I'm skeptical about solution #1 (we lack candidates rather than roles) and
#3 (without actual data is not possible to find the best solution,
yesterday alone I think I wrote 30 times through VRTS "hey, you forgot to
turn this VPN off"). Instead, I wholeheartedly endorse improving blocking
messages. I've tried to write down a stub of wizard at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Vituzzu/wizard but I lack
the time to do it). Also I'm quite skeptical about the technical support,
for the issue. This proposal
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Admins_and_patrollers/Allow_global_whitelisting_of_IPs_subject_to_global_rangeblocks
has been around since 2014, lack of global block for accounts is already a
meme.

In short, stewards and global patrollers are left alone fighting against
machines (it took ages to improve the NTSAMR spammers situation) and deeply
dedicated trolls (Rgalo and his T-MO block is immensely expensive in terms
of resources) almost by hand.

Vito

Il giorno ven 22 apr 2022 alle ore 14:43 Florence Devouard <
[email protected]> ha scritto:

> 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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