[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia-wide global blocking mechanism?

Thu Jan 31 21:17:48 UTC 2008

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> On 31/01/2008, Alex <mrzmanwiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> The ability for local sysops to override it would help this a bit, but
>> ideally, it should be restricted to blocking IPs only until SUL is
>> implemented.
>>     
>
> SUL will only help where people use exactly the same username on each
> site they need to be blocked from - vandals smart enough to jump
> projects when one catches them are likely to realise they need to use
> a different name (just hopefully one similar enough for a regex to
> catch).
>   
I'd be more worried about a good user on one project using the same name 
as a bad user on other projects. The odds of that happening are low, but 
still possible. I also doubt that most vandals would be dumb enough to 
be caught by a regex that wouldn't also have a good chance at having a 
high potential for collateral damage. On a side note, how well does 
regex handle non-latin characters?

-- 
Alex (en:User:Mr.Z-man)