Last modified: 2006-01-06 20:51:44 UTC
When dynamic IP's from large ISP's (i.e., AOL and other ISP's) are blocked because of anonymous vandalism, it hurts registered users with long good edit histories, because the current mediawiki behavior is to block all users using that ip. I propose that such IP's get a special mark in the database indicating that this BLOCK of ip's is special. When one of those ip's is blocked, the block only affects anonymous (and perhaps very new?) users, and does NOT cause an automatic block of legitimate registered users in good standing. As currently stands, a vandalizer only needs to register with AOL and never log in, and they can vandalize to their hearts content with minimal penalty, and we are powerless to block them.
I agree, the same things happen on IRC - my ip has been put into blacklist :( One thing that Wikipedia's people could do is to actually disable anonymous editing for the "blocked" IPs, allowing them to login. Also, there is a way of blocking people by e-mail address, I am not sure if MediaWiki developers had done that or not but i think that it would be a great idea. Especially when combined with Blocked IPs. What i mean is that if the E-Mail is blocked and the user wants to register, theiy should get a cookie and their IP address should be blocked until the ISP replies. As well, a message could be sent to their E-Mail address saying that their E-Mail address is being used for vandalising, and if they don't reply e.g. in 24 hours or anything - they are reported to ISP. There are lots of solutions but the thing is that it's hard to take control of them. Another idea popped into my head - just add a cookie to every user, with a unique ID ( it can be the id of the Edit ), and add that edit's id into the vandalised page list (Probably in MySQL, new table :/). Whenever the user comes back online, they are monitored ( This does not apply to people who are not Vandalising, only to logged people ). They can be reported to the ISP with monitored addresses and dates/times :). Only disadvantage is that they can simply delete the cookie file. But still if there is more security, there is less troubles.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 550 ***
