Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal

This proposal is now implemented.

This proposal, based on BugZilla bug 550, aims to introduce a new level of blocking that would reduce the level of collateral damage done by blocking certain IP addresses, while at the same time reducing vandalism by allowing blocking anonymous editing from specific IP addresses that can't be satisfactorily blocked at present.

At present we have 2 kinds of blocks, one by username, the other by IP. The IP block locks out everybody, even logged-in users. This causes situations like this, this, this, this, and this.

When I blocked an IP the other day I received this email response:

This is the third time this happens. That IP is used by Datastream, the only ADSL provider of my country, Malta. It is used as a gateway and actual IPs are different. By blocking that IP you have blocked all ADSL users in my country! Now while I recognize there's some moron vandalizing pages, you have to find some way to get to his REAL IP not the ADSL gateway!

This could be prevented if we could allow the user to log in and still edit.

A solution

Blocking IP addresses commonly associated with vandalism that are also used by good users, but allowing logged in users to still use that IP address.

Note that current forms of blocking would still exist, this form of blocking would only be used when the other types are not applicable.

Implications

This new form of blocking will only affect specific IP addresses, most obviously will be AOL, which would almost certainly be blocked due to the level of vandalism.

There will be two main consequences of this; 1) Vandalism will be reduced as we can block them more effectively, 2) Good editors will no longer be blocked just for using the same IP address as a vandal.

Problems

1) Some more determined vandals will simply make a user account if the IP address is blocked, and carry on vandalising Wikipedia, solutions to this problem include;

• Only allowing approved user accounts to be made on blocked IP addresses.

Pros: Adds a human element into the process, thus making it more accurate in most cases.

Cons: We need to find people to approve these accounts.

Possible solution: Allow all already-registered users to approve accounts.

Pros: Makes sure that there are always people who can approve.

Pros: May help establish links between longstanding accounts and vandals.

Cons: Makes it possible (although hard) to get around the block for vandals.

• Place hurdles on the creation of new user accounts from blocked IP addresses:
  • Putting a time delay on new user accounts from the blocked IP address.

Pros: Potential contributors on blocked ips can make accounts and continue editing.

Cons: Potential contributors may be deferred and not willing to wait, determined vandals may be willing to wait.

• Ask the user to solve a captcha, either when creating a new account or occasionally when saving a page from a blocked IP (or both). Brion Vibber is currently adding captcha code to MediaWiki (to impede link spamming) which could be used for this purpose. This solution could also be combined with the time delay solution if either is considered too weak to be sufficient.

Pros and Cons: Similar to time delay proposal.

Additional pro: Prevents bots from using shared/anonymous IPs.

Additional con: Captchas can cause major accessibility problems.

Additional con: Captchas don't stop non-automated vandalisation.

• Ask for a valid email address.

Pros: Requires no extra work, will stop all but most determined vandals.

Cons: un-wiki?

Additional con: Like captchas, some legitimate users will be unable to pass this stage

• Do nothing. These vandals would have been vandalising wikipedia anyway, at least this way we can block their new user accounts (unlike before where we couldn't realistically block them at all). Possibly we could have a separate Special:Log/newusers page which lists new user accounts from blocked IP addresses.

Pros: Least work to implement

Cons: Easier for vandals to get around IP blocks.

2) Some good users will be forced to log in.

A price worth paying. At the moment some good users are blocked just for using the same IP as vandals.

Please discuss on the talk page before making substantial changes.

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Vote (95-125-11)

This 3-way vote is just a way to gauge general consensus, it won't necessarily have any impact on Wikipedia. There will be no time limit, lets just see what the results look like after 30 votes.

after 138 votes it's 63-70-6... so that on the main question of whether to have a softer form of blocking it's 134-6.

After 138 votes it's clear that the community supports the proposal. So it's probably a bad idea to do any more "pile-on" voting. So I would suggest not commenting on this poll unless you have an original idea. Werdna648^T/_C\^@ 15:17, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Let's get as wide a selection of wikipedians' views as possible, especially since views so far are split on whether to create a "hurdle" for new accounts from blocked IPs. It's now at 65-71-7. --Hughcharlesparker 10:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Two way: 190-11

Now at 83-110-11, or 193-11 (two-way). 21:25, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Add this new form of blocking, and let new accounts from the blocked IP addresses be created freely

1. Support Yes, definately. This would cut down massively on annoying schoolchildren vandalism, whilst allowing good users to edit with minimum fuss. I don't think that there should be restrictions on setting up accounts, as this would still cause problems in the example listed above, and most vandals wouldn't go to that trouble anyway.
2. Support --Alexnye 20:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
3. Support Yes please. Kaldari 17:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
4. Support This one looks technically feasible and should cut down high-school vandalism considerably. More complicated solutions simply may not have enough people to be implemented. Pavel Vozenilek 00:29, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
5. Support yes to this altho Id be happy with having some kind of hurdle like a delay. BL kiss the lizard 01:03, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
6. Support yes to see how effective it cab be Halcatalyst 05:13, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
7. Support The simplest solution first, until/unless we learn it doesn't work...then the second option below becomes available. nae'blis _(talk) 13:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
8. Support Good point by nae'blis above. Also, we should be more worried about preventing good users from signing up than dealing with vandalism; the whole basis of this proposal is to minimize collateral damage to good users, not to make them jump through hoops. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
9. Support Merovingian (t) (c) (e) 21:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
10. Support When editing from my AOL dialup, I have on a good many occasions hit a block due to previous vandalism by anon users. Now I can and do unblock, previously I had to find an admin, or log out of aol and back on, and soemtimes even that didn't help. Could get quite frustrating. DES ^(talk) 21:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

    I just noticed a comment on the talk page, suggestiong that this new form of block would be used only in rare cases, and probably only after someone has complained about being the innocent victim of the sort of block we have now. In that case I see little point to this proposal. I support it only on the understanding that the new form, as a less drastic remady, would normally be used first, and a block of the current sort would be used only after that failed, or when theat was food reason to belive that it would not be effective in a particualr case. DES ^(talk) 16:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

11. Support I completely agree with Christopher, we shouldn't be deterring new users in order to fight vandalism. - ulayiti (talk) 15:08, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
12. Support Yes, we need something like this so vandals can be blocked and good users can edit. - Taxman ^Talk 18:02, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
13. Support Definitely. No sense blocking people that don't need to be blocked. If they go so far as to create an account, that just brings it to the next level of security; a utility that tracks which usernames are on a blocked IP, and how long they've existed/how many edits they have, would be helpful for monitoring, I'm sure. Radagast 22:37, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
14. Support Yes. Evaluate later to see whether it's worked. 207.72.3.209 13:08, 20 October 2005 (UTC) Oops -- forgot to log in. Tlogmer 13:09, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
15. Support Absolutely. When I'm at my second job, a college, I'm always blocked. Logged in users should get affected only as a last resort. --K. AKA Konrad West TALK 00:59, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
16. Support Definitely. My school (and the dorm in which I usually live) are behind a filtering proxy which covers essentially all state-run schools and libraries in Maine. Naturally, there are frequent instances of bored kids vandalizing pages during class. I don't think account creation hurdles are needed immediately, but if they turn out to be necessary I'll support them. --bd_ 22:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
17. Support Yeah - I was always being hit by this before becoming an admin and I'm sure there are many, many who still get hit. I would also support the proposal below so long as one gets implemented. --Celestianpower ^hablamé 09:34, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
18. Support Support the creation of a new bolck type - I have been hit while editing from Internet cafes. I would also support the proposal below, but I think it would be better to do things one stage at a time: we can rediscuss the question of account creation if and when it is necessary. Physchim62 17:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
19. Support yes, as one form of blocking to be used first Mozzerati 14:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
20. Support I support this, especially as I just ran into someone with this problem on WikiEN-l. On the other hand, I hope the blocking admins don't use this as an excuse to just (for example) block all of AOL all the time just because it makes things a little easier (what I call the Beef Irradiation Problem). Make these blocks the standard ones, then if that doesn't work add the delay as per below, then if that doesn't work just block everything.Kiaparowits 19:01, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
21. Support This seems to do the least harm, and might be an acceptable step towards eliminating IP blocks, which I entirely disagree with for obvious reasons. Anyone confused by that last might like to review m:Foundation issues. Sam Spade 21:02, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
22. Support Agree with Nae'blis. Barno 16:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
23. Support If viewed from the direction of "this proposal allows legitimate editors to edit when their otherwise shared IP has been tagged for vandalism" then it is a very very good, pro-Wiki idea. ➨ ❝REDVERS❞ 14:09, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
24. Support My thinking is that content-based vandalism detection would be far more effective than editor-based methods such as this; however, among the options provided, I think that this one is the least onerous. I think it should be considered an interim solution and not a final one; to take a lesson from recent American History, no matter how high you build the levee, Nature will find a way around, under or through it ... and the discussion here is very much about building higher levees. Courtland 00:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
25. Support Absolutely. I actually proposed this same idea recently and only just discovered that this page already exists. Having special restrictions for accounts created from blocked IP's seemed sensible to me at first, but on pondering, it just seems to create a second class of wikizens unnecessarily, as many vandals will jump one or two hoops, but the curious contributor will just be turned off. Keeping a list of new users (under a week old, or with less than 10 article edits) made from these accounts, and tagging them accordingly in History/Recent Changes, can cut the extra patrolling overhead that might be created by vandals creating accounts when they normally wouldn't. Phoenix-forgotten 01:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
26. Support Yes, but the captcha should also work for people who cannot view pictures. --Habakuk 19:36, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
27. Support Yes, I think this is the best solution, so far. I think it should be tried to see if/how it woks. A delay hurdle may be useful as well. --Piolinfax 15:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
28. Support This has been long needed. Since we are trying to reduce collateral damage from blocks, I think it would make sense to try the new-account-creation-still-allowed blocks first. If this is found insufficient, then we can make it finer grained yet. But support something of this type. Morwen - Talk 11:15, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
29. Support This is needed; I don't think the effort needed to implement a "hurdle" is worth the time. Add this functionality now so that good editors don't get blocked, and implement the hurdle later as time permits. I'm not sure how effective the hurdle will be anyway. --ssd 23:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
30. Support This the simplest to implement way and certainly has some value. Lets implement it first and then see if we need some hurdles later abakharev 05:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
31. Support I support this proposal. If a vandal is determined enough to create a bunch of sockpuppet accounts just so he/she can vandalize articles then i doubt the proposed time delay would matter much anyhow. -Loren 16:18, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
32. Support Yes, for same reasons as above. SuperTails92 16:58, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
33. Support Minimal disruption to legit users, gets rid of most of the problems with the current situation. Palfrey 22:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
34. Collatertal damage is getting more common these days. Innocent, legitimate users find themselves getting caught up so often, that this only serves to frustrate them. - Mailer Diablo 15:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
35. Support Yes, get it done now!!!! Mjal 01:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
36. Support I am on my school's Web Team and run my school's linux server, and frequently think of things which would be a good addition to Wikipedia, but I am blocked at every turn by an IP Ban on our caching outgoing proxy server. I fully support trying this out and seeing if it is a good enough measure before escalating to adding a registration hurdle. Eko 03:27, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
37. Support —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 23:10, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
38. Support Most certainly. I ran into autoblocking when I accidentally logged on to My username in all lowercase. I created these accounts to avoid impersonation, but they were blocked by someone who -- not surpisingly -- mistaked them for impersonator accounts. Luckily I travel with My laptop so I don't keep one IP address. However I'm worryed about Blocked User being able to leave Blocked IP addresses in there wake! -- Eddie 05:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
39. Support I support this option, as well as the possibility of adding some sort of hurdle, as well as having a "confirmed user" status. Alphax ^τεχ 04:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
40. Support Having just been autoblocked for no other crime than being an AOL user for the third time this week, I am strongly inclined to support this proposal. If there are concerns about the details of its implementation (such as the provision of some kind of "hurdle"), those could always be developed over time by provisionally implementing the "simple" semi-blocking policy and adding "hurdles" later if they seem necessary. I am not in favor of doing nothing; it may be unusually bad for me as an AOL user, but my personal experience lately has been that the disruption due to collateral damage is actually becoming worse than the disruption due to vandalism that the blocking policy was intended to resolve Vremya 10:31, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
41. Support Being a victim of a school-wide ip block, I support this proposal. USER-cacophony 06:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

