[WikiEN-l] Range IP blocking

Sun Jan 15 04:57:18 UTC 2006

>From user: Snpoj
Current user IP: 63.19.227.233

I think the system in place for range IP blocking should undergo a change. 
Here's why:

I just signed up with NetZero which I assume, like most dial-up ISP's, uses 
dynamic IP's. After logging in and attempting to contribute to an article, I 
learned that my IP had been blocked by user: Curps. It seems that his email 
was unavailable otherwise I would have brought the issue directly to him 
rather than to the mailing list as a whole.

The problem here is not that my IP was blocked, because if I had not logged 
in and tried to edit an article, I would have been fine and understanding of 
the fact that the IP had been temporarily blocked. The problem here is that 
I logged in as a responsible contributor with no reports of vandalism and 
was blocked. Furthermore, I would have understood the blocking if I had 
registered in the IP range previously and then was blocked, but I did not 
register within that IP range, nor have any of my contributions been within 
that IP range.

So, the problem is that a contributing user with no record of vandalism was 
arbitrarily blocked in an attempt to stop a vandal. Although I realize that 
this may be a rare instance, I still think it is important because it 
represents a larger issue.  Measures were employed to stop a vandal from 
destroying articles, but at the same time a valid user was prevented from 
creating articles. Thus, the normal operations which lead to the improvement 
and existence of Wikipedia were blocked in an attempt to halt a potential 
vandal.

IP range blocking will not go away because it still is a useful (although 
perhaps extreme) measure to prevent vandals, but I would like to propose a 
different system to prevent cases such as my own. I propose that the new 
system should roughly follow these steps:

Please note that:
I define "registered" as "originally signing up the username"
I define "contribution" as "any contribution that has not been labeled as 
vandalism"

1. Accept that the IP has been blocked by an admin
2. Check whether a non-banned user is logged in from this IP range
3. Check whether the user has registered from this IP range and has made any 
contributions
4. If the user has registered recently from the IP range and has made no 
contributions, then block
5. If the user has registered from the IP range and has made any 
contributions then unblock the specific IP as long as the user is posting 
from it.
6. If the user has registered from outside the IP range and has made no 
contributions (or any contributions for that matter), then unblock the 
specific IP as long as the user is posting from it.

Basically, this is an attempt to move away from an "IP blocking-only" system 
to a more versatile hybrid "IP/user blocking" system.

On a final note, I question the measures taken by Curps:

As shown from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist?action=search&limit=50&ip=63.19

Curps has blocked 63.19.128.0/17

According to

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Range_blocks

A "/17" will block 32,768 IP addresses. (And here's a quick disclaimer: I am 
not very familiar with binary and range blocking so this may be incorrect.)

I understand the dedication admins take to block vandals but in all honesty 
I think it's a bit extreme to block 30,000 IP's even if it's only for a 
couple of days.

If any admin is reading this, I ask that you please address this issue to 
the admin community on my behalf.  Again, I understand that this issue may 
be rare, but I anticipate having problems like this in the future while 
using an ISP such as NetZero.

Thanks for your time. Regards,
-Snpoj

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