[Foundation-l] Re: check user policy/Tor

Thu Nov 3 20:33:03 UTC 2005

On 11/2/05, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l>> wrote:

>> For these reasons, I would personally be in favour of blocking
>> access, or at least editing, to all anonymizing services.
>
> I would say that more important than trying to identify each user's
> IP and disallowing anonymity -- which strikes me as the wrong way
> to go -- would be asking users (presumed anonymous) to verify their
> goodwill and interest in the projects by working in a sandboxed
> area, or submitting time-delayed changes, until they had
> demonstrated a reasonable threshhold of good faith; at which point
> they could vandalize and be quickly blocked, having spent much more
> time getting to that point than the vandal-fighters did blocking
> them.
>
> Anonymity serves useful purposes; we should try to preserve those
> while promoting the productive development of the projects.
>
> To be mergist about these ideas... one could offer users both
> options. 1) edit under a privacy policy which disallows anonymity,
> or 2) edit anonymously, first passing through a sandbox stage to
> demonstrate that you are not a bot and are acting in good faith.
>
> + SJ +

The amount of intervention required to do as you suggest - check all time
delayed entries for vandalism, create a system to over come edit conflicts
which develop during the time delay (more "magic solutions"), create and
implement a policy covering "reasonable threshold of good faith",
managing anon user privileges who meet that threshold - would cost more
than the current vandal fighting does. The point is to reduce the existing
cost significantly.

The proposed model allows for anonymity except when an IP is investigated
for wrong doing, and would probably reduce time cost to sites by
preventing anonymized IPs from editing maliciously. By implementing a
system which requires monitoring, decision-making, and user privilege
management you would create an onerous time task for smaller projects and
likely create opportunities for conflict which are unnecessary.

Amgine