[WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!

[Andrew Smith]

The MIT vandal might be discouraged from repeating his antics if someone
complains to MIT about him. While we don't explicitly know who it was, it
seems from what I've read that we know what IP addresses he was using at
specific times so if MIT keep track of this then they will know who he is.
Pointing out to them that if actions like these are repeated then wikipedia
may be forced to block ranges of MITs IP addresses which would adversely
affect their students as this is a useful educational resource etc might
spur them into action.

While I wouldn't like to see anything serious happen to him a warning about
his future conduct regarding university network facilities (which
universities seem quite keen to give) might encourage him not to repeat his
actions.

Just an idea..

Andrew


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 11:53 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: SERIOUS HELP NEEDED NOW!


> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Any solution that depends on Jimbo being present is IMHO
> > flawed. Jimbo is usually logged off on the weekends, for example.
>
> I agree with this.
>
> At this point, we're not talking about *policy* per se.  Policy on
> simple vandals very much empowered the sysops to ban the MIT vandal,
> it's just that a technical limitation made it impossible.  The wiki
> model of trust means that sysops can ban simple vandals without even
> talking to me about it -- this happens all the time -- but that bans
> of people who are not *just* simple vandals requires a discussion
> point.
>
> This is a check on our power (all of us, even me), to prevent the
> temptation to ban people for political disagreements.
>
> > We already have that - IP blocking. We never had a vandal that could
> > switch IPs faster than we could block them. What would be nice is
> > wildcard support at least for the fourth octet.
>
> This would have been helpful this weekend.  Obviously, wildcard
> blocked ips should be restored to use more rapidly than single ips,
> because they are much more likely to negatively impact legitimate
> users.
>
> > We should also have account
> > creation per IP throttling.
>
> That's a good idea, too, but in this *particular* case it would not
> have helped.  The MIT vandal was hopping ips fairly quickly.
>
> But a fourth octet wildcard would generally knock out an entire
> computer lab or coffee shop no problem.
>
> --Jimbo
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