[Wikipedia-l] multi-headed VANDALS

[Stephen Gilbert]

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I just blocked 3 IPs of a vandal similar to if not
> the same as the previous 
> one. Both events involved more than one IP being
> used by a single individual.
> 
> Please see
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist
> 
> One of the messages this person left was: 
> 
> "ADMIN, you gunna block every IP im on? ROFL.. don't
> waste your time ;) <3 
> proxies ;)"
> 
> I know, we could whois the IPs and complain to the
> ISP but my partner is a 
> tech support supervisor for Earthlink and he says
> that Earthlink does not act 
> on these types of complaints. I don't know if this
> vandal's ISP will be so 
> ambivalent. Most ISPs seem to not care what their
> users do so long as EULAs 
> are not violated. 
> 
> I'm not sure what to do -- this person will almost
> certainly come back again. 
>  
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Jimbo you are an ISP owner, what do you think?
> 
> --mav

Well, we can use the old fashion UseModWiki way of
dealing with vandalism: seven to ten people watching
Recent Changes and undoing things faster than the
vandal can do them. They tend to go away when their
masterpieces don't last 30 seconds.

The problem with IP banning is not only that people
have dynamic IP numbers. It is trival to use a list of
anonymous proxy servers to change your IP after every
edit. There are even programs that will rotate through
your proxy list every thirty seconds. In this case,
banning becomes as much work as simply dogging the
person and reverting the pages.

Stephen G.

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