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…
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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