On 6/17/07, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com>
wrote:
Not quite. It's banned (as I understand it)
because if editor A
is editing from 12.345.678.910, and editor B is editing via TOR,
and B is suspected of being A's sockpuppet, we can't say, "Aha!
You're using the same IP address as A!" But it seems to me we
could note that they're using TOR and block them as a sockpuppet
on that basis -- *after* they're suspected/accused of being a
sockpuppet.
It's for the exact same reason, just in reverse: If an apparently
good-faith contributor is using an anonymizing service like TOR, it's
impossible to detect that they're also trolling (or whatever) from
their actual IP.
But we don't use checkuser to detect that apparently good-faith
contributors are trolling or sockpuppeting or whatever. We use
it in an attempt to confirm that apparently bad-faith editors are.