[Foundation-l] Global blocking needs to be halted for now

[Birgitte SB]

--- On Tue, 9/16/08, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Global blocking needs to be halted for now
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 9:36 PM
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 9:19 PM, Alex
> <mrzmanwiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > the dave ross wrote:
> >> I think it is very unfortunate that we allow
> individuals (vandals) to have
> >> such a huge impact on both the administrative
> volunteers and the general
> >> contributing public.  This whole global IP block
> issue is a result of yet
> >> another attempt we have made to stem prolific
> vandals, and yet another
> >> attempt which causes more collateral damage than
> it prevents vandalism.
> >
> > [citation needed]
> > Is there any data behind that? Or is it just based on
> the fact that
> > there have been more complaints about collateral
> damage than there has
> > praise for stopping vandals?
> >
> 
> From what I've seen, it's been more useful than
> not.
> The few collateral damage pales in comparison with the
> amount of
> crosswiki vandalbots we've been able to stop.
> 
> But that's taken for granted (it's done, and
> because of it being done,
> nobody sees the vandalism
> and therefore the usefulness of global block is not
> apparent to the observer)
> 

I agree that it a useful and needed tool.  It is however frustrating to find out that it was not implemented as advertised.  The original discussion had also been frustrating for me as it seemed everyone misunderstood my proposal and misattributed positions to me which I did not hold.  But even when I left that discussion in frustration, I was certain that while they would not agree with my proposal they would do _something_ to handle the discussed problems.  I never imagined we would have blocks in the range of months with the majority of logs that would be meaningless even if someone thinks to put in and English translation machine and no process able to sucessfully help a blocked editor when they do manage to email the blocking steward in a common language.  Back then I was thinking the people having problems with this feature would one that didn't speak a very common language.  And the reaction to this is "file a bug for en.WS and then pester a dev"
 and "not our decision" and "we already addressed these problems extensively in implementation".  

And that of all people in Wikmedia I had to be the one emailed by someone caught in one of these blocks boggles my mind. I guess other people just don't see the problem here.  Maybe when ten editors or fifty have caught in blocks it will be seen as an issue worth addresesing.  Or maybe everyone just wants to wait for each WMF wiki to come asking about this so they can all be told individually to file a bug and find a dev who will respond to it.

Birgitte SB