    Support Yes please. Let's progress cautiously - we can consider adding account creation hurdles after semi-block has been in place for a while. I edit from behind a proxy which covers the whole of Birmingham's schools system - there's usually a note on the talk page complaining about vandalism. Hughcharlesparker 21:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

    Having done some more vandal fighting, I've moved my vote to the "support with hurdle" section. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 10:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

42. Support I've just had my IP unblocked after a few hours of complaining via email and on IRC. I'm not against the hurdles, but they should only be put in place on a case-by-case basis, after trialling free user creation. The main thing is to get the blocking policy changed quickly. It's seriously harming Wikipedia. Pengo 01:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
43. Support - seems kinda hard on the innocent otherwise Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 15:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
44. Support—We can start with this, and then re-assess the situation. PizzaMargherita 07:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
45. Support I support this policy. I think at the very least a trial period is worth implementing. Permanent establishment of the policy should only follow a determination that it has brought about the intended results. --Ed (Edgar181) 18:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
46. Support This was the point of my original proposal, bug 550. It simply should not be possible to edit anonymously from an AOL proxy. AOL does not follow the standard rule of one IP per person-session; it is almost as if AOL were designed to vandalize wikis. Mr. Treason and Michael especially liked using AOL for vandal edits. —Guanaco 02:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
47. Support. Sounds quite reasonable. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:21, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
48. Support Support hurde as well, but as a seperate step.Rich Farmbrough 11:50 20 March 2006 (UTC).
49. Support I'd rather not have hurdles to creating accounts. Hiding talk 13:13, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
50. Support This level of blocking is nothing but a help to the wiki. The hurdle proposal below is awful instruction creep, though, and very anti-wiki. Xoloz 20:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
51. Support. I wish I'd voted earlier. --maru (talk) contribs 00:08, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
52. Support Collateral damage is a damned nuisance that simply hinders efforts to curtail vandalism. I would also support the "hurdle" proposal. SoLando (Talk) 19:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
53. Support I've seen shared IPs that have contribs showing pages of links to articles they've vandalized. There needs to be a way to block such shared users but still allow people with people with an account on such shared networks to edit. Shadowoftime 05:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
54. Support. Like it or not, by far the greatest quantity of vandalism on Wikipedia comes from anonymous editors, and it's getting to the point when many of us spend far too much time on anti-vandalism patrols, particularly on articles (like those on individual schools) which are magnets for bored teenagers. However, for the moment, I think anyone should be able to create a user account from a blocked IP without further hurdles, although I may well change that opinion later on. -- Necrothesp 10:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
55. Support ILovEPlankton 17:46, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
56. Support. The most wiki-friendly solution (certainly more so than the status quo). Batmanand | Talk 01:08, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
57. Support per above--HereToHelp 16:42, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
58. Strong support a very necessary step. If we need to, add a hurdle to new accounts from blocked IPs later. I suspect that will prove necessary, but I'd rather try a solution with smaller impact first. Gwernol 00:56, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
59. Support Provided that we don't go around permabanning or extensively blocking AOL IPs and the like. I do not want admins to go trigger-happy on this. Having been on RC patrol before, however, I think this is a good idea. Johnleemk | Talk 15:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
60. Support Well it would give admins the option to shortterm ban AOL-IP vandals without having to wait until they have gone through all the templates again - while giving the person on the other end the option to log in and edit at any time he wishes Agathoclea 15:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
61. Support. I'm tempted by the idea of a hurdle, but I think that a hurdle that had any real effect would be too restrictive. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
62. Support – Blocking IPs only and not logged in users is a good idea, I have experienced one of these blocks before (fortunately I was using a public computer cluster with 50 machines). However, I think restricting the creation of new accounts from blocked IPs is unnecessary, your average run-of-the-mill drive-by vandal can't be bothered to create an account – Gurch 17:01, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
63. Support See comments in oppose section. Antonrojo 13:48, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

    At risk of breaking up the list formatting, I think that this quote from Jimbo's user page provides pretty good evidence that the 'add additional barriers to new accounts' might not agree with the wikipedia philosophy:

    Newcomers are always to be welcomed. There must be no cabal, there must be no elites, there must be no hierarchy or structure which gets in the way of this openness to newcomers. Any security measures to be implemented to protect the community against real vandals (and there are real vandals, who are already starting to affect us), should be implemented on the model of "strict scrutiny".

    "Strict scrutiny" means that any measures instituted for security must address a compelling community interest, and must be narrowly tailored to achieve that objective and no other.

    For example: rather than trust humans to correctly identify "regulars", we must use a simple, transparent, and open algorithm, so that people are automatically given full privileges once they have been around the community for a very short period of time. The process should be virtually invisible for newcomers, so that they do not have to do anything to start contributing to the community.

    Also, agree with the following from DES:

    "I just noticed a comment on the talk page, suggesting that this new form of block would be used only in rare cases, and probably only after someone has complained about being the innocent victim of the sort of block we have now. In that case I see little point to this proposal. I support it only on the understanding that the new form, as a less drastic remedy, would normally be used first, and a block of the current sort would be used only after that failed, or when there was good reason to belive that it would not be effective in a particular case."

64. Support This approach should have been taken from the very beginning. Nothing is more annoying than being blocked (sometimes several times) because some idiot that one has never met decides to act stupidly.
65. Support As a legitimate editor, I am often frustrated when I attempt to contribute from my local library, or school computers, since vandalism has occurred at some of these IP's, and they are blocked. I think it would be wonderful to implement a system in which legitimate editors were still able to contribute on blocked IPs such as these, while casual vandals (who I believe are the most common) would be blocked. Abhorsen327 14:54, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
66. Support.I have been "blocked" twice... --Exir Kamalabadi^{Join Esperanza!} 08:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
67. Support -- I would go further but this is a good start. John Reid 22:39, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
68. Support. However I think developments on this are going to have to be developer- and software-led: it is up to the developers to tell us what they can do, then the community will agree a change in policy to cover it. David | Talk 23:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
69. Support. We need to find creative ways to limit vandalism. Chick Bowen 14:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
70. Support, this allows legitimate users to edit. I'm always affected when my IP gets blocked. --Terence Ong 04:42, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
71. Support I am often blocked because I use a shared IP and someone else with the same IP keeps on vandalising Wikipedia. If we implement this change, we can block IPs more freely without worrying so much about collateral damage. As for vandals creating accounts, I will say that many vandals are just one-time pranksters, which will be stopped with the IP blocks. The more determined vandals are in the minority, and by forcing them to create accounts, the speed at which they can vandalise is decreased, and they are easier to track. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:32, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

