On Mon, 10 Mar 2003 15:55:03 -0500, Daniel Ehrenberg name12323@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.