[Wikipedia-l] Blocking IPs and related wikiware tweaks proposal

[Daniel Lee Mayer]

On Saturday I blocked 212.138.47.12 after this person deleted content from at 
least three Islam related articles ([[Qur'an]], [[Dialect]], & [[Muslim 
language]]). 

It would be nice if I could have stated my reason why as part of the blocking 
process and for [[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] to show up in Recent Changes with 
my explanation automatically in an edit comment. 

I really don't think the current seemingly hush-hush setup will alleviate 
fears in some that a secretive cabal has taken over the 'pedia. I know that 
this is not the case and not the intention of the current setup, but others 
don't. 

We should be completely open with everything we do and the software needs to 
be tweaked to make this natural and easy. There should also be a notice on 
[[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] telling the world just how long an IP is blocked 
and there should eventually be the ability for other sysops to undue an IP 
ban if a mistake has been made.   

On a related front: Is it possible to block the IP of a logged in user? There 
is nothing stopping a vandal from logging in and doing harm. Although I am 
not aware of any logged in user actually performing a systematic assault on 
articles there have been several logged in users uploading copyrighted or 
inappropriate material.    

BTW it also would be nice to be able to more easily track what these vandals 
have done so that the other damage these people have probably done can be 
fixed. Otherwise many of the less obvious changes these people have made will 
be obscured by someone else editing a vandalized article in order to improve 
it -- thus removing their IP/user name from Recent Changes. Could 
"contributions of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" automatically be generated and placed on 
[[wikipedia:Blocked IPs]] when xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is blocked?

As soon as we decide what to do with these issues in general this discussion 
should be switched to the developer mailing list to work out the details. 

maveric