[Foundation-l] TOR Nodes

Tue Jan 15 14:12:32 UTC 2008

I agree that China is responsible for the problem in general (Internet
censorship being something individual websites have trouble doing) but
I suspect our influence over Chinese policy is limited. There are
technical workarounds for Chinese editors, however - blocking all Tor
exit nodes categorically shuts off a main workaround.

Re the blocking policy, if you read the page linked to by Mercury it
seems that it isn't at all clear what the consensus is there. Mercury
made mention of modifying the policy based on the discussion on that
page, which contained a number of objections to the indef hardblock of
all open proxies. The most convincing to my mind was the apparent fact
that Tor exit nodes are frequently active only for a very short period
of time - afterwards the IP is recycled, so it serves no purpose to
indefinitely block an IP that was used as an exit node for 2 days.

Lastly, anonymizer IP ranges are under consideration for blocking as
well using RonaldB's tools.

In a technical sense, I would be fine with using Ronald's tool to
block all current open proxy exit   IPs. Politically, I think it is
something the Foundation should weigh in on so that issues associated
with blocking this category of IPs permanently can be
addressed/anticipated.

Nathan

On Jan 14, 2008 11:28 PM, Matthew Britton
<matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> --- 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
>
>
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