[Wikimedia-l] MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group annual report 2021

[Markus Glaser via Wikimedia-l]

Dear all,

it is my pleasure to announce the publication of our annual report for 2021. 
Please find it here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group/Annual_Report_2021

Best,

Markus Glaser
User:Mglaser

MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

[dhorn]

Paulo, you're right — I'm sorry, I shouldn't use "anonymous" to describe 
unregistered editing. I misspoke on that.

Danny
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Next steps: Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines

[Andreas Kolbe]

Hi Stella,

You say, "It is also worth noting that currently, ENWP has rules regarding
private information and doxxing that go into more detail than the UCoC
Phase 1 text (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Posting_of_personal_information).
The UCoC is meant to be a minimum base for behavior (both positive and
negative) to help communities build upon."

The problem is that as far as I can see, English Wikipedia policies and
guidelines do not meet the "minimum" standard asked for by the UCoC.

English Wikipedia policies and guidelines allow things the UCoC forbids,
and do not demand things asked for by the UCoC. To my mind it is now
entirely unclear whether or not people can, or will be able to do an end
run around English Wikipedia policies and guidelines by applying for UCoC
rulings where no English Wikipedia policy or guideline would apply, and
whether or not the UCoC is intended to overrule English Wikipedia policies
and guidlines.

Andreas

On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 5:44 PM Stella Ng  wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> Speaking as the senior manager of the team whose role it was to support
> the UCoC drafters:  we should remember that high level, section 3 of the
> UCoC (Unacceptable Behavior)  is meant to address bad behavior. When
> writing this, the drafting committee was thinking specifically of the
> potential of harm, such as physical or reputational as well the context and
> intent behind the behavior.
>
> It is also worth noting that currently, ENWP has rules regarding private
> information and doxxing that go into more detail than the UCoC Phase 1 text
> (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Posting_of_personal_information).
> The UCoC is meant to be a minimum base for behavior (both positive and
> negative) to help communities build upon.
>
> As noted previously, there will be a review of not only the UCoC but the
> Enforcement Guidelines one year after ratification is completed. During
> that period, feedback, as well as examples will be worked through to ensure
> that both texts are fit for purpose and lessen any ambiguity folks may be
> having issues with.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Stella
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 12:03 PM Carla Toro 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I'm writing this on a personal note, but just to clarify, Doxing is under
>> the section of harassment, which is aligned with its definition of being
>> the act of revealing identifying information about someone online *with
>> the clear intention of harassing someone*. And I think I can use the
>> examples given by Andreas to throw light on what doxing is and what is not.
>>
>> 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_staffer_edits
>> This reveals contributors' employer and address, very likely without
>> their consent, on a page in Wikipedia. It's in direct contravention of the
>> above bullet point. Should this page exist?
>> - This is not Doxing, this is just a mechanism of transparency with the
>> government.
>>
>> 2.
>> https://www.vox.com/2014/7/18/5916005/malaysian-crash-mh17-russia-ukraine-wikipedia-edit
>> This press article states that someone at a Russian TV network edited
>> Wikipedia to blame the MH17 plane crash on Ukraine. This therefore reveals
>> a contributor's employer and possibly also their work address. Is this
>> article harassment? Should any Wikipedians who may have tipped off the
>> journalist be punished?
>> - Not precisely Doxing. It may be harassment (maybe unintentionally) but
>> not from a Wikimedian. The article clearly states "Within an hour, someone
>> with an IP address that puts them at VGTRK's Moscow offices changed it to
>> say "The plane was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers."". So this was the
>> fault of the press by making the conection of the edit and the IP and the
>> disclousure of the information.
>>
>> 3.
>> https://www.dailydot.com/irl/wikipedia-sockpuppet-investigation-largest-network-history-wiki-pr/
>> This press article – which was instrumental in triggering a significant
>> change in the WMF terms of use, well before your time with the WMF of
>> course – comments on various contributors' employer, again in direct
>> contravention of the Doxing bullet point. Is this harassment? Should the
>> Wikipedians who "shared information concerning other contributors'
>> Wikimedia activity outside the projects", by speaking to the writer of this
>> article, be sanctioned under UCoC if they did the same today?
>> - They all used their users name and agree to that interview. They
>> weren't sharing information to harrass someone, they were talking about
>> their own investigation. If this was the case today, I think that they
>> should not be sanctioned but they should be carefull if it is an on going
>> investigation.
>>
>> 4. https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgbqjb/is-wikipedia-for-sale
>> In this article the late Kevin Gorman – who died much too young! – as
>> well as James Hare and a WMF staffer again "share information concerning
>> other 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Next steps: Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines

[Maggie Dennis]

Hello, Lane.

The Enforcement Guidelines discussion is being extended, but the Universal
Code of Conduct
 is
already policy, active on Wikimedia projects under the Terms of Use via
provision 11
.
The Enforcement Guidelines are intended to provide a more universal
framework of enforcement, but individual projects are already enforcing the
code locally, and the Foundation has been acting under its provisions in
its own investigations since its ratification.

In terms of how people affected by unacceptable behavior should approach
it, many communities already have protocols for handling behavioral issues,
with local functionaries and administrators helping to enforce those. Where
those do not exist, there are some global systems
 and, where
those may not be appropriate, the Foundation’s office actions
 may provide necessary
support.

I do apologize if I’m explaining some things you already know; I am also
thinking about what others in this channel may or may not be aware of. :)

There will be a timeline update for the next phase of the project very
soon. The teams are in the final stages of preparing a proposal for the
Board.

Best,

Maggie


On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 6:26 AM Lane Chance  wrote:

> Hi, from the statements so far, there seems no planned date for
> implementation. By this I mean a date from which an affected volunteer can
> raise a complaint.
>
> Given the extended redrafting, "conversations" and having another vote, is
> it fair to estimate that the earliest for UCoC cases would be sometime in
> 2023, probably more than 12 months from now?
>
> In practice would this also mean that people affected by unacceptable
> behaviour in 2021 and probably throughout 2022 should give up on any plan
> they may have to lodge a UCoC case?
>
> Lane
>
> On Mon, 2 May 2022 at 17:44, Stella Ng  wrote:
>
>> Hello Everyone,
>>
>> Speaking as the senior manager of the team whose role it was to support
>> the UCoC drafters:  we should remember that high level, section 3 of the
>> UCoC (Unacceptable Behavior)  is meant to address bad behavior. When
>> writing this, the drafting committee was thinking specifically of the
>> potential of harm, such as physical or reputational as well the context and
>> intent behind the behavior.
>>
>> It is also worth noting that currently, ENWP has rules regarding private
>> information and doxxing that go into more detail than the UCoC Phase 1 text
>> (
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Posting_of_personal_information).
>> The UCoC is meant to be a minimum base for behavior (both positive and
>> negative) to help communities build upon.
>>
>> As noted previously, there will be a review of not only the UCoC but the
>> Enforcement Guidelines one year after ratification is completed. During
>> that period, feedback, as well as examples will be worked through to ensure
>> that both texts are fit for purpose and lessen any ambiguity folks may be
>> having issues with.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Stella
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 12:03 PM Carla Toro 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> I'm writing this on a personal note, but just to clarify, Doxing is
>>> under the section of harassment, which is aligned with its definition of
>>> being the act of revealing identifying information about someone online 
>>> *with
>>> the clear intention of harassing someone*. And I think I can use the
>>> examples given by Andreas to throw light on what doxing is and what is not.
>>>
>>> 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_staffer_edits
>>> This reveals contributors' employer and address, very likely without
>>> their consent, on a page in Wikipedia. It's in direct contravention of the
>>> above bullet point. Should this page exist?
>>> - This is not Doxing, this is just a mechanism of transparency with the
>>> government.
>>>
>>> 2.
>>> https://www.vox.com/2014/7/18/5916005/malaysian-crash-mh17-russia-ukraine-wikipedia-edit
>>> This press article states that someone at a Russian TV network edited
>>> Wikipedia to blame the MH17 plane crash on Ukraine. This therefore reveals
>>> a contributor's employer and possibly also their work address. Is this
>>> article harassment? Should any Wikipedians who may have tipped off the
>>> journalist be punished?
>>> - Not precisely Doxing. It may be harassment (maybe unintentionally) but
>>> not from a Wikimedian. The article clearly states "Within an hour, someone
>>> with an IP address that puts them at VGTRK's Moscow offices changed it to
>>> say "The plane was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers."". So this was the
>>> fault of the press by making the conection of the edit and the IP and the
>>> disclousure of the information.
>>>
>>> 3.
>>> 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