    It is quite legitimate for people to edit from IP addresses. By allowing many IP wide blocks you are reducing peoples chance for anonymity, and therefore leaving them open to possible retribution from government or other organisations. Vandalism isn't the only thing that happens from IP addresses. Ansell 01:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

    Anonymity of IPs is beside the point. The type of our Wikipedia account has nothing to do with preemptive wiretapping and routine censorship of your local Internet access. On the contrary, any editor who wants basic anonymity should set up an account, because edits from IPs (obviously) reveal retraceable IP information to the world. Femto 10:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

72. Strong Support This is needed, and would work well. Please enable it. Daniel (☎) 11:43, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
73. Strong support Vandalism accounts are blocked quite quickly anyway. But collateral damage is a big problem. -- Tangotango 04:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
74. Support. Helps tackle a significant problem. The majority of indiscriminate vandals will be put off by having to create an account. Meanwhile legitmate users can still edit. Zaxem 11:11, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
75. Support as per nae'blis. Polonium 00:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
76. Support I often work on Wikipedia articles from my school, and one day someone had vandalized a page and the school's IP address was temporarily blocked. IP address blocks should be waived for logged in users, since they tend to be people committed to advancing the Wikipedia. Maybe large institutions (such as universities, schools, businesses, etc.) should be IP blocked, requiring people to register. This way, their specific actions can be monitored rather than by IP address which applies to the nearly 2000 people at my school.Johantheolive 22:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
77. Support. I often fight vandals during the day and we need a way to stop the casual vandals without blocking out legitimate registered users. I would rather start with this lighter touch and only add hurdles to registering users if it becomes necessary. --MarkS 11:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
78. Support This solves one of the major problems with blocking addresses, and I think the extra trouble of creating an account will put most vandals off, without the need for extra safeguards on accounts from these IPs. Kcordina ^Talk 11:19, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
79. Support per Nae'blis --Zoz (t) 21:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
80. Support There's no point in blocking good faith editors because of idiotic vandals, this proposal is a good way of fixing the problem. Emmett5 15:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
81. Support I see no adverse effects to blocking unregistered users. If somebody really doesn't want to take the time to register their user, then what they would like to add must not be that important. TrogdorPolitiks 19:26, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
82. Strong Support As a User who has written well over 300+ quality articles for the "Pedia" and sometimes I find myself on the verge of just quiting because of the "blocks" which affect me and other well intentioned Users. People who use E-bay or most other sites must register if they want to participate in those sites and those sites continue to prosper. Tony the Marine 00:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
83. Support Being blocked due to a vandal on the same ISP is a great annoyance to many users. We may create the issue that people'll just create endless sock accounts to get around this but I think this'd be usefull for 90+% of IP vandals without impacting on registered, quality editors - Peripitus (Talk) 03:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
84. Support. I agree with Peripitus on this one. Ian Manka Talk to me! 21:22, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
85. Support This is the best balance between stopping vandals and allowing good users (including good new users) access to wikipedia. Eluchil404 22:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
86. Support. Looks like a good compromise. Experience will show if further obstacles to registration are needed. Latebird 08:15, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
87. Support A good idea, myself having been recently blocked due to this sort of problem. --LeakeyJee 08:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
88. Support I have had so many troubles with trying to edit and finding myself on a blocked IP. It really irritates me, and I see no reason why this shouldn't have been implemented long ago. BW52 02:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
89. Support Reduces vandalism, creates no hurdles to new users and allows registered users to edit without worrry.... good proposal --Robdurbar 19:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
90. Support. This helps to reduce vandalism.--Tdxiang 08:53, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
91. Support. Either the soft or hard (obstacle) method, one or the other, is desperately needed to curb vandalism. I tend to feel that requiring an email address is going too far, though. Perhaps a blocked IP could have a limited number of "new user" account creations per day (I don't know how many would be good); however, a determined vandal might use all of these up in one slew and good faith contributors would be locked out. But in general, unless a better solution is found, I'd rather we do without the obstacle to new accounts on the blocked IP. Kasreyn 02:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
92. Support. Lcarsdata (Talk) 07:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
93. Support. Jibbles | Talk 20:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
94. Support. Badly needed. Circeus 06:10, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
95. Support. However, block new accounts from blocked IPs from editing until after some time. Ariedartin JECJY ^Talk 17:48, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
96. support helpful and such, per above
97. Support I am all for REASONABLE blocks that dont hold good editors back while keeping the collection safe from those out to do it harm. Shortfuse 02:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Add this new form of blocking, and implement some sort of hurdle to new accounts being created on the blocked IP addresses

1. Support Martin 08:58, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
2. Support I love the whole proposal but I hate the captcha idea. I was once on a site that required a captcha for every page...and it was annoying as heck. Plus, much of our vandalism is non-automated. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 13:56, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
3. Support Charles Stewart 00:40, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
4. Support asking for a valid e-mail shouldn't be a problem. Maybe put a suggestion on where to get a free one for those who don't already have one. - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 06:23, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
5. Yes, but no captchas, just a "new account delay" of say 1 hour. -- SGBailey 08:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
6. SYSS Mouse 12:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
7. Support Yes please. Valid email probably isn't a necessity - a one-hour delay as per SGBailey should cut out the vast majority of the vandalism. Grutness...wha? 00:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
8. Ohhhhhhh yeah. The frustration of being innocently blocked is immeasurable. Plough talk to me 10:16, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
9. Support user:zanimum seems logical
10. Comment (note that I also voted in the section above, please don't double count me) While I don't think some sort of hurdle essential, I think one might be a good idea. I would favor giving a user a choice of either a 2 hour delay, or an email challange/response with the email address being logged. That should deter many vandals, at least, and not be too onerous for most users. DES ^(talk) 21:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

    I just noticed a comment on the talk page, suggesting that this new form of block would be used only in rare cases, and probably only after someone has complained about being the innocent victim of the sort of block we have now. In that case I see little point to this proposal. I support it only on the understanding that the new form, as a less drastic remady, would normally be used first, and a block of the current sort would be used only after that failed, or when theat was food reason to belive that it would not be effective in a particualr case. DES ^(talk) 16:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

    Thats a really good suggestion, we can always count on you for that! Martin 21:40, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

11. Support I'm with DES' email proposal. By requiring a fresh email address for each account it will become unlikely that people will create more than one account. Thue | talk 10:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

    • This is naive: there will generally be little difficulty for a determined vandal to generate a fair number of email addresses obtained from the free email providers. But the free email providers have measures in place to limit their abuse, so this scheme should put a limit to the amount of abuse from most vandals. Of course, the really hi-tech vandal will have email servers with multiple DNS addresses and multiple IP gateways that can generate email addresses as they are demanded by their automated WP vandalisation scripts... --- Charles Stewart 14:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

    • I am aware that it is not too hard to get past, but I think it is unlikely that most vandals will go to the trouble. Thue | talk 15:19, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

    Plus we are not talking about blocking all anonymous editing (or even all anonymous editing from IPs used by multiple people), so it is really beside the point, and at the moment these vandals have a free run on Wikipedia, so any change will be for the better. Martin 15:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

