On Mar 10, 2015 12:05 PM, "Risker" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Thanks for your responses, Chris. Regardless of what processes are
> proposed, I suspect that the strongest objections will be socially based
> rather than technically based.  Bawolff has a valid point, that success on
> a smaller wiki may have an effect on the social perception of the use of
> Tor on enwiki - but if it is started on another wiki, please ensure that
> there is actual community agreement and that there are sufficient
> administrators who are willing and able to promptly address any problems.
> We may have 700 wikis, but really only about 50-60 of them have sufficient
> daily activity and editorial community size to be able to manage any
> problems that might arise from this.
>
> To my experience, the majority of experienced editors who are asking for
> IPBE or something similar tend to be editing through VPNs that are
> hard-blocked for various reasons (most commonly spamming and/or heavy-duty
> vandalism - and if it's spamming, it's usually blocked at the global
> level).  There are some exceptions - particularly related to users working
> from countries where there are entirely valid security concerns (we could
> probably all recite the list). And IPBE does permit editing through Tor
> now.  Whether continuing with IPBE or providing an alternative, the user
> would still have to persuade the same administrators/community members of
> the legitimacy of their request.
>
> I cannot speak for the entire enwiki community  (let alone any other
> community) about whether or not there would be acceptance for the idea of
a
> user having two unlinked accounts, one "regular" account and one "Tor" one
> - given my role as a Checkuser I'm exposed to a much higher frequency of
> socking complaints than most community members - but given it's been darn
> hard to keep the community from flat-out banning multiple unlined
accounts,
> I have my doubts it will be greeted with open arms, even if it "works" on
> other wikis. (Pretty much the only exception that has received support is
> "editing in a high risk topic area", so there *may* be some support).
> Unfortunately, there's been plenty of history on enwiki of experienced
> users having multiple accounts that were used inappropriately, including
> administrator accounts, so that raises the bar even higher.
>
> Also....I'm a little unclear about something. If a "Tor-enabled" account
> creates new accounts, will those accounts be able to edit through Tor,
> too?

The account creation would come from the proxy, so the wiki would have to
trust that the proxy is only handing out accounts to users who have been

>
> Risker/Anne
>
> On 10 March 2015 at 14:33, Chris Steipp <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 10:39 AM, Risker <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > A few questions on this:
> > >
> > >
> > >    - So, this would result in the creation of a new account,
correct?  If
> > >    so, most of the security is lost by the enwiki policy of requiring
> > > linking
> > >    to one's other accounts, and if the user edited in the same topic
area
> > > as
> > >    their other account, they're likely to be blocked for socking.
(This
> > > is a
> > >    social limitation on the idea, not a technical one.)
> > >
> >
> > Registering a pseudonym through this process implies that you are an
> > existing editor (we could even limit the process to only one pseudonym
per
> > existing account, so you know there's a 1-1 mapping), just not linking
to
> > which one you are. Do you think enwiki be open to considering that?
> >
> >
> > >    - Why would we permit more than one account?
> > >
> >
> > I was originally thinking that if something happened (forgotten
password,
> > etc.), you could start over. But not a hard requirement.
> >
> >
> > >    - It's not usually experienced editors who seem to have an issue on
> > >    English projects; most of the huffing and puffing about Tor seems
to
> > > come
> > >    from people who are not currently registered/experienced editors,
so
> > the
> > >    primary "market" is a group of people who wouldn't meet the
proposed
> > >    criteria.
> >
> >
> > There may not be enough intersection between users who we have some
trust
> > in and those who want to edit via Tor. I'm hopeful that we can define
> > "established" to be some group that is large enough that it will include
> > productive editors who also should use Tor, but small enough to preclude
> > spammers. I'm assuming if we start with some guideline, then we can
adjust
> > up (if there's too much spam) or down (if there aren't enough users)
> > depending on the results.
> >
> >
> > >
> >
> >    - On reading this over carefully, it sounds as though you're
proposing
> > >    what is essentially a highly technical IPBE process in which there
is
> > > even
> > >    less control than the project has now, particularly in the ability
to
> > >    address socking and POV/COI editing. Am I missing something?
> > >
> >
> > In a way it is, but there are couple advantages over IPBE as I see it:
> > * Neither the WMF nor checkusers can correlate the identities, whereas
with
> > IPBE, it's possible that a checkuser can still see the IP that created
the
> > account requesting the IPBE. This is less control, but also less risk if
> > the wmf/checkuser is coerced into revealing that information.
> > * Hopefully it will be a less manual process, since the only manual
(which
> > could be automated if the right heuristics were found) step is
confirming
> > that the requesting user is "established". There's no further rights
that
> > have to be granted and maintained.
> >
> > It also give slightly more control in that:
> > * We're not giving out the IPBE right
> > * The whole system can be blocked (hopefully temporarily) with a single
> > block or revoking the OAuth key, if there is ever a sudden flood of spam
> >
> > Admittedly, we could do all of this (except making the identities
> > unlinkable) by having an edit-via-tor right that is different from IPBE,
> > but the unlikability I think is important for our users.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Risker/Anne
> > >
> > > On 10 March 2015 at 13:16, Giuseppe Lavagetto <
[email protected]>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi Chris,
> > > >
> > > > I like the idea in general, in particular the fact that only
> > > > "established" editors can ask for the tokens. What I don't get is
why
> > > > this proxy should be run by someone that is not the WMF, given - I
> > > > guess - it would be exposed as a TOR hidden service, which will mask
> > > > effectively the user IP from us, and will secure his communication
> > > > from snooping by exit node managers, and so on.
> > > >
> > > > I guess the righteously traffic on such a proxy would be so low (as
> > > > getting a token is /not/ going to be automated/immediate even for
> > > > logged in users) that it could work without using up a lot of
> > > > resources.
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > >
> > > > Giuseppe
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > > [email protected]
> > > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > [email protected]
> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > [email protected]
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Reply via email to