. And you are 
directly violating one of the wikimedia projects goals,,.. to be 
accessable to everybody. I can complain about this policy because I know 
how wikipedia works. Many people can not complain because they do not 
know how to do that. So they go away frustrated and you loose potential 
contributors.

How do I think you can solve this? On dutch nl: I am a sysop and a 
proponent of hard blocking policies. If somebody vandalizes they get 
blocked for 24 hours, period. I heard there are problems on Japanese 
wikipedia with getting sysops and there is a shortage of hands so that 
is why Japanese as the only wikipedia decided to block open proxies. So 
you need to get more sysops.

Being a sysop doesn't mean much. You just help to keep wikipedia clean. 
It is not about power!! All you get is some extra buttons to revert 
vandalism, secure a page and block a vandal. I want to urge on all 
active users to ask for sysop status to solve this problem! You see if 
everybody is a sysop, there are no problems with power! because 
everybody is the same .... a sysop. And everybody can spend 10 minutes a 
week on cleaning. It is not much extra work really. And than it is easy 
to unblock the open proxies. Because you have a big group of sysops to 
stop the vandals! And welcome the people that couldn't use Japanese 
wikipedia before now.