12. Support I'm ok with this too. I think time delay would be most effective, but that can be figured out later. - Taxman ^Talk 18:02, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
13. Support Oh yes, please. -- Arwel 02:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
14. Support I like the 1 hour delay idea. Filiocht | The kettle's on 11:17, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
15. Support Even as little as a 15-minute delay should be enough to deter vandals. --Carnildo 17:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
16. Support I like the proposal. I'm not sure if an account creation hurdle is necessary, but I fear that without any hurdle this new weak block would be used too seldom (resorting to hard block instead) -- acceptance is likely to be better if there is a hurdle. --Chrissi 12:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
17. Support I believe Brion Vibber has already implemented a system that prevents blocked IPs creating accounts, as a measure against the recent vandalbot. Given its efficacy there, there's no good reason to remove that provision entirely, but time-limiting the effect might be sensible. -Splash^talk 13:12, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
18. Support Yes, of course. *drew 07:22, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
19. Support I support both this one and the one above - I don't really mind which so long as one gets implemented. --Celestianpower ^hablamé 09:35, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
20. Support yes, as another form of blocking to be used if problem new accounts start to be created Mozzerati 14:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
21. Support Yes. I like the valid e-mail idea, and also the choice of a valid e-mail or a time delay, if that wouldn't be too confusing. RSpeer 21:53, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
22. Support Yes. I'm all for this proposal since I'm constantly getting blocked from editing at school because of the shared IP between a network of schools, which contains some chronic vandals. I like the E-mail verification idea, but there are ways around everything unfortunately =( RealmKnight 01:17, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
23. Support Certainly. And post haste! Radiant_>|< 23:52, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
24. Support Yes, OK with both firts votes, but this is best, also accept forcing email registration. I do not see these suggestions as a new form of blocking, it is a relaxed blocking that allows real users to do edits while using a shared IP that is beeing blocked. Stefan 08:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC) OK will add to this, as I tried to state above, the reson for me voting for this is that I was blocked yesterday because I sit on the same ISP as half of Singapore, Singapore forces you to use a proxy that blocks (censors) some URLs. Because of one admin blocking one vandalism I could not edit for most of last night. This is not what wikipedia is supposed to do, so I vote for this NOT to block common IPs, but to allow registered users that wants to do real edits to actually do that. (and if anyone wonders that talk page have a warning not to block that IP unless really nessesary, but it was still blocked after one (or maybe two vandalsms). The block was changed from 48h to 24h by the original admin after my email (I think) and later reveted totally by a admin on the same IP. But it did cause me not to be able to do much updated for 2-3 hours. (sorry or the ranting :-) ) Stefan 13:33, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
25. Support Huh. Here I am, thinking current status already was that existing log-in-accounts were unaffected by blocked IP users. This is un-Wiki and no state to be in. Femto 20:38, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
26. Support Yes Londenp 21:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
27. Support Aye--Cyberjunkie | Talk 11:05, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
28. Support Yes. I think this should be the default method of blocking anonymous vandals. I see no reason that the time delay couldn't be as much as 24hours, which would often be the case anyway if they found their ip address blocked. This would also allow problematic IP ranges to be blocked on a more permanent basis which would proabbly be more effective at stopping vandalism. --Martyman-(talk) 11:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
29. Support Good idea, giving us a way to block vandal IPs with minimal collateral damage. A one time hurdle is OK to overcome and prevents repeated vandal sockpuppets. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:33, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
30. Support I endorse this product or service. (That's a vote for this option.) I think a hurdle is necessary, but preferably a small hurdle. Perhaps for accessibility there could be the option of a captcha OR a time delay, at the user's preference. Midg3t 09:11, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
31. Support WebBoy 16:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
32. Support. This is an excellent idea. Seasoned vandals know full well that AOL cannot be blocked and they take advantage of it. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 11:12, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
33. Support, as my school is a repeat vandal, and it stops me from editing 80% of the time I'm there. Support captcha on registration only, thoughSceptre ^(Talk) 16:43, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
34. I have voted on the section above as well, but implementing the right sort of a hurdle can significantly add to the value of the project. I don't like that captcha ideas, but the e-mail idea seems to be reasonable (we can forbid free E-mails here, the same way we forbid the open proxies), we can also use a $1 credit card transaction as in paypal, it is quite unlikely that a user have a hundreds of credit cards (the underaged can ask their parent to help them here). abakharev 05:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
35. Support - time delay hurdle only, any other hurdle would be a different rule than other new log-ins get - it they don't have to have email and they don't have to pay or submit credit card details - I really do not like that suggestion from abakharev. The time delay should come with a meaningful message to explain why and would of course only apply while the IP or IP range is being blocked. I think an hour is perhaps too long. The time hurdle runs contrary to the promise that "anyone can edit" but is probably necessary to slow down vandalism.--A Y Arktos 21:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
36. Strong Support a valid unique email address should be required.  ALKIVAR™ 12:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
37. Strong Support — At least one hurdle should be implemented because creating an account takes about 2 seconds. Creating a free email account at least adds 15-30 seconds to the time involved to start vandalizing again. Like both the email and credit card ideas, or both at the same time. Uris 14:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
38. Support This seems reasonable. -ICR 06:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
39. Support Agreed. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 12:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
40. Support... another implementation would be to block new account creation on the blocked IP for the time period of the semi-block and only allow currently registered users on that IP to edit. I have been shut out by an IP block before, and it's very frustrating. haz _(user talk)^e 11:44, 23 February 2006
41. Definately support the blocking proposal. There should probably also be a hurdle, though I'm not sure what it should be. I also strongly support the creation of Special:Log/newusers/blockedips. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 03:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
42. Ouch.. i never knew support hurt that much, I've wanted this for ages. Werdna648^T/_C\^@ 04:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
43. Support this type of block will aid those of us on shared proxies. - Richard Slater 12:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
44. Support. With either human aided approval for new accounts (request is put into pool, where a willing vandal-focused admin chooses to 'attach' themselves to the new account for a short period as a point of contact should it start vandalising) or, failing that and at the very least, the 1 hour delay. ◄ИΞШSΜΛЯΞ► 02:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
45. Support. Doesn't solve all problems, but would help. Ben Aveling 16:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
46. Support I strongly support. My school is blocked and I cannot edit, I tried to make an account for a friend but could not because of the blocked IP. He was discouraged but later created one at home. The0208 00:21, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
47. Support. Also implement this form of blocking. We need a wide variety of options when blocking users. —Guanaco 03:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
48. Support with a welcome to wiki email that includes a registration link which must confirmed before they can edit as the hurdle. Although critics may see this as unwiki, and we do have some valuable contributors who (for some reason!) haven't registered I believe that anyone who isn't prepared to register when compulsary isn't going to contribute significantly anyway (after all a user name actually reveals less about you than you IP. Just my $0.02 File:Glenstollery.gif^POW! 07:40, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
49. Support KillerChihuahua^?!? 10:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
50. Support I have been a victim of the blocking public IP's before. I am at school when I am on wikipedia and there are hundereds of students that use these computers so blocking all of them because of a few morons is not progress. I completely agree that you should have to have an account to edit if your IP has been blocked before.
51. Support. On such IP's, legitimate users can login and edit, while vandals are blocked and real potential contributors will be willing to wait a few hours or days. -- King of Hearts ^talk 03:04, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
52. Support --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 23:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
53. Support Perhaps the "hurdle" can be something like with the semi-protection policy. Users that have a certain number of edits and/or a certain tenure will be allowed to overcome the IP block. joturner 03:41, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
54. Support Many websites include 'hurdles' such as captchas merely to post on their forums. There is absolutely nothing non-Wiki about requiring people to validate themselves before contributing. Fixing vandalised articles is mundane, thankless and a waste of time. --Mal 16:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
55. Support Definitely. Vandal fighting is a waste of time, and vandalised edit histories ugly. This would certainly help reduce it, whilst not affecting legitimate users. --kingboyk 17:36, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
56. Support sounds like a good way to stop vandalism - Mike"mjg0503"_talk 21:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
57. Support In my experience a lot of vandals are just kids sitting in classes who are bored and want to do something. Putting in the hour delay will make the casual vandals go elsewhere as they won't wait around for their account to be set up, or may not even set up an account in the first place as they may think it'll mean they're easier to trace. But we need to do something as most of my time these days is chasing vandals around the place and I don't have the power to block them. Ben W Bell 08:28, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
58. Extreme support - the IP at my home is blocked on alternative days and I can't edit even when I'm logged in. This forced me to use my school's computers or proxies. If the new measure is implemented I'll feel a lot better. --Deryck C. 09:06, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
59. Support Seems the only way to let legit and non users of the same IP in, I suppose only allowing edits by logged in users is a no-no although its not that hard to create an account is it? Leevanjackson 13:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
60. Support this is a sensible solution to a difficult problem. Hall Monitor 18:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
61. Support Sensible proposal; not perfect but a potential improvement. Worthy (at the very least) of a trial period, to gauge the level of collateral blocking. Aquilina 19:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
62. Very Strong Support. Solves all of our problems with the shared IPs (which anyone who's ever seen the (former) backlog of unblock requests knows NEEDS to be fixed), and prevents vandals from getting past the blocks. --Rory096 05:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
63. Support but captchas can easily be faked now (see our article). User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 06:43, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
64. Support. Time delay should be effective. --maclean25 05:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
65. Strong Support. We definitely need this. -- Renesis13 16:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
66. Support It's not perfect, and would need some further discussion (I like the time delay idea, myself), but it's a step in the right direction, for my money. --InShaneee 04:14, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
67. Conditional Support-only if blocking the new accounts is much stricter, and really it is a one-strike and you're out policy on these new users. Mkaycomputer 22:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
68. Very Strong Support. I am on the bad end of a block almost constantly at the college I attend (Runshaw College) - just have a look at User_talk:195.194.131.172. This College is attended by many thousands of Further and Higher education students and operates at three sites in two towns. This is very annoying for many students that want to use Wikipedia in good faith. However, I do some patrolling for the Counter Vandalism Unit and can see that some hurdle should be introduced to avoid this type of block becoming ineffective. I do hope that something happens to this soon, as there is such strong support for this policy. I would hate to see it sitting as 'proposed' for another few years. GO! --Skoorb 17:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
69. Conditional Support - I am in a similar situation as Haggis (or Skoorb), where my school's proxy IPs have been blocked. When I log in there I find out that I am still blocked from editing. I think it would be a good idea to block anonymous IPs and IPs that were normally used by vandals. However, users that about two weeks old and have a good record of editing should be able to edit anywhere, even on blocked addresses. --FlyingPenguins 04:26, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
70. Support, I would support going without the hurdle too, but I think this proposal will be very effective if a hurdle is used. -- Kjkolb 13:10, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