[Benjamin Ikuta]

Hi, can I help? 



> On May 3, 2022, at 8:25 AM, Peter Southwood  
> wrote:
> 
> And who will do all this tedious work? Cheers, Peter
>   <>
> From: g...@tiscali.it  [mailto:g...@tiscali.it 
> ] 
> Sent: 01 May 2022 20:01
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Open proxies and IP blocking
>  
> Another somewhat obvious solution: instead, or before, of blocking, make the 
> edits coming from one of the (too) dangerous IPs go through a reviewal 
> process before getting published; hopefully a very quick one. 
> In theory this would be against the original Wikipedia ideas, but I saw that 
> it's something already practiced in some cases, and anyway blocking seems 
> enormously worse than requiring a review before publication. 
> 
> By the way, I now realized that the current Wikipedia is already very 
> different than what I believed, and it works just because it does *not* 
> really allow anyone to make edits. 
> Before deciding where to go from here I'd suggest you to reflect on what's 
> worse: to forbid anonymity or require reviews; I believe most normal people 
> are more interested in privacy than immediate publication of edits. 
> 
> Kind regards, 
> Gabriele 
>  
>  
> 
>  
> Virus-free. www.avg.com 
> 
>  
> ___
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> 
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

[Peter Southwood]

And who will do all this tedious work? Cheers, Peter

 

From: g...@tiscali.it [mailto:g...@tiscali.it] 
Sent: 01 May 2022 20:01
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Open proxies and IP blocking

 

Another somewhat obvious solution: instead, or before, of blocking, make the 
edits coming from one of the (too) dangerous IPs go through a reviewal process 
before getting published; hopefully a very quick one. 
In theory this would be against the original Wikipedia ideas, but I saw that 
it's something already practiced in some cases, and anyway blocking seems 
enormously worse than requiring a review before publication. 

By the way, I now realized that the current Wikipedia is already very different 
than what I believed, and it works just because it does *not* really allow 
anyone to make edits. 
Before deciding where to go from here I'd suggest you to reflect on what's 
worse: to forbid anonymity or require reviews; I believe most normal people are 
more interested in privacy than immediate publication of edits. 

Kind regards, 
Gabriele 

 


 

 

Virus-free.  

 www.avg.com 

 

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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Next steps: Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines

[Lane Chance]

Hi, from the statements so far, there seems no planned date for
implementation. By this I mean a date from which an affected volunteer can
raise a complaint.

Given the extended redrafting, "conversations" and having another vote, is
it fair to estimate that the earliest for UCoC cases would be sometime in
2023, probably more than 12 months from now?

In practice would this also mean that people affected by unacceptable
behaviour in 2021 and probably throughout 2022 should give up on any plan
they may have to lodge a UCoC case?

