On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
There must be a way that we can allow users to work from Tor.
RESOLVED FIXED http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NOP
Not quite; if your _only_ means of access is Tor and you have no prior editing history to point to (which may be a situation if you're in a country where Internet access is heavily censored/monitored), this process is currently quite restrictive in terms of actually granting global exemptions as previously demonstrated. [1]
We've had this conversation a few times and I'd love to see creative approaches to a trial/pilot with data driving future decisions. But given that the global exemption process is entirely a community (steward) process, it's not clear to me that WMF can/should do very much here directly. I also don't think it's really a technical problem first and foremost. It clearly is the kind of problem where people do like to _look_ for clever technical fixes, which is why it's a recurring topic on this list.
As a social problem, I stick with my original suggestion [2] to relax the global exemption rules a bit, monitor globally exempt accounts for abuse and constructive activity, and try to determine whether the cost/benefit ratio of relaxed rules is worth it. This could be done as a time-limited trial (say 30 days), and requires no new technology. If the cost/benefit ratio actually is worse, there are many non-technical ways to raise the barrier while still having a clearer path to success for sufficiently motivated people than today (say, the well-worn tool all bureaucracies use to manage intake, "fill out this form").
As Derric pointed out, as a policy issue it's a bit OT here, though it requires people who understand the full technical complexity to make a cogent case for a pilot on Meta and elsewhere. IOW -- I think many people who've been talking on this list about this issue share the right end goal, but it's the wrong target audience.
Erik
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-January/074049.html [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-January/074070.html