Yes, it's getting frequent and not only from people in Africa.
I ended up to trouble-shoot these problems by mails or direct messaging on
Facebook more and and more frequently, maybe with simple users who just know me
or have my contact. Sometimes it looks like sharing the duties of a sysop or a
steward with no power.
It's getting less and less clear how pros and cons are calculated exactly, but
you just get the feeling that some users really care a lot about this policy
and you just have to deal with the consequences, no matter how time-consuming
it's getting.
A.M.
Il mercoledì 20 aprile 2022, 20:34:36 CEST, Amir E. Aharoni
<[email protected]> ha scritto:
I don't have a solution, but I just wanted to confirm that I agree fully with
the description of the problem. I hear that this happens to people from
Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and some other countries almost every day.
The first time I heard about it was actually around 2018 or so, but during the
last year it has become unbearably frequent.
A smarter solution is needed. I tried talking to stewards about this several
times, and they always say something like "we know that this affects certain
countries badly, and we know that the technology has changed since the
mid-2000s, but we absolutely cannot allow open proxies because it would
immediately unleash horrible vandalism on all the wikis". I'm sure they mean
well, but this is not sustainable.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
בתאריך יום ד׳, 20 באפר׳ 2022 ב-21:21 מאת Florence Devouard
<[email protected]>:
Hello friends
Short version : We need to find solutions to avoid so many africans being
globally IP blocked due to our No Open Proxies policy.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking
Long version :
I'd like to raise attention on an issue, which has been getting worse in the
past couple of weeks/months.
Increasing number of editors getting blocked due to the No Open Proxies policy
[1]
In particular africans.
In February 2004, the decision was made to block open proxies on Meta and all
other Wikimedia projects.
According to the no open proxies policy : Publicly available proxies (including
paid proxies) may be blocked for any period at any time. While this may affect
legitimate users, they are not the intended targets and may freely use proxies
until those are blocked [...]
Non-static IP addresses or hosts that are otherwise not permanent proxies
should typically be blocked for a shorter period of time, as it is likely the
IP address will eventually be transferred or dynamically reassigned, or the
open proxy closed. Once closed, the IP address should be unblocked.
According to the policy page, « the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of
an open proxy with the IP block exempt flag. This is granted on local projects
by administrators and globally by stewards. »
I repeat -----> ... legitimate users... may freely use proxies until those are
blocked. the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of an open proxy with the
IP block exempt flag <------ it is not illegal to edit using an open proxy
Most editors though... have no idea whatsoever what an open proxy is. They do
not understand well what to do when they are blocked.
In the past few weeks, the number of African editors reporting being blocked
due to open proxy has been VERY significantly increasing.
New editors just as old timers.
Unexperienced editors but also staff members, president of usergroups,
organizers of edit-a-thons and various wikimedia initiatives.
At home, but also during events organized with usergroup members or trainees,
during edit-a-thons, photo uploads sessions etc.
It is NOT the occasional highly unlikely situation. This has become a regular
occurence.
There are cases and complains every week. Not one complaint per week. Several
complaints per week.
This is irritating. This is offending. This is stressful. This is disrupting
activities organized in good faith by good people, activities set-up with our
donors funds. And the disruption is primarlly taking place in a geographical
region supposingly to be nurtured (per our strategy for diversity, equity,
inclusion blahblahblah).
The open proxy policy page suggests that, should a person be unfairly blocked,
it is recommended
- * to privately email stewardswikimedia.org.
- * or alternatively, to post a request (if able to edit, if the editor
doesn't mind sharing their IP for global blocks or their reasons to desire
privacy (for Tor usage)).
- * the current message displayed to the blocked editor also suggest
contacting User:Tks4Fish. This editor is involved in vandalism fighting and is
probably the user blocking open proxies IPs the most. See log
So...
Option 1: contacting stewards : it seems that they are not answering. Or not
quickly. Or requesting lengthy justifications before adding people to IP block
exemption list.
Option 2: posting a request for unblock on meta. For those who want to look at
the process, I suggest looking at it [3] and think hard about how a new editor
would feel. This is simply incredibly complicated
Option 3 : user:TksFish answers... sometimes...
As a consequence, most editors concerned with those global blocks... stay
blocked several days.
We do not know know why the situation has rapidly got worse recently. But it
got worse. And the reports are spilling all over.
We started collecting negative experiences on this page [4].
Please note that people who added their names here are not random newbies.
They are known and respected members of our community, often leaders of
activities and/or representant of their usergroups, who are confronted to this
situation on a REGULAR basis.
I do not know how this can be fixed. Should we slow down open proxy blocking ?
Should we add a mecanism and process for an easier and quicker IP block
exemption process post-blocking ? Should we improve a process for our editors
to pre-emptively be added to this IP block exemption list ? Or what ? I do not
know what's the strategy to fix that. But there is a problem. Who should that
problem be addressed to ? Who has solutions ?
Flo
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/Tks4Fish
[3]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global_permissions#Requests_for_global_IP_block_exemption
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking
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