[WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a new policy

Sun Feb 6 05:21:21 UTC 2005

On Sat, Feb 05, 2005 at 12:11:17PM -0500, Rhobite wrote:
> That's one way to do it. At some point, someone official may want to
> contact BT and see about getting her warned, although it's hard to
> believe that they'll drop her from the service for this.

Here's an angle:

She's been banned from Wikipedia according to policies imposed by the
legal owners of Wikipedia's servers.  This means that she does not have
permission to use those servers.  Doing so might actually be a criminal
offense, depending on the laws in her jurisdiction.

Most ISPs do have acceptable-use policies that specifically exclude
breaking the stated rules on other sites.  BT states that users "must
not gain or attempt to gain unauthorised access to any computer systems
for any purpose" [1] -- which would seem to include setting up sock-
puppet accounts to gain access to Wikipedia editing after being banned.

Setting up an account -- or, indeed, clicking on an edit link -- is
certainly an instance of "gaining access".  If the person doing so has
been banned, that access is unauthorized.  If they've been informed of
the ban, they certainly can't rest upon ignorance.  Open and shut case,
no?

[1] http://www.abuse-guidance.com/ -- yes, BT puts their AUP on its own
    freakin' domain.  Weird!

> The tactics you describe are used by the anti-spam movement, but is
> her conduct as damaging as that of a spammer? Assuming that BT doesn't
> drop her, is Wikipedia prepared to embrace the "collateral damage"
> philosophy of the antispammers?

Ignoring the question of whether "the collateral damage philosophy" is
mischaracterized, it is not appropriate for Wikipedia.  We do not have
an abuse problem comparable in scale or ind degree of criminality with
the e-mail spam problem.  Nor do we have a systematic problem of ISPs
ignoring abuse reports or allowing privileged customers to abuse
Wikipedia with impunity [2].

So there is no point in using tactics that are designed to (A) shun ISPs
who are complicit in criminal activity that causes us problems, or (B)
press awareness of that complicity onto the ISPs' other customers.  ISP
complicity is simply not evident here.

[2] Some ISPs -do- apparently allow privileged customers to spam with
    impunity.  http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=158

-- 
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

[WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

[WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a new policy