71. Support. Without the hurdle would be an improvement, but with the hurdle it would be a MAJOR improvement. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 14:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
72. Support; necessary for institutions behind proxies. ~ PseudoSudo 17:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
73. Support. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:36, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
74. Support. The present system of blocking vandals only works for vandals that have a unique IP address. There needs to be some equivalent for those with a shared IP address. The fact is that if you have a unique address, then that information is in the Wiki system and can potentially be traced to your home/work computer. Users sharing an IP should be in the same situation of having some unique identifier in the Wiki system, an email address at the very least. This would mean a vandal would have to go to the trouble of getting another email address if they were blocked in order to create a new user name. Something has to be done about this problem. Tyrenius 11:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
75. Support. This makes so much sense: why has it not been done already? I suggest we ask for the "hurdle" to be implemented, but capable of being switched off so that it can be easily removed if we find that we don't need it. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 05:19, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
76. Support. This sounds like it could solve some of the problems that we are having in the Finnish Wikipedia. --Jannex 07:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
77. Support This is the type of blocking system I have been hoping for. A while back my idiot roomate vandalized my user page 3 times, and got our IP address blocked so I couldn't edit even under my username. I didn't bother doing an unblock request but it would avoid situations like these from happening in the future. VegaDark 02:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
78. Support - Yes. Kilo-Lima|^(talk) 14:31, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
79. Support As long as something is done to make sure that the blocks of this sort don't stay on too long. JoshuaZ 22:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
80. Very strong Support — My school is blocked as a repeated vandal as well, so I know how frustrating it is when you are locked out of editing with your own account because of someone else's idiocy. This policy would truly be helpful for many who are unfairly blocked from shared IPs. I would support a 1 hour delay, as it discourages casual vandals (albeit not determined ones), while providing an easily (in home conditions, not too hard in work conditions) performable condition the editor must fulfill if he doesn't already have an account —UED77 01:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
81. Support Lundse 16:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
82. Support I was made painfully aware of this due to a block which came due to one student out of 40,000 at my university [1]. Even as a registered user, I was not able to do anything. True, I could have gone to my technical department to have the one vandal looked at, even though they reverted their edits immediately after placing them and it would possibly be seen as wasting their time to present the same evidence that the blocking admin showed me. I think putting a slight hurdle up would deter such a non-intrusive vandal, while still allowing registered users to edit, that part is a non-negotiable for me. I do not see why the registered editors part of this proposal has not been accepted already, it has more than 90% consensus and is the part which is causing the pain for current editors. Ansell 22:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
83. Strong support I'm rather puzzled that my name hasn't appeared here until now. I think it would be better to have some sort of hurdle to registering new accounts from blocked IPs to prevent mass creation of vandal only accounts. Obviously this won't affect existing users, and as long as the hurdle wasn't too great it shouldn't put of many 'serious' contributers. Petros471 18:41, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
84. Support. For pretty much all the reasons given above. MrWeeble Talk Brit tv 12:07, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
85. Support -- No Guru 02:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
86. Conditional Support One effect of this policy is that vandalism will become more sophisticated. In my experience, vandalism by users with a login take longer to detect and fix (sometimes days or weeks). New tools need to be developed to help this, possibly new colors for users from banned IPs on the history or recent changes pages. If not, the overall effect of vandalism will increase. Ted 02:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
87. Strong Support Vandal fighters face an ocean of vandalism with a paper boat to cross - this would certainly help significantly. I like Ted's idea of color-coding above, but support this proposal regardless. --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 03:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
88. Strong support, asking for a valid mail should be fine. -- Grafikm_fr ^(AutoGRAF) 15:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
89. Support --Ligulem 06:57, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
90. Support It would help cut down on IP vandals greatly -- Masterjamie 15:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
91. Comment Might be a good idea, at least legitimate users of the IP will know the IP is blocked to anon editors and obviously deter vandalism... . Try doing a trial run of the rule to see if all WPedians like it. --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 09:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
92. Strong Support This will allow Wikipedia to protect itself against "IP vandals" (who try to get their IP blocked). Right now, it only has protection against "content vandals" (who try to add bad content, or remove good content). Eli Falk 16:39, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
93. Absolutely Support Being a good-faith, innocent editor attempting to edit Wikipedia only to find out I'm blocked is beyond annoying. joturner 20:24, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
94. Support. I like someone's idea of approved users. This would be a tier above anonymous or very new editors, but relatively easy to achieve, for instance it could be given automatically to any user registered for, say, over a month. However if such a user were to engage in vandalism, or act like a sockpuppet, any administrator could demote them back to pre-approved level. Regaining approved level would require a certain minimum number of good-faith edits and no bad. Any user would still be able to edit, but only approved users would be eligible to vote on AfD or to edit semi-protected pages. --woggly 10:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
95. Support Potential problems of hurdles is worth it. Snoutwood (talk) 15:57, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
96. Total support. The less vandalism we have to revert, the more time and effort we can devote to productive work. — Phil Welch (t) (c) 21:01, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
97. Hell yeah. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 03:57, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
98. Support This should have been done ages ago. MyNameIsNotBob 09:55, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
99. Support. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of the Sith} 09:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
100. Support. Azate 03:35, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
101. Support. I like to think I'm a good-faith editor. My IP address has come close to being blocked in the past. - Gimboid13 20:57, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
102. Support Existing user accounts should not be autoblocked because of vandalism by a shared IP address. Creation of new accounts on a blocked IP must have restrictions, but a catchpa will be useless to deter the vandals. It has to be some form of effective time delay - how long would the juvenile vandal be prepared to wait before being able to add "Joe Bloggs is sooo GAY" to all his favourite articles again? --Cactus.man ✍ 11:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
103. Support In my view, this addresses Wikipedia's most serious problem. There is nothing more frustrating in respect to editing.--Hokeman 23:00, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
104. Support for both a reasonable time delay (measured in hours not days) and also requiring email validation for known abusive IP ranges (AOL in particular) with no hesitation. Use of captchas also seems reasonable as long as there was also a bypass registration method in place to manually approve user accounts. The manual approve process should be for special exception processing only, such as for those with web accessibility issues that cannot perform a captcha, so as not to become a large burden. -- Argon233 ^T C _@ ∉  00:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
105. Support. I sometimes edit from behind a proxy which covers the whole of Birmingham's schools system - there's usually a note on the talk page complaining about vandalism. I originally voted for the "support without a hurdle" option, but I've done a lot more vandal fighting since then. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 10:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
106. Support. I sometimes edit from an Internet cafe and have seen a similar problem to Hughcharlesparker's.--Runcorn 15:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
107. Support. i think a one hour delay on new count is all thas needed. No captchas please, also I'd prefer not to give my e-mail address. --T.A Stevenson 18:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
108. Support. Not ideal but seems a logical compromise. Bayberrylane 19:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
109. Support, i'm sick of being blocked at school because of a couple of morons. But we can't just let them sign up to carry on vandalising. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
110. Support It's probably not the best policy on the table right now, but this one seems very promising. I like it. --Pilot|guy ^{(roger that)} 14:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
111. Support, it's just the thing we need for school computers. But I also suggest that the hurdle be removed once the new user signs in on a non-blocked IP. Random the Scrambled 16:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
112. support, it's only common sense. dab (ᛏ) 21:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
113. support, with the hurdle ideally being a unique email address not belonging to a blocked account, as was suggested above. Most vandals will not have the attention span to keep creating new email addresses every time an account of theirs is banned. That way, only mature editors like ourselves will be likely to -- ooh, look, a moth! --Iritscen 16:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
114. support. --Túrelio 16:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
115. Support. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 10:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
116. Support. Really glad I found this, it would be very helpful. --Quentin Smith 21:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
117. Support - kind of Yes, but not TOO big a hurdle, it should still be possible to make the accounts. I have been really annoyed on IRC when people run through the same tonne of complaiunts about AOL vandalism, i've been through it a million times. here's how it goes: 1) somebody complains that there is a new AOL vandal on the loose b) somebody says we should range block him c) somebody DOES rangeblock him d) I complain line all hell that i can't edit e) block is lifted, reluctantly f) somebody says ALL aol IPs should be blocked indefinitely g) everyone offers their opinions (mainly in favour) h) i say how much collatoral damage it would cause i) everyone says let's do a survey and see how many AOL edits are vandalism j) i say that would be innacurate, because respected users of wikipedia would be logged in, so it wouldn't work k) the vandal finds out he's unblocked, and starts again l) somebody does a range block m) an administrator that uses aol lifts the block and tells everyone to shut up n) somebody changes the topic. My point is that every IP I have access to is always getting blocked, and i'm sick of the prejudice against AOL users, but, if we do implement this feature, admins will feel less guilt in blocking an IP for an extended amount of time, so the number of long-term blocks would go THROUGH THE ROOF!!!, and I just don't want us to be stopping legitimate users of AOL who don't have an account here to be kept from editing because there was some person a year ago who used that IP for the wrong thing. We do need to allow editors to edit when their IP is blocked, but let's not get liberal with the blocks because i'm worried that we will end up stopping anon newbies from joining us. I hope my long message hasn't filled the page too much... MichaelBillington 05:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
118. Support. Yamaguchi先生 21:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
119. Support. Khukri ^{(talk . contribs)} 14:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
120. Support.  Grue  07:09, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
121. question I want to make sure I am completely understanding this before I support this. This would block the IP adress, and leave a note no the template with an email adress they can contact to request to create an account? IF so, then I support this. I was an IP editor for a bit before I realized it was free to create an account. In fact, the only reason I created my account was because a stupid friend of mine was blanking pages and the school's IP was a bad edit away from being blocked. False Prophet 02:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
122. Support --Ideogram 05:27, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
123. Strong support on the condition that "hurdle" does not translate to "indefinitely impossible." It may even be worthwhile to have the IP-block and username freeze be considered on seperate timeframes. Say, "block anon edits from this IP for 24 hours, block new user creation from this IP for just one hour." Or something to that effect; some sort of seperation may be wise. Good idea? Luna Santin 11:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
124. Support I feel this would keep away less determined IP vandals, while allowing registered users to keep up the work. Yet some hurdles must be added to prevent the mass creation of vandal accounts. If we then still get a determined vandal who somehow circumvents the hurdles, we still can escalate to IP blocking. CharonX/talk 23:46, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
125. Support, but do not require valid email. Leuko 06:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
126. Support of the options, I would like to try this one first and see how it goes. If it doesn't work, then rethink it. Good idea. Trnj2000 18:06, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

