On 17 January 2014 16:26, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
The problem isn't straight up vandalism (IPBE is no help there -- the account'd get swiftly blocked) but socking. POV warriors know how to misuse proxies and anonymity to multiply "their" consensus, and having IPBE and editing through any sort of anonimizing proxy (including TOR) defeats what little means checkuser have to curb socking.
I understand. Wikimedia's current abuse prevention strategies rely on limits to user privacy being maintained, and any technical solution that attempts to broaden access for Tor users is unlikely to be successful at any significant scale unless this changes, no matter how clever a solution it is.
The Board or global community could decide that protecting users' right to anonymity is more important than having abuse prevention tools relying on IP disclosure, but in the absence of such a Board-level decision or community-wide vote, I don't think the situation relative to Tor users will change. My personal view is that we should transition away from tools relying on IP disclosure, given the global state of Internet surveillance and censorship which makes tools like Tor necessary.
Well, Erik, the vast majority of socks are blocked without checkuser evidence, and always have been, on all projects; the evidence is often in the edits, and doesn't need any privacy-invading tools to confirm. I get the notion of reducing or eliminating the public visibility of IP addresses and am quite supportive of it; IPv6 addresses in particular can often disclose far too much personal information.
End of the day, though, absent blocking problematic IP addresses and ranges (which really can't be done unless the person blocking actually knows the IP address or range), the socks and spammers just keep coming. This problem isn't unique to WMF projects, and I don't believe anyone has come up with a solution that allows open/unregistered editing without also using IP information for blocking or limiting access.
Risker