I have read all the comments and discussed privately with a few people.
There are some elements of answers that are purely in the hands of
stewards, they have to discuss and find common grounds, in particular to
implementing blocks, so that they limit damage on good people, whilst
preserving the projects from vandals.
However, the general observation is that the current system to report an
unfair block to stewards and get unblocked by them is largely broken.
1) process is not simple to understand by the user
2) complicated to implement on the steward side (requires back and forth
discussion, checking legitimacy of request, copy pasting information etc.)
3) the steward pool of volunteers is limited, whilst the stewards
willing to do that job is even smaller (I heard the VRT queue is
overflowing)
4) the process reveals IP private info
All this creates a bottleneck.
There is one path we could explore, a feature to simplify the process of
"adding legitimate users" to the Global IPblock exemptions list, in a
process inspired from the Global renamers one.
* new functionary role (eg Global IPblock exempters) : populated by
stewards, or people appointed by steward
* interface directly on wiki (bypass of VRT, bypass of copy pasting
between tools)
* a process which would NOT require revealing the IP address to the
functionary (it is sufficient that the system recognise the person is
blocked in relationship with an Open Proxy/TOR stuff)
* a process which could provide info to the functionary to very quickly
assess whether the person is a legitimate editor or not (every person
fighting vandalism know how to do that... display last contribs... block
log... number of edits... etc. or simply direct links to those info to
simplify the functionary job)
* a process allowing various "unblocking" options, day, weeks, indef
listing, pretty much as the blocking feature permit, so as to grant
indef listing to the super trustworthy individuals, and a time limited
listing to those more questionnable
* add a checkbox system where requesters can give pre-loaded reasons for
their asking (edit-a-thons etc.), which will help make the system
multilingual and language neutral for the functionary (in most cases, no
need to discuss with the user)
* add any feature necessary to limit the risk of vandals abusing the
feature (forced loging before submitting the request, capcha stuff)
In short, simply make the "add to the Global IP block exemption list"
process fluid with removal of the current bottle neck (stewards), which
in turn will be able to focus on more important security issues.
Is there any reasons why this would technically and socially not work ?
Flo
Le 22/04/2022 à 13:25, Rae Adimer via Wikimedia-l a écrit :
Hi all,
About unblocking IPs that geolocate to Africa, it’s not as though the
blocked IPs are random. The problem with these affected ISPs are that
they have many users on the same IP address. They aren’t traditional
proxies (and traditional proxies will not be unblocked, that isn’t the
issue here), they’re just poorly managed ISPs. I’m not even sure if
there would be more vandalism from unblocking these ISPs, and I think
it should be done.
“Smart blocking” would be a bad idea. It would take *a lot* of work to
implement and would be a net harm to our ability to deal with abuse. I
am strongly opposed to creating this. Also remember to a large extent
the issue with these IPs isn’t a range, it’s that there’s multiple
users on the *same* IP.
Regarding IPBE, the issue isn’t that we’re declining requests, it’s
that we don’t get to them in a timely manner. There are a lot of
requests.
I’ve tried to clear up a number of other misconceptions in a comment
on the Meta-Wiki page as well.
Best regards,
Rae
On Fri, Apr 22, 2022 at 07:03 WereSpielChequers
<[email protected]> wrote:
Yesterday I was on a conference call that included several
Nigerian Wikipedians, I was surprised at how much of their
problems editing Wikipedia were over blocks.
The English language Wikipedia doesn't have an overall problem
with editing numbers, nearly eight years on, editing volumes are
still clearly above the 2014 minima. But we do have huge
geographic skews and in particular we badly underrepresent the
English speaking parts of Africa in our community and in our
Projects. I don't know if other languages have similar issues, but
it would not surprise me.
I get that lowering our guard overall against IP vandals would
increase the workload of those who'd rather be improving
Wikipedia than clearing up after vandals. But there are a couple
of things that could fairly easily be done if we want a more
global community.
Firstly, unblock IPs that geolocate to countries where we lack
contributors.Yes we will get more vandalism in those countries,
but far far less than if we also unblocked all IPs in countries
where we have lots of editors.
Secondly, implement "smart blocking", especially with range bocks.
Yes there will still be lots of collateral damage where someone in
the same range has the same sort of device/, O/S etc as the person
who did the edit that prompted the block. But anyone in the same
range who uses a different type of hardware operating system etc
would not be caught by a smart block.
Thirdly, especially if we can't do the first two, be more liberal
with IP block exemption for accounts in countries where we lack
editors and have problems with a limited number of often blocked IPs.
WSC
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