No new form of blocking

1. Oppose It's a good idea, but I have doubts. If this is implemented, most likely all of AOL, Netscape, all other major corporations, colleges, and school districts will be blocked using this form. This would restrict anonymous editing severly, contrary to the spirit of the Wiki. In addition, I don't believe that this would help counter-vandalism; in fact, in my opinion, it makes it harder for us to block vandals. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 15:41, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

   Flcelloguy, can you elaborate on how this will adversely impact major-ISP users such as AOL customers? My understanding is that currently, vandal blocks sometimes catch both anons and registered users from the target IP range. If I am wrong, this may change my vote above. nae'blis _(talk) 13:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

   That is pretty much what happens. At present, if there's a blanket block on an IP, everyone on that IP gets banned. The proposal is to ban all anons from an IP while allowing registered users at the same IP to continue ediing. As I see it, it will actually have the opposite effect to what Fleclloguy says, in that a block on any IP will no longer affect everyone at an IP, but only some of its users. It will reduce the "collateral damage", not increase it (and as a busy admin who's been blocked twice times in the last week because of a blanket IP block, I'm all in favour of that!). Grutness...wha? 13:44, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

   I've posted a (IMO) lengthy response on the mailing list; you can read it here. I think I've covered my opinion regarding this in that post, but I'll clarify myself here as well. Currently, (AFAIK) AOL IPs are rarely blocked for long periods of time; range blocks of the AOL IPs are extremely rare, if any. In either case, I sympathize with those being inadvertantly prohibited from editing, but the amount of time those IPs are blocked should be kept to a minimum. In either case, my opinion is that all of the AOL IPs and multiple other public-use IPs will be blocked using this new blocking form, restricting anonymous editing. However, this would not stop vandalism, because vandals can just use log-in or create accounts. There's been some discussion above regarding limiting new accounts, but IMHO this would prove ineffective and against the spirit of the wiki: email addresses should not be required (see mailing list post), captchas would do nothing since most of the vandals are not automated bots, and one-hour limit creations would severly impede the creation of accounts on a significant portion of the population. Do we really want to say to those who use AOL: "sorry, someone just created an account, and because the IP is blocked, you have to wait an hour to create one, and someone else most likely will register before you do?" Anyways, my opinion is that this policy would 1) hinder anonymous editing, a crucial principle of wikis and Wikipedia, 2) actually encourage vandals, and 3) increase collateral damage by restricting editing and account creation on hundreds of potential contributors while not filtering out vandals. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 20:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

   The one hour block does not mean one account per hour on each IP address, it means every account registered will only become active after one hour - most vandals will not bother waiting around, after all, very few vandals are actually determined. I agree catchpas would be ineffective and email is probably going to far. Martin 20:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

   Oops, sorry, must have misinterpreted the "one hour" thing. However, I still feel the same way about that - we shouldn't limit new accounts to editing one hour after creation; many users will be frustrated at this and just leave. This is, IMO, also going against the basic principles of wiki - that anyone can edit *now*, not one hour later. Many potential contributors would be deterred by this one hour delay; however, vandals wouldn't — they would just create more accounts continuously. Vandals have already shown that they are persistant and determined and (unfortunately) continue their actions, while potential editors and contributors can easily be chased away by these restrictions. Personally, I wouldn't have waited an hour after stumbling upon Wikipedia, I would have just continued anonymous editing or have left — but since the IP address would be blocked, we're putting ourselves in the danger of scaring off and chasing away potential valuable contributors while not deterring vandalism. Are we to discourage more people to join us when we have such trouble retaining good users already? Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 20:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

   I think in quite the opposite way; that we have trouble attracting good users because we have such a bad reputation among the kind of people who would be the best editors (i.e. the highly skilled). We have this repution because we are so open to vandalism. Now lets not make this into a discussion about whether we should stop all anonymous editing, because this proposal would not affect that many people. You quote "anyone can edit", this technically will not be breached as anyone could still edit (well, as long as they have a computer...), but I understand your point that is probably in breach of the principle behind "anyone can edit", however, wikipedias fundamental policy is that it is community driven, and this proposal seems quite popular with the community at the moment. Plus the 1 hour thing is just a number I plucked out my head, it could be 15 minutes, or nothing at all. thanks Martin 21:15, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

   What I want to know is: how is editing from an account any less "anonymous" than editing from an IP address? Kaldari 23:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

   Because a registered user does not have to provide any personal details, but anonymous users leave a trail of their IP address when ever they edit. Martin 09:16, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

   That's my point exactly! Registered users are actually more anonymous than so-called "anonymous" users. So Flcelloguy's statement that this proposal threatens the ability to edit anonymously doesn't make sense to me. Kaldari 17:47, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

   Sorry, I thought you were literally asking, glad to know we agree! Martin 19:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

   I apologize if I've made myself unclear, but I haven't intended to say anything about privacy at all. When I say "anonymous editing", I mean "IP address editing" or "editing without logging in". Privacy is irrelevant to this proposal and is a whole other debate. Hope that clears things up. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 21:42, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

   Flcelloguy, thank you for both the link to your full answer and the synopsis here. I'm relatively new, so I don't have a lot of "institutional knowledge" to go by. What I'm seeing is that this proposal (essentially a bugfix) will allow registered users to avoid IP blocks that are supposed to be targetted at anon vandals. The rules for IP blocks currently are *more* restrictive for new users, as they can/will/may be blocked even if they create an account, am I right?

   I'd like to have more data; I recently observed someone saying that 9/10 edits to Wikipedia are made by anon users; what's the rate of blockage/day? How many times is a single IP range blocked, on average, for the 24 hour/30 day period specified in the guideline? How many users get blocked because of IP blocks right now? I'm not convinced that Option 1 above is any more restrictive to the "anyone can edit" policy, unless you are reading it as proposing indefinite blocks on large chunks of IP addresses that known vandals haunt. If so, then I missed it. nae'blis _(talk) 02:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

   Thanks for participating in the discussion! I'll try and answer all your questions here. True, while the new type of block is less restrictive, this proposal essentially means that all of the AOL IP ranges will be blocked. From the policy: This new form of blocking will only affect specific IP addresses, most obviously will be AOL, which would almost certainly be blocked due to the level of vandalism. Right now, AOL blocks are extremely rare, and I've never seen a range block (which blocks all of the IP addresses in a certain range) been applied to AOL. True, we do get vandalism from AOL, but most of it is petty vandalism, and the only reason we tend to notice it more is because it's AOL. We don't have a major problem with vandalism here, and considering AOL services more than 25 million users in the U.S. alone, the amount of vandalism per person is quite small. There has been, IMO, no need to block any of the IP addresses for extended periods of time (i.e. more than 15 minutes), and it's extremely rare for an AOL IP to be blocked. I don't have specific data on the number of blocks, etc., but you can view the block log; most of the blocks are for registered users and then vandals on other IP addresses. In addition, AOL IP addresses also make useful contributions to Wikipedia. We shouldn't try to suppress IP editing; the whole spirit of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit, even if not registered. Regarding the amount of IP editing overall - no, I can't provide a single number, but if you click on recent changes that should give you a good idea of how much is edited by IP addresses. I would give a rough estimate of 50-50 for the amount of IP editing versus registered user editing. Blocking users is not used that often, in my opinion: again, see the block log. I would give an extremely rough estimate of about 50-100 blocks a day, excluding Willy on Wheels blocks and open proxy blocks. Regarding your question on registered users being blocked: in my opinion, there's not that much of a problem right now. While I sympathize with those who are inadvertantly blocked, I think only a small minority of registered users have been inadvertantly prohibited from editing. In either case, I think this policy will do nothing to change that; instead, we could just promote wiser use of blocks. Again, as I have said, this policy (in my opinion) would go against the very spirit of Wikipedia — that anyone, no matter what ISP they use or what vandals are doing — should be able to edit. I think I've covered all your questions, but feel free to ask me more. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 21:56, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

   I hate to tell you, the above does not quite match my experience. i do about 5% of my editing via AOL dialup, no more. I have run into IP blocks at least a dozen times in the past few months, perhaps 20 times. Each time while I was logged in. Is that enough that you call AoL blocks "very rare"? perhaps. It is enough that if I had to edit wikipedi entirely via AOL dial up, i probably wouldn't. DES ^(talk) 22:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

   Can you provide the specific IP range for AOL dialup? I'm sure the IP range provided at Special:Blockip is much wider than dialup; correct me if I'm wrong. Also, could you link me to a block of any AOL IP? I haven't seen any recently, but then again, I've been doing less RC recently. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 23:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

   I don't know what part of AOL's range they use for dial-up users, I suspect that ANY aol IP can be so used. Here are the IPs on which i have been nblocked and unblocked myself since I became an admin. Also see WP:ANI#Hidden Block DES ^(talk) 03:00, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

   • 12:10, 22 October 2005 DESiegel unblocked User:64.12.116.13 (This block is affectign my edits-- shared AoL IP)
   • 23:51, 18 October 2005 DESiegel unblocked User:#46559 (Shared AOL IP, was blocking me)
   • 21:23, 11 October 2005 DESiegel unblocked User:#43055 (Shared AOL IP, is blockign me from editing a page)

   Note that AOL seems to assign a different IP for each url a dial-up user uses, with the assignment staying the same for a given URL during a single connect session. I suspect some sort of hash of the URL is used. DES ^(talk) 03:00, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

   Flcelloguy, I must present to you a fact that all existing AOL and other intraISP-shared IP addresses are being blocked on nearly alternative days (mine is blocked for at least once a week, each time 24h), and therefore as they're already blocked long ago, your claim that "they will all be blocked by this policy" is not valid. --Deryck C. 09:04, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