Lane

On Mon, 2 May 2022 at 17:44, Stella Ng  wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> Speaking as the senior manager of the team whose role it was to support
> the UCoC drafters:  we should remember that high level, section 3 of the
> UCoC (Unacceptable Behavior)  is meant to address bad behavior. When
> writing this, the drafting committee was thinking specifically of the
> potential of harm, such as physical or reputational as well the context and
> intent behind the behavior.
>
> It is also worth noting that currently, ENWP has rules regarding private
> information and doxxing that go into more detail than the UCoC Phase 1 text
> (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Posting_of_personal_information).
> The UCoC is meant to be a minimum base for behavior (both positive and
> negative) to help communities build upon.
>
> As noted previously, there will be a review of not only the UCoC but the
> Enforcement Guidelines one year after ratification is completed. During
> that period, feedback, as well as examples will be worked through to ensure
> that both texts are fit for purpose and lessen any ambiguity folks may be
> having issues with.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Stella
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 12:03 PM Carla Toro 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I'm writing this on a personal note, but just to clarify, Doxing is under
>> the section of harassment, which is aligned with its definition of being
>> the act of revealing identifying information about someone online *with
>> the clear intention of harassing someone*. And I think I can use the
>> examples given by Andreas to throw light on what doxing is and what is not.
>>
>> 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_staffer_edits
>> This reveals contributors' employer and address, very likely without
>> their consent, on a page in Wikipedia. It's in direct contravention of the
>> above bullet point. Should this page exist?
>> - This is not Doxing, this is just a mechanism of transparency with the
>> government.
>>
>> 2.
>> https://www.vox.com/2014/7/18/5916005/malaysian-crash-mh17-russia-ukraine-wikipedia-edit
>> This press article states that someone at a Russian TV network edited
>> Wikipedia to blame the MH17 plane crash on Ukraine. This therefore reveals
>> a contributor's employer and possibly also their work address. Is this
>> article harassment? Should any Wikipedians who may have tipped off the
>> journalist be punished?
>> - Not precisely Doxing. It may be harassment (maybe unintentionally) but
>> not from a Wikimedian. The article clearly states "Within an hour, someone
>> with an IP address that puts them at VGTRK's Moscow offices changed it to
>> say "The plane was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers."". So this was the
>> fault of the press by making the conection of the edit and the IP and the
>> disclousure of the information.
>>
>> 3.
>> https://www.dailydot.com/irl/wikipedia-sockpuppet-investigation-largest-network-history-wiki-pr/
>> This press article – which was instrumental in triggering a significant
>> change in the WMF terms of use, well before your time with the WMF of
>> course – comments on various contributors' employer, again in direct
>> contravention of the Doxing bullet point. Is this harassment? Should the
>> Wikipedians who "shared information concerning other contributors'
>> Wikimedia activity outside the projects", by speaking to the writer of this
>> article, be sanctioned under UCoC if they did the same today?
>> - They all used their users name and agree to that interview. They
>> weren't sharing information to harrass someone, they were talking about
>> their own investigation. If this was the case today, I think that they
>> should not be sanctioned but they should be carefull if it is an on going
>> investigation.
>>
>> 4. https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgbqjb/is-wikipedia-for-sale
>> In this article the late Kevin Gorman – who died much too young! – as
>> well as James Hare and a WMF staffer again "share information concerning
>> other contributors' Wikimedia activity outside the projects", including
>> employment details. This is in direct contravention of the Doxing bullet
>> point, compliance with which you explained is a "minimum" standard that
>> participants will be held to.
>> -Same as 3.
>>
>> 5.
>> https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2011/09/hari-rose-wikipedia-admitted
>> In this article a journalist writes about a Wikipedia editor – a fellow
>> journalist, as it 

[Wikimedia-l] The Statement about UCoC Enforcement Guidelines of Wikimedia Taiwan

[Reke Wang via Wikimedia-l]

The following statement is Wikimedia Taiwan(WMTW)'s response to the
announcement "Board of Trustees on Next steps: Universal Code of Conduct
(UCoC) and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines
".
The below statement has also been approved in the WMTW board meeting on May
1, 2022. We sincerely invite the Wikimedia Foundation and all Wikimedians
to review and comment.

We urge the Foundation board to consider the official ratification and
enforcement of the current version of the Enforcement Guidelines, and
continue the conversation and refinement based on the community feedback
and concerns during the implementation. As an affiliate in the Wikimedia
Movement, we (the WMTW) understand that the Wikimedia movement places more
emphasis on consensus-building rather than a pro forma democracy of
majority vote. However, the vote was nearly 60%(58.6% versus 41.4%), not an
extremely small difference of 50.1% versus 49.9%. From the experience of
Chinese Wikipedia, it is detrimental to our movement in a situation like
this; a situation of overemphasizing the strong opposition in order to gain
more consensus, and ignoring the opinions of the ones in favor.

