[WikiEN-l] Blocking whole large ISPs (was The whole point of wikipedia)

[David Gerard]

Tony Sidaway wrote:
>On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Incerdenterly do you remeber Mr treason? We had to block everyone who
>> edited from AOL.

>This seems a little unlikely.


AOL is currently 22% of the US market (the "one-third" I was told [by
them ... ahem] a year ago seems to match their noted decline, since
they're not doing nearly as well selling broadband in the US as they
are in the UK), so that would be a *lot* of people to block in a go.

But, if it was that or switch the wiki to read-only, AOL would be
blocked. Same for any other large ISP. With a note from the devs to
the Foundation and a very very nice message to the abuse department of
the ISP in question asking for their help.

That AOL essentially operates an internal anonymising proxy network
only makes them a harder case to make blocks specific for. At least
with most ISPs you can narrow it down to a city's proxy if they aren't
showing you users' real IPs. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dealing_with_AOL_vandals


- d.