2. Oppose AOL users are routed through a different proxy each time they go to a different webpage. If the person realized they can't edit, and then go to the create a new user page, they'll probably be using a different IP address. AOL is the largest ISP in the USA, with more than 20 million subscribers. Therefore, we really need to solve the AOL issue, but this is not the solution. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 16:13, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

   As I understand the issue, you're correct that they would probably be using a different IP address on the second page they go to (either to edit again or to make a new account). However, they would never run into this sort of block again if they kept logging in! Also, it was my understanding that the most common complaint that led to this solution was people who already had a username and were blocked as collateral damage. (see Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy_proposal#Yes please and [[2]] for examples of such users).Kiaparowits 14:46, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

   You are quite correct that the prime problem now is with coleteral damge to logged in and non-vandal editors. Also, while it is true that when an AOL editor goes to a new page s/he gets a differetn IP, when that editor returns to the first page, s/he seems to get the original IP back -- I have seen this happen over and over. My belif is that the IP is assigned based on some sort of hash of the URL, plus some sort of base that is unique to the user during the current session.. This is a very odd approach, but there it is. DES ^(talk) 15:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

3. Oppose Blocking hundred of anons over a small numbers of vandals is simply unreasonable. I support adding "finer" blocking options, but your proposing this option with the intent to abuse it. My comments on the US Congress RfC should be taken as a counter proposal. JeffBurdges 16:33, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

   Here is a summery:

   • Allow users to watch edits by other users and IP ranges, as opposed to just pages.
   • Allow users to create, edit, & share lists of pages, users, & IP ranges which could be included in anyone's watchlist.
   • Create a featured list functionality where users vote to feature some such lists, and all anonymous edits from featured lists are identified by list membership.

   So all anonymous AOL & U.S. Senate edits would be identified as such. Each user could just the probability of vandalism based upon the IP address identifier, or even watch lists they felt were suspicious (AOL, U.S. Senate, etc.).

   Admins might also execute blocks based upon such lists, but they'd need to include the version of the list page to use. Once you've got this sort of fined grained watching functionality, you should add both "edit certification" (registered users certify anon edits) and "anon block" (this proposal) as weaker forms of blocking for specific IP ranges, lists, etc.

   BTW, admins should have a "random moving vandal" option to their block time, it would choose a random block time based upon some unpublished algorithm, with most blocks being less than one hour, but with some lasting 24 hours. This would force the vandal to move, as they can't risk camping an IP address for 24 hours to vandalize again, while minimizing the damage done to random users. JeffBurdges 16:33, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

   • So you want to integrate this proposal with yours but you're going to vote against implementing this one? That doesn't make sense. It seems you've assumed this will only be blanket applied to cases like the congress situation which is incorrect. Your proposal alone doesn't solve some very specific problems where an ip adress is used as a proxy and a large amount of vandalism comes from it, but it is not possible to block because longstanding contributors also contribute through it. It appears you have not very carefully looked at the justification for this proposal. You're welcome to also have your own proposal, but your reasons for voting against this one aren't very compelling. For one, it's not necessarily going to be hundreds of anons, it will be applied as needed, when there is consistent vandalism. Also, assuming this proposal has been made with intent to abuse it, is clear failure to assume good faith. - Taxman ^Talk 18:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

   • I will add that at the moment if an IP is blocked everybody using that ip is blocked, with this proposal only anons would be blocked, this has the opposite effect to what you imply in you opening statement "Blocking hundred of anons over a small numbers of vandals", as this way less people will be blocked. thanks Martin 19:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

   • No, more people will be blocked if the blocks are longer. Allowing any user to watch the IP addresses they choose is essential to keep the feature proposed here from being abused. Any permanent block of anons on sites such as AOL is abuse. JeffBurdges 17:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

4. Oppose I think this is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Rather than creating a new type of blocking, we should create a new type of user: a "confirmed" user would have immunity from any IP-based block, and could only be blocked explicitly by username. Here, "confirmed" status essentially means "not a throwaway account": this could be granted right away for established users with even a modest contribution track record, while a new user confronted with an autoblock would have to perform some small non-automatable task that takes a minute or two, like responding to a page of a dozen captchas, or maybe (friendlier to the visually impaired) answering some automatically-generated questionnaire that requires human reading and comprehension skills and maybe a bit of research on Wikipedia or Google (eg, "who was the mother of the wife of the predecessor of the predecessor of Louis XIV of France"). This creates a mild "effort barrier" to discourage serial sockpuppet creation seconds apart (which we've been seeing a lot of lately), but it's only a one-time-ever hassle for legitimate users. I'm not sure creating a new type of blocking solves the core problem, which is: an established user, once "confirmed", should never be autoblocked under any circumstances (under any "new" or "old" form of blocking). For example, an Arb Com member getting autoblocked because of the actions of another person is simply nuts. -- Curps 05:12, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

   I think that that's an interesting idea that deserves to be explored. — Ilyanep (Talk) 02:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

   Indeed. This is a brilliant suggestion. Vandalism is a huge drain on our resources (both human and otherwise), and the current model for dealing with it is badly broken. Hall Monitor 18:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

   I'm sure it's me, but I'm not getting the difference between this and the basic proposal (with-hurdles version). In Curp's proposal, if you have a (real) account and you're logged in, no problem; if you have a (real) account and you're not logged in, you have to log in (if your IP is blocked). If you don't have an account (and your IP is blocked), you can create one by answering answering a question, then logging in. the Do I have that right? In the basic proposal, isn't it the same thing? What am I missing? Herostratus 16:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

   Nothing. This merely specifies the type of hurdle that should be added. Random the Scrambled 11:05, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

5. Oppose On one side, I think this may have the effect of significantly restricting IP editing; That's a bad thing. On the other side, there's no justification for blocking a logged-in user just because he shares an IP with a vandal. If the software is doing something I don't want it to do, the software needs to change. I can't bring myself to say, "No, don't fix this. I want to be forced to occasionally block people who have done nothing wrong." At the same time, I think fixing this without making other changes in how we block and how we deal with vandalism, will do more harm than good. JeffBurdges has some good ideas above, as does Curps. For now, with reservations, I support fixing the software to not block users I don't intend to block. But I also support making other changes at the same time, to mitigate any problems fixing this may cause. Tom Harrison ^Talk 19:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
6. Oppose I have a fix for bug 550 (it's a fairly trivial task) but I abandoned work on it over six months ago on recognising the political implications. I don't want to further restrict the usability of the site by non-logged-in editors, and by making it easier to block editing by specific IPs and ranges without causing collateral damage, I believe this would be the effect of the proposed new type of block. --Tony Sidaway 12:24, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

   You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I don't quite understand you here. Are you saying that this new form of blocking will encourage admins to block with less fear of collateral damage? I find that the current system is broken - and in some cases (AOL, schools, SingNet come to mind), significant vandal activity is taking place but collateral damage prevents a block. For example, at my school about 2 pages are vandalised per day - escalating to a block every two weeks or so - but I offset this with sometimes 10-15 constructive edits per day. Unfortunately, when the school's IP is blocked for vandalism, I, and thus the project, suffer from the collateral damage. This new form of blocking could be implemented in situations like this to let people like me continue to contribute to Wikipedia, whilst locking out vandals if they are particularly obnoxious. Werdna648^T/_C\^@ 14:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

   I am with Werdna here. I edit from school all the time, and I find that every few days, I need to unblock myself because of vandalism from that IP. This wouldn't change "it's a shared IP, so only block for an hour or two at most (my policy)", but it would allow people who obviously aren't going to vandalize to edit from a blocked IP, which ultimately helps the project. —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 17:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

7. Oppose Needs to be a re-designed policy or thrown out completely. An Encyclopedia meant to be edited by the public is bound to have its share of vandals--however, the community seems to do a good job at keeping up with said vandals. Almost Famous 07:33, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

   That's not really the point being addressed. the way things stand at the moment, when you block a vandal on a shared IP, there's a good chance that a lot of legit users will be blocked at the same time. The proposed changes would stop that from happening. This isn't a change to enable us to catch more vandals, it's a change to allow us to catch the same number without impeding editors who are currently disadvantaged. Grutness...wha? 15:34, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

8. Oppose. I don't think this will be helpful as there will be a profusion of sock puppets from vandals. Instead, a rating system can be introduced for users (good, bad and neutral). Each new user, when they create an account will start with a rating of neutral. Other users who see edits of the new user, will rate them either positively or negatively. A tally of the votes received by the user will decide whether he is good or bad. Now when an ip is blocked, it would block all bad users from that ip and allow all good users. Neutral users will be barred from eiditing protected/semi-protected pages. What do you think? --soUmyaSch 06:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

   That's absurd, it's too complicated and it's going to eventually drive away people (even the good users.) The beauty of Wikipedia is that ANYONE can edit, with or without a User Name, if it's a bad edit it'll usually go back to the previous state anway. There isn't one article on this entire network that isn't on someone's watchlist. Almost Famous 08:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

   Comment Why do the ISP's have to use those stupid proxy things anyway? It's very obnoxious. Bill Sayre 22:08, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

   Comment: I think a low 'barrier of entry' for new editors is more in keeping with Wikipedia philosophy. Usability studies have shown a precipitous drop in web portal enrollment when people are forced to login (no time to look them up so you'll have to take my word for it). I'd suggest that we find better methods for catching vandalism such as beefing up the recent changes patrol would be a better approach. Antonrojo 02:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