The Chinese Wikipedia has long faced the problem of strong opponents
occupying discussions on guidelines or the content of articles. When facing
controversial issues, it is easy to overrule the majority as long as a
small number of users support each other and form strong opinions to
express oppositions. They often invoke guidelines such as "Wikipedia is not
a testing ground for democracy
" and "Voting is
not a substitute for discussion
", claiming that
the majority of opponents still need to reach a consensus with the
minority; but when others try to communicate with them, they often refuse
to open the conversation by giving lengthy debates, until the volunteers
give up on the discussion due to fatigue. In Chinese Wikipedia,  such
long-term so-called GAME behavior has led to a failure of internal
community management mechanisms. It is not easy to push for changes
regarding policy and guidelines, it is difficult to stop the vandalism, and
these even led to well-intentioned editors leaving the movement. All of
which contributed to the Foundation's action on Chinese Wikipedia last year
indirectly.

If UCoC's enforcement of the guidelines has to be postponed because of
receiving objections, it raises doubts about the Foundation's credibility
with the communities. In the re-run of the community vote, will it be
delayed again due to strong opposition, regardless of the outcome? Does
this case also encourage potential spoilers whose behavior will be affected
by the UCoC to continue to find reasonable excuses to freeze the
enforcement process, making the UCoC become a mere formality? Does it imply
that in the re-run of the community vote, it does not matter if the
communities participate actively or not, because the  supporting opinions
won't be given equal respect anyway?

If the current version of the enforcement guideline can be ratified and
implemented first, and take a conservative approach towards the strongly
challenged content temporarily, as well as shorten the time frame for the
first iteration reviews, this should be able to show respect to the voting
result, and also give those reasonable opinions a chance to be
incorporated. This is in line with the consensus spirit of the Wikimedia
movement.

-
This open letter was written in Mandarin by WMTW Secretary General Reke
Wang (User:Reke) , approved
by the WMTW Board, and translated by Joyce (User:Joycewikiwiki)
, our
International Coordinator
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[Wikimedia-l] Call for Election Volunteers

[Mahuton Possoupe]

Hello all,

The Movement Strategy and Governance team is looking for community members
to serve as election volunteers in the upcoming Board of Trustees election.

The idea of the Election Volunteer Program came up during the 2021
Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election. This program turned out to be
successful. With the help of Election Volunteers, we were able to increase
outreach and participation in the election by 1,753 voters over 2017.
Overall turnout was 10.13%, 1.1 percentage points more, and 214 wikis were
represented in the election.

But a total of 74 wikis that did not participate in 2017 produced voters in
the 2021 election. Can you help change the participation?

Election volunteers will help in the following areas:

   - Translate short messages and announce the ongoing election process in
   community channels
   - Optional: Monitor community channels for community comments and
   questions

Volunteers should:

   - Maintain the friendly space policy during conversations and events
   - Present the guidelines and voting information to the community in a
   neutral manner

Do you want to be an election volunteer and ensure your community is
represented in the vote? Sign up here

to
receive updates. You can use the talk page

for
questions about translation.


Thank you,


Mahuton (WMF)
Facilitator, Movement Strategy & Governance


-- 

*Mahuton POSSOUPE (He/Him)*

Movement Strategy & Board Governance facilitator

French-speaking communities

Wikimedia Foundation 
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

[Paulo Santos Perneta]

"*if a wiki chooses to block all unregistered edits (...) w**ould we still
need to auto-block open proxies, if there was no more anonymous editing at
all?*"

Please don't use the term "anonymous" to refer to IP edits, which are
anything but anonymous.
The only edits with a minimum level of anonymity are precisely those made
by registered users.
One of the reasons we blocked IP editing on pt.wiki was exactly because
editors using IP addresses were being traced, identified, and harassed.

