[WikiEN-l] Hardblocking usernames

[Anthony]

On 8/11/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/08/07, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > 1.  I wrote a patch, all they had to do was commit it.
> > 2.  Admins already have ipblock-exempt.
>
>
> So you consider that the devs being unwilling to alter the MediaWiki
> codebase just so you personally can edit through TOR constitutes a
> "ban"?
>
This user is not the only one who would benefit from such a patch, so
that part's a little unfair.

> I strongly suggest you are out of step with the project.
>
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-February/010659.html
>
> "In general, I like living in a world with anonymous proxies.  I wish
> them well.  There are many valid uses for them.  But, writing on
> Wikipedia is not one of the valid uses." - Jimmy Wales
>
Do I really have to dig up the quotes where he said essentially the opposite?

Eh, I will:

"Anonymous edits are mostly good, but when we look into problematic edits
in an effort to limit the waste of good people's time, a couple of
things really strongly stick out: open proxies and Tor nodes.  These are
used almost exclusively for ill, almost never for good.

So, we block them.  But I don't like this.  I want there to be ways for
people who have genuine privacy needs to be able to edit Wikipedia.

--Jimbo"