[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia-wide global blocking mechanism?

Fri Feb 1 16:41:09 UTC 2008

I would like to re-iterate as a former admin of a small wiki almost
without a community, for small wikis it looks very much reasonable. May be
not only the vandal blocking, but also cleaning up some mess like pages
created for vandalism which are tagged and need to be deleted. Larger
wikis with the community of course will most probably choose to handle it
themselves (not opt in).

Cheers,
Yaroslav

>

 no or barely a community. Most of the wiki's are small sized, and many
> show little activity. It is much easier, and would in practice be
> almost the same, to just automatically opt in projects...
>
> BR, Lodewijk
>
> 2008/2/1, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>:
>> The problem with opt-out is that a wiki must know this
>> even *exists* in order to opt-out.  So if you are
>> capable of notifing all the village pumps in a
>> language they can comprehend, this is reasonable.  If
>> you are not capable of that, opt-out is not
>> reasonable.  If this is mainly for wiki's with no
>> community, then allow stewards to "opt-in" such
>> wiki's. If they have no community, they will not
>> object.
>>
>> Birgitte SB
>>
>>
>>
>> --- effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I agree with your concerns. However, currently a
>> > similar system is
>> > already active, proxyblocker. This system blocks
>> > some (I dont know how
>> > many) proxies, detected somewhere in 2005. Dont
>> > worry, no new blocks
>> > are being added, but some are still in place. The
>> > user just gets a
>> > message that he is blocked by proxyblocker. We could
>> > pick a logical
>> > name to appear in the message, that would point to
>> > meta. Maybe
>> > CrosswikiBlocker, or VandalbotBlocker or something.
>> >
>> > Opt-in is not workable. This new thing is mainly for
>> > wiki's with no
>> > community. You can only opt in if you have a
>> > community. Hence, opt in
>> > would not work. After all, the stewards mainly have
>> > to block bots on
>> > wiki's with no or almost no normal edits. when there
>> > are people
>> > around, and they have sysops and a community, they
>> > can handle it
>> > themselves generally. However, I would plea for
>> > opt-out.
>> >
>> > For the unblocking, I do not think that should be a
>> > major issue, if we
>> > would choose for a maximum of a block in the range
>> > of 1 day-1week. In
>> > that case, the chance that someone is affected by
>> > that block, but is
>> > not the person who was doing the malicious edits, is
>> > quite slim.
>> > Furthermore, that person will survive to wait a day
>> > or a week, no big
>> > harm done. If it proofs to be a major blocker for a
>> > specific
>> > community, ie they would only have one IP for a
>> > whole country or
>> > something, they could opt out.
>> >
>> > BR, Eia
>> >
>> > 2008/1/31, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>:
>> > >
>> > > --- Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > On 31/01/2008, Birgitte SB
>> > <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
>> > > > wrote:
>> > > >
>> > > > > This is the key problem.  I think that unless
>> > we
>> > > > are
>> > > > > capable of notifing all wikis of about the
>> > > > workings of
>> > > > > this process in a language they are proficient
>> > > > taking
>> > > > > blocks Wikimedia wide will cause a lot of
>> > harm.
>> > > > Of
>> > > > > course an opt-in system would be very
>> > workable.
>> > > >
>> > > > Would logging it in the local block-log system
>> > be an
>> > > > acceptable method
>> > > > of notification?
>> > >
>> > > I was more thinking first about a notification
>> > that
>> > > this ability even *exists* before addressing
>> > > notification individual blocks. However regarding
>> > > individual blocks what language are you proposing
>> > the
>> > > local log entry be written in?
>> > >
>> > > The only reasonable way to do this is to have the
>> > log
>> > > entries be a consistent pre-arranged formula that
>> > > links to a local page explaining the system in the
>> > > local language.  The best way to ensure that all
>> > this
>> > > is set-up is to use an opt-in system that requires
>> > > these things be set-up before blocks .
>> > >
>> > > Anything else means some wiki(s) will wake up one
>> > day
>> > > to realize there are inexplicable blocks in place.
>> > > Likely with logs entries they cannot read.  And
>> > very
>> > > likely when they start making inquiries no one
>> > will be
>> > > able to explain what has happened to them own
>> > language
>> > > leading to further misunderstandings.
>> > >
>> > > Seriously make a system to handle these blocks and
>> > > require every wiki wishing to join the system file
>> > a
>> > > bug and things will go much more smoothly.  If the
>> > > stewards find they are doing tedious manual blocks
>> > on
>> > > a certain wiki, they can encourage the that wiki
>> > to
>> > > file the bug.
>> > >
>> > > Birgitte SB
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
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