Best,
Paulo


 escreveu no dia terça, 3/05/2022 à(s) 02:31:

> I've been getting really helpful replies both here and in the Meta
> discussion, thank you very much. I'm going to summarize what I'm seeing so
> far, and ask some new questions.
>
> One thing that's come up is that there are many kinds of good-faith people
> who experience collateral damage from the current practice — people in
> Africa and South/Southeast Asia who are automatically in proxies thanks to
> their ISP (the folks who started the conversation), and also people who
> live in countries where contributors risk harassment or legal action,
> including queer editors who live in countries where queer sexualities are
> criminalized.
>
> Right now, I'm thinking about the different kinds of "pain" involved on
> all sides. Just for the sake of this conversation, I'm using the word
> "pain" to mean something that's frustrating, time-consuming, dangerous,
> obstructive, or otherwise negative. Admins & stewards who spend all of
> their free time trying to block IP-hopping abusers experience "pain", users
> who get doxxed or harassed by IP-hopping abusers experience "pain",
> organizers with editathon participants getting blocked experience "pain",
> editors who are blocked from contributing experience "pain".
>
> So: is this a zero-sum game, where one group's pain relief = another
> group's pain point? Right now, I think the expansion of proxy blocks since
> last year has been reducing the pain for vandal/abuse fighters, which has
> increased the pain for good-faith users (especially in Africa/South Asia).
> For stewards, it may have just shifted the work: less work blocking the
> vandals, but more work granting block exemptions.
>
> If it's a zero-sum game, then we're trying to find an acceptable balance
> among these groups, which is difficult and makes everyone unhappy. I'm
> hoping there are things that we can change in the software that make this
> more of a non-zero-sum game, so that relieving pain for one group doesn't
> increase it for someone else.
>
> The ideas so far break down into two categories: #1) making proxy blocks
> less frequent or more nuanced so that we don't need an unblocking request
> process, and #2) making the unblocking request process easier or more
> efficient. The IPBE process is kind of the pivot point in the problem. From
> a software design perspective, the fact that IPBE even exists is a failure
> state — we're not doing our job properly making a website that anyone can
> edit, if good-faith people are blocked and other good-faith people are
> spending time unblocking them. So the ideal solutions would be focused on
> #1, because if we solve those, #2 doesn't exist anymore.
>
> Here are some of the ideas suggested so far:
>
> Category #1: Making proxy blocks less frequent, or more nuanced
> * Instead of auto-blocking, wait for someone to vandalize before blocking
> that open proxy
> * Tag edits made through open proxies, so that admins can give them more
> scrutiny
> * Throttle edits made through open proxies, to discourage vandals (and
> good-faith people)
> * For Apple's Private Relay, rangeblock the regions where vandalism is
> coming from rather than blocking the whole service
> * Treat ISPs in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia that use
> carrier-grade NAT differently, instead of making them auto-blocked open
> proxies
>
> Category #2: Making the IPBE process easier, or more efficient
> * Make the local/global distinction easier to understand and navigate by
> signaling to users that they've got a local or global block, and guiding
> them in the right direction
> * Let trusted users like campaign organizers submit lists of accounts to
> be automatically exempt (but obviously blockable if those accounts are used
> badly)
>
> Are there other suggestions for either category? What have I missed?
>
> One thing I'm curious about: for the "treat ISPs in Africa/South Asia
> differently" idea — would people in other regions be able to abuse those
> services? Would a bad actor in Europe be able to make edits through an
> unblocked ISP in Ghana?
>
> Also: What happens if the open-proxy block only applies to anon edits, and
> allows edits from people with accounts? I know that the basic answer is
> "then the bad-faith people create accounts, so there's no point" — but does
> that at least reduce the amount of "pain"/damage to a more acceptable
> level?
>
> I'd also like to know what happens if a wiki chooses to block all
> 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

[Vi to]

In practical terms the only working point for category #1 is the last one,
which is already done *in theory*. Yes, proxying systems from countries
affected by such problems can generally be exploited from elsewhere. About
category #2 the first point is great, but it needs a committed development
effort, point 2 a temporary GIPBE can be a good idea.

