[Foundation-l] Dealing with interwiki disruption

[Brian McNeil]

[Mike Godwin is CC'd on this as I'm sure he simply doesn't have time to
follow everything on foundation-l, and I would in this case greatly value
his input on my proposal at the end of the email, and the policy it would
require to support it.]


As I tried to point out in my earlier message, the issue is predominantly IP
addresses, not usernames.

In an attempt to explain without giving privacy policy violating details, we
had a persistent vandal on Wikinews who was creating dodgy usernames,
getting blocked for vandalism, then coming back when the autoblock on the IP
address expired, creating a new user, and starting over. Local
administrators DO NOT KNOW THE IP; they just block the name. Where it's one
user every three or four days it is not immediately apparent this is the
same person.

I was the one who checkusered one name, on Wikinews. I'd gotten suspicious
enough to take that decision, if you don't understand how much of a grey
area this stuff is you shouldn't be commenting unless it is to ask questions
of people who do the job. The Checkuser gives the IP address and from the IP
address you can get a list of all usernames. In this case, we had, at the
limit of data retention, an "X on Wheels" account, so either Willy on Wheels
himself, or a copycat. Every single one of the dozens of accounts had been
indefinitely blocked, so this IP address was a pretty permanent home for the
vandal. There was no collateral damage in putting in place a long-term block
(in this case three months) preventing the IP from editing either logged in
or not.

This information was then shared on Checkuser-l, and checkusers on other
projects started confirming they had similar issues with the IP address;
lots of accounts that had all been blocked indefinitely for vandalism. A
general consensus formed to apply a three month block across multiple wikis.

These are the sort of cases that a global block ability would cover, and I
would restrict access to such a tool to stewards. For this case we do not
know if we got every WMF wiki, and the work... To get wikis where there is
nobody with Checkuser you're looking at a steward granting themselves the
right, applying the block, and taking the right away from themselves again.
This is a VERY time-consuming process.

So what I would propose for global blocking is that stewards have an extra
option to block an IP address (*NOT a username*) across all wikis.

The policy and guidelines for use of such a feature are the difficult bit,
and what I believe this discussion should be working towards. Yet, they need
room for application of common sense. We restrict it to Stewards, the most
trusted users. We expect proven (Checkuser confirmed) vandalism on multiple
wikis. We expect a stable IP, or a range with little or no collateral
damage. What more? Consensus from a number of checkusers on different
projects?

Some of the suggestions I've seen in this discussion are unworkable. We
promise to keep IP information out of the public eye when you register an
account. The ability to access that information is restricted, and rightly
so. Checkuser is a delegation of developer power to trusted users. So, we
can't run this on meta where everyone and their dog can access it.


Brian McNeil