[WikiEN-l] Jayjg: Abusing CheckUser for political ends?

[jayjg]

On 6/17/07, elisabeth bauer <eflebeth at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2007/6/17, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> > On 6/16/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > > Anthony wrote:
> > > > On 6/15/07, Blu Aardvark <jeffrey.latham at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >> I'm relatively sure that even Jimbo himself has stated that he doesn't
> > > >> have a problem with users editing through proxies as long as they are
> > > >> doing so in good faith.
> > > >
> > > > I seem to remember this too.  Couldn't find the exact email, though.
> > >
> > > See [[Wikipedia talk:No open proxies#A general statement]].
> > >
> > "I would like this policy to be (thoughtfully, slowly, and with due
> > consideration for all valid viewpoints) revised a bit to include a
> > stronger acknowledgment that editing via open proxies can be a valid
> > thing to do."
> >
> > This is a pretty strange comment if editing via open proxies is
> > already a violation of policy.  He didn't say he thinks the policy
> > should be revised to allow editing via open proxies, but rather he
> > said he thinks it should have "a stronger acknowledgment" that this is
> > already allowed.
>
> Until 7 May 2007 the page Wikipedia:Advice to users using TOR to
> bypass the great firewall recommended users affected by a block: "Tor
> proxies can now be softblocked so logged in account users can edit via
> a tor connection. If you find an IP that has this problem please
> request an unblock to a softblock for tor."
>
> It signalled in no way that it would be a violation of policy to
> '''use''' an anonymizer - only that there could be problems to edit
> because these proxies would be routinely blocked.

That page was an essay. It wasn't even a guideline, and certainly not policy.

>
> That it would be already a violation of policy to '''use''' proxies or
> anonymizers is a fairly new interpretation of the original descriptive
> policy "open proxies may be blocked at any time" and I am not sure
> that it is a valid one.

The WP:NOP policy has, since its inception, banned open proxies from
editing Wikipedia, regardless of the specific wording.