Vito

Il giorno mar 3 mag 2022 alle ore 03:31  ha scritto:

> I've been getting really helpful replies both here and in the Meta
> discussion, thank you very much. I'm going to summarize what I'm seeing so
> far, and ask some new questions.
>
> One thing that's come up is that there are many kinds of good-faith people
> who experience collateral damage from the current practice — people in
> Africa and South/Southeast Asia who are automatically in proxies thanks to
> their ISP (the folks who started the conversation), and also people who
> live in countries where contributors risk harassment or legal action,
> including queer editors who live in countries where queer sexualities are
> criminalized.
>
> Right now, I'm thinking about the different kinds of "pain" involved on
> all sides. Just for the sake of this conversation, I'm using the word
> "pain" to mean something that's frustrating, time-consuming, dangerous,
> obstructive, or otherwise negative. Admins & stewards who spend all of
> their free time trying to block IP-hopping abusers experience "pain", users
> who get doxxed or harassed by IP-hopping abusers experience "pain",
> organizers with editathon participants getting blocked experience "pain",
> editors who are blocked from contributing experience "pain".
>
> So: is this a zero-sum game, where one group's pain relief = another
> group's pain point? Right now, I think the expansion of proxy blocks since
> last year has been reducing the pain for vandal/abuse fighters, which has
> increased the pain for good-faith users (especially in Africa/South Asia).
> For stewards, it may have just shifted the work: less work blocking the
> vandals, but more work granting block exemptions.
>
> If it's a zero-sum game, then we're trying to find an acceptable balance
> among these groups, which is difficult and makes everyone unhappy. I'm
> hoping there are things that we can change in the software that make this
> more of a non-zero-sum game, so that relieving pain for one group doesn't
> increase it for someone else.
>
> The ideas so far break down into two categories: #1) making proxy blocks
> less frequent or more nuanced so that we don't need an unblocking request
> process, and #2) making the unblocking request process easier or more
> efficient. The IPBE process is kind of the pivot point in the problem. From
> a software design perspective, the fact that IPBE even exists is a failure
> state — we're not doing our job properly making a website that anyone can
> edit, if good-faith people are blocked and other good-faith people are
> spending time unblocking them. So the ideal solutions would be focused on
> #1, because if we solve those, #2 doesn't exist anymore.
>
> Here are some of the ideas suggested so far:
>
> Category #1: Making proxy blocks less frequent, or more nuanced
> * Instead of auto-blocking, wait for someone to vandalize before blocking
> that open proxy
> * Tag edits made through open proxies, so that admins can give them more
> scrutiny
> * Throttle edits made through open proxies, to discourage vandals (and
> good-faith people)
> * For Apple's Private Relay, rangeblock the regions where vandalism is
> coming from rather than blocking the whole service
> * Treat ISPs in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia that use
> carrier-grade NAT differently, instead of making them auto-blocked open
> proxies
>
> Category #2: Making the IPBE process easier, or more efficient
> * Make the local/global distinction easier to understand and navigate by
> signaling to users that they've got a local or global block, and guiding
> them in the right direction
> * Let trusted users like campaign organizers submit lists of accounts to
> be automatically exempt (but obviously blockable if those accounts are used
> badly)
>
> Are there other suggestions for either category? What have I missed?
>
> One thing I'm curious about: for the "treat ISPs in Africa/South Asia
> differently" idea — would people in other regions be able to abuse those
> services? Would a bad actor in Europe be able to make edits through an
> unblocked ISP in Ghana?
>
> Also: What happens if the open-proxy block only applies to anon edits, and
> allows edits from people with accounts? I know that the basic answer is
> "then the bad-faith people create accounts, so there's no point" — but does
> that at least reduce the amount of "pain"/damage to a more acceptable
> level?
>
> I'd also like to know what happens if a wiki chooses to block all
> unregistered edits, like Portuguese WP and Farsi WP are doing right now?
> Would we still need to auto-block open proxies, if there was no more
>