This has been my experience on en.wikipedia, as well as what we (the users)
are told when we complain about AOL. It is certainly the case that within
seconds of blocking an IP, a legit user is affected, while the exact same
vandal is mysteriously on a new IP continuing his vandal spree. It seems
awfully coincidental to me that the vandal would be able to get onto a new
IP within seconds of the old one being blocked (I've had dialup, and I was
never able to disconnect and reconnect in a matter of seconds) while at the
exact same time a Wikipeida contributor dials in and is assigned the IP the
vandal was using, as opposed to some non-Wikipedian being assigned it.
Perhaps I'm completely wrong; I only know what a lot of vandalfighting has
taught me, along with what I've been told by people who are supposed to know
what they are talking about.
Essjay
On 3/20/06, Tim Starling <t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
- Essjay - wrote:
The problem is not what the users do from AOL
IPs, it is the way AOL
*assigns* IPs. Right now, if you are an AOL dial-up user, you will be
assigned a new IP every 15 minutes, or every page load, whichever comes
first. Literally *every time you load a page, you will have a new IP*.
That
makes blocking problematic AOL users
*impossible*. By the time a sysop
can
discover and block a given address, the vandal
has jumpted IPs at least
once, potentially a dozen times. Additionally, no sooner than the block
button is clicked, a legitimate AOL user with an account will be
assigned
that IP, and will be blocked. This is not as much
of a problem on
smaller
projects, with fewer editors, fewer vandals, (and
fewer AOL users as a
result), but it is a serious problem on large projects like en.wikipedia
,
where there are thousands of AOL users.
That's certainly not the impression we gained when we researched this a
couple of years ago. Has
something changed recently? AOL's information on this subject certainly
hasn't changed:
http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html
My understanding on this subject is that in the US, AOL uses a proxy
cluster with load balancing by
a hash of the destination URL. Thus if you block an AOL IP which edited a
particular article, you
block all AOL edits to that particular article.
-- Tim Starling
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