[Foundation-l] TOR Nodes

Tue Jan 15 04:28:33 UTC 2008

--- Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> (Was Ipblock exempt proposal for en wiki)
> 
> This seems like something that, while it affects
> primarily en.wiki,
> should be run by the Foundation because of the
> potentially serious PR
> consequences (Wikipedia makes it impossible to edit from
> China etc.).

Hi, forgive me, but I don't quite see how you got there
from here.

First, problems with editing Wikipedia from China are
primarily the fault of China itself, which blocks access to
Wikipedia.

Second, anonymizing proxies are not the only way in which
these blocks may be bypassed.

Third, and most importantly, open proxies are *already*
indefinitely hard-blocked, abuse or otherwise. It would be
nice to think that they are only blocked in case of abuse,
but this is not the case. All this proposal would do would
allow exemptions from such hard-blocks for individual
users. If this sounds controversial, bear in mind that all
administrators are alrady exempt from hard-blocks. Any
administrator on any project could already be editing
through any hard-block blocked proxy and (short of a
checkuser) nobody would be any the wiser.

In short, this proposal makes it no more "impossible to
edit from China" than it is already.

-Gurch