From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com Date: 2008/6/5 Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] TorBlock extension enabled To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
2008/6/5 Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org:
Andrew Garrett wrote:
The TorBlock extension will override local IP blocks to provide a consistent treatment of tor.
I've disabled this behaviour for now, so that we can have a more orderly phase-in period with community discussion. Admin blocks of Tor exit nodes will continue to work. The new protections which have been introduced will also work, and so Tor anonymous users on the English Wikipedia will typically see two block messages.
Thanks for holding off on this :-)
I've asked the other checkusers concerned about this to post useful information to wikitech-l about what we actually see in practice on en:wp (buckets of toxic waste through Tor, the fabulously illustrative case of Runcorn concerning softblocks, etc), so as to supply the devs with good info.
I don't have the records to do a statistically valid analysis of the use of Tor by sockpuppets and vandals as compared to other types of proxies. I'm sure that the new extension, which amounts to global "firm" blocking of Tor exits (more than a soft block but less than a hard block) will cut down on the use of Tor by casual or lazy vandals.
However, the firm block would not address the problem of determined abusive users using proxies to conceal their activities. The two most prominent cases that come to mind are Poetlister (whose sock Runcorn downgraded blocks on Tor exits so that her other socks could use them) and Mantanmoreland, who created a second account that exclusively used proxies in order to avoid checkuser confirmation. Or see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Fantevd, where a nominally good user with 6000 edits was found to be running a sock farm via open proxies, ultimately involving 24 accounts with 3000 edits to
Both of these accounts caused significant disruption and drama. Blocking all proxies that exit to Wikipedia could potentially prevent similar future situations, but not if all the puppetmaster has to do is to keep a low profile for 90 days.
And at least on enwiki, the "moral" reason for softblocking Tor exits (to allow people to edit from repressive locations, etc) has been voided by the enabling of the IP block exemption.
Gmaxwell correctly pointed out in an email to checkuser-L that if Tor exits are hardblocked, smart puppetmasters will use other proxies. True, but we can block those proxies. We *can't* block Tor exits, at least if the override behavior is in place. In fact, with the override enabled, the new extension will actually *encourage* sockpuppeteers to use Tor, because it will guarantee they will always be able to edit as long as they have the patience to wait for their socks to be autoconfirmed. They will no longer run the risk of enrolling in a commercial anonymizing service only to discover that we have blocked it.
I think this extension is a great idea and I thank all the volunteers who worked on it, but I think the override is a very bad idea.
Thatcher