   One other comment: I've reviewed a fair amount of ip contributions and have been suprised to find a lot less vandalism than I would expect and a good amount of valuable additions. New users often don't 'get' the wiki concept at first (I know I didn't) and can't believe that they can really contribute without proving themselves worthy. Making people login to do so or go through some other authenitication step is asking a lot of faith from them--many users will wonder why they should bother. I think the proper order of things is to get new users hooked on Wikipedia first and then encourage conformity to various policies later. Lastly, I've seen a lot of online communities start with an ethic of openness and then set up barriers to 'make things more orderly'--often leading to a major decline in participation. Antonrojo 03:16, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

   Both of these comments miss the main point. In the case of the first comment, it's not a question of catching vandalism, its the fact that when a vandal attacks our only real method of stopping it from recurring is to block the user. In cases where vandal share IPs with other editors and do not have usernames, all these good users are also blocked. I regularly have my account blocked, and many toher users do likewise, simply because an unregistered user with the same IP is vandalising the site. With regards to the second point, again, it's got nothing to do with conformity - its all to do with helping us to stop the blocking of good users whenever a vandal starts to cause problems. Sure, some may be put off by having to get a username, but it's hardly a big deal to do. We're not talking about having to pay a registration fee or even reveal an email address, and takes 30 seconds to do. I doubt that a significant number of new users would not bother simply because of that. Grutness...wha? 02:45, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

   After thinking it over, it sounds like the first option for the proposal is consistent with the problems I outlined, provided that there isn't a special policy for blocking anon IPs, which this proposal could be seen as a first step towards (e.g. more frequent and longer, even permanant blocks to induce editors to register). That seems like the best compromise since it keeps legitimate users from being punished by the blocks and provides an incentive to register. The creation of many sockpuppets from an IP is also an important problem and I don't think that captchas or email verification are the way to go for that...maybe a time limit on the creation of new accounts for persistent offenders would be a good solution. Antonrojo 13:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

9. Oppose unless a duration limit is imposed on these blocks (see talk page).-Polotet 03:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
10. Weak oppose some users don't like signing in (like Louis Epstein). I agree otherwise. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 17:13, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

    They would not be forced to sign in unless their IP was blocked. Ansell Review my progress! 05:45, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

11. Oppose. Vandalism isn't the only big problem. There's also sock puppetry, retaliatory NPOV tagging and editor conspiracies to promote a POV agenda. I would prefer a simple review procedure for all edits. It has been proposed at Village pump (perennial proposals) before. My user page has a brief outline of how it would work. -- Bookish 19:58, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions

#1

Only tangentially related, but I'm working on adding WHOIS references to the AOL and SHAREDIP templates, to make accurate identifiction of true sharedips, vs phoneys, a bit easier..

The current line I'm playing with:

• http://ws.arin.net/whois/?queryinput={{PAGENAME}}+

and

• http://ws.arin.net/whois/?queryinput={{{1}}}+

..which is turning out to be a very useful line, with many other template related applications--{anon iso − 8859 − 1janitor} 21:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

These links are already in the MediaWiki message for anon talk pages. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:21, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

#2

Recap -- The main issue being addressed here is that you (effectively) have one block of IPs which is shared by both undesirables, and genuine users. In effect that means that any given IP can be a blocked or a legitimate user. The suggestion is to allow users with accounts to bypass blocking. The problem is that is legitimate users can bypass an IP block by using an account, so (of course) can the undesirables. Also, by using an account, it becomes less immediately obvious that they are editing through an IP block, so blocked editor detection may become a little harder. One must now checksock in all cases, leading to a lot of "indeterminates" with AOL etc. On the other hand revealing IP's is not desirable either in order to protect legitimate user anonymity.

Proposed solution -- Edits made through a blocked IP (where the edit was only possible because the editor concerned used an account) should be flagged, to allow easy identification of edits made through an IP block.

Consideration --

• Benefits - bona fide editors can check if an editor using an account *would* have been blocked had they not used an account, which will greatly help identify socks and blocked users, but will not significantly impact on legitimate users.
• Coding - A single field added to the table of edits, indicating whether the edit was allowed through a blocked IP due to using a named account. A flag then displayed in DIFF or CONTRIB or HISTORY summaries and the like next to edits which were. Not too complex.
• Anonymity - since no IP information is given, the only additional disclosure is that a user "would have been blocked" had they not used an account. Not expected to be much of an issue, there are many blocks, and a legitimate editor could be anywhere (it is the blocked editors who one can guess where they come from).

FT2 (Talk) 12:11, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

#3

Editors don't need IP's to detect socks. They need to be able to tell if domains (or significant IP octets) for 2 edit match, to identify if the same editor did both. That's the main thing needed to detect a blocked editor trying to edit the same article through a block. For most blocked users, if the style, article focus, and most of the IP/domain matches, its probably a blocked editor running the account.

So here's the suggestion: - allow users to view an "editors hash" based on most significant data of the IP or domain, next to each edit. Again, this doesn't ID anyone (since the whole address isn't used and hashes aren't easily reversible), but it does allow for a simple comparison of IPs between editors, a sort of quick check that users can do for themselves before requesting a Checkuser or stirring up wiki-accusations.

This could be made accessible to editors in general: - Allow a hash of the top 2 or 3 octets and/or main domain+tld, of any user to be visible next to each edit, as an "editors hash". Doesn't ID anyone, but does provide a very good armory for everyday users to quickly identify likely socks whether or not editing through an account, without needing access to the IPs or to ask someone else to Checkuser for them. Allows IPs to be compared without disclosing their value. Would probably identify most socks quickly, and reduce load on WP:RFCU.

FT2 (Talk) 12:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

#4

A triple log in for IPs where some users are nuisances - once the problem has been identified, a placename is given for legitimate users (eg, in my case - XYZlibrary) on a triple entry system (with name and password), which would only be invoked when the IP-as-a-whole is blocked. Would this be practical?

Jackiespeel 21:52, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Motion to close and adopt as settled policy

As of July 11, 2006, the voting stands at 88-124-11. I assert that we have achived consensus - there is an avalanche of support for not blocking logged in users from blocked IP addresses, and a nearly 3:2 working consensus that another new account creation hurdle should be added for such cases.

The largest single contributor of complaints brought to Unblock-en-l mailing list is AOL users who don't understand how they were caught up in someone else's block. There is a clear need to move beyond sitting and watching consensus build on this policy. Consensus has arrived. This is settled policy and should be implimented as soon as practical. Georgewilliamherbert 06:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

It isn't a bad suggestion, but while we are still waiting for the BugZilla bug 550 to be implemented, what is the rush to close this discussion. People are still voting both ways, albeit, though more are for the hurdle than against recently. Ansell 07:12, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

There have been Bug 550 fixes prototyped a couple of times now, Tony and then... I don't want to re-scan the whole bug history, but a couple of them. I think everyone went on the back burner while this policy proposal bubbled around a bit.

The fundamental situation has not changed - users are still as blocked as they were six months ago or a year ago or two years ago, and the volume of editors is not suddenly sharply higher. But as someone reading and responding on Unblock-en-l, the number of AOL users complaining about IP blocks is significant. The visibility due to Unblock-en-l going live has increased, and in my opinion demonstrates that this has been a fairly serious problem all along which has just not been sufficiently visible. Now that it is...

In my opinion, looking at the polling, we have consensus. If we have consensus, then we should implement. Anyone who disagrees that we have a working consensus here is welcome to object to closing, but I think we passed the "results are clear and evident and overwhelming" point months ago now... Georgewilliamherbert 08:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

If closing this is going to put greater priority on the implementation then I am all for it. If closing this prematurely will force the developer to make compromises in the design of their solution, which is possibly a large chunk of the work, then it will not be the best in the long run. From looking at the history on the bug, the second "premature" option is possibly not an issue, however, there may be other alternatives I have not pointed out. Ansell 11:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

You'll see from the talk page for this discussion here and here that User:Robchurch is working on the mechanism to implement this and it'll be along in due course. So, I guess it has been adopted and the tools to do it are on the way. Kcordina ^Talk 09:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

It's here! Now we just need to decide how it should be written into the main blocking policy. Petros471 09:38, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Top news. I assume this was thanks to the good work of user:Robchurch, but something seems to have upset him and he's gone away. Kcordina ^Talk 09:51, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it was based on the code by Rob, but the announcement was by Tim Starling. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-10/News_and_notes for a link to the relevant mailing list post. Petros471 10:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that maybe explains the comments on Rob's user page. Kcordina ^Talk 11:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Huh?? I know this comes rather late, but I only just realized what seems to have happened here. WP lost the guy who implemented the BPP? Something happened that was so bad he left? How the heck could this have happened?! Wasn't anyone paying attention?  :( Kasreyn 06:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

We obviously have consensus on not blocking logged in users, but clearly not on the login hurdle. Another way of saying "almost 3-2 working consensus" is "less than 60% in favour" :-) 72.137.20.109 18:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Re:Ansell's comment on "what's the rush?", this straw poll has been going for nine months. If that's a rush, I don't want to be involved in slow decision processes here! Grutness...wha? 22:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I understand that this decision involves software modifications, and the design of the software change is important. The change is in part dependent on whether it is more preferable to have option 1 or option 2 as listed above. This is one of the two longest decision making processes I have ever been involved in on Wikipedia. The other drawn out debate I have been involved in was Wikipedia:Template locations. Other than these exceptional processes I think the rest of Wikipedia settles nicely into a consensus within a reasonably short (ie, weeks.. up to 2 months max mostly) timeframe. Ansell 07:09, 19 July 2006 (UTC)