[Wikitech-l] Tor and proxy_check

[Travis Derouin]

FWIW, I did some data gathering. From this list of Tor IPs:

http://proxy.org/tor.shtml

I found that there were only 84 edits on our wiki coming from these
IPs. Most of these edits were vandal edits:

Ex:

http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=149.9.0.56
http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=149.9.0.59

I can appreciate both sides of the argument in this situation, but it
does remain an issue that Tor users are able to change IP addresses
easily and remain anonymous. For smaller wikis, like ourselves, this
can be really problematic if we encounter a motivated vandal.

>From my understanding, if a registered user uses an IP that has been
blocked, they will also be blocked, correct? If a solution that works
as a compromise is to ban just the anonymous edits from this these
IPs, while allowing registered users to edit from these IPs, some sort
of changes to Mediawiki will have to be put in place to accomodate
this, as far as I know. Additionally, this doesn't prevent a vandal
from creating multiple accounts, unless there's a way to increase the
blocking on the IP to the normal, usual level so that registered users
from that IP are also blocked.

Another possibility is that registered users from these IPs will have
to confirm their registration via e-mail, if the wiki isn't configured
to do so already. It'd be nice to have this option just for this
special case.

Travis