[WikiEN-l] Re: a more "confident" username

[Richard Grevers]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003 15:55:03 -0500, Daniel Ehrenberg 
<name12323 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>> please describe in your own words how you think the current process of
>> page deletion, page protection and IP banning works. If you name the 
>> right
>> pages and describe the process correctly, I have no objections to making
>> you a sysop.
>
> Y'know, this isn't that good a test because I could have just looked it 
> up.  Anyway, IP banning keeps vandals out of wikipedia.  When one person 
> from a consistant IP address keeps vandalizing pages, his IP address is 
> banned by a sysop.
Daniel, I  have posted this a couple of times previously, and not yet  been 
challenged on it:   I.P.  blocking is  ineffective against dial up users 
and, to a lesser extent, broadband users. Dial up users are assigned a new 
IP No. from their I SP's  pool each time they reconnect, and seldom receive 
the same number twice. As a broadband user, I can change my IP number 
simply by cycling up the power on my router.

 An IP block should only be used if there is a pattern of abuse from the 
same IP No. over a couple of days or longer. Otherwise there is the risk of 
blocking innocent users dialing up from the same Internet provider.

Of course, it is possible that Wikipedia has a higher than usual proportion 
of users who have a fixed IP numbers because they are connecting from 
universities or similar institutions.
-- 
Richard Grevers