Forum:Range blocks


 * I am pretty fucking pissed off that I wander away from the site for a few goddamn hours and when I return, I find that rangeblocks are being unilaterally utilized at the behest of one user, simply because it is apparently now the only way to deal with trolls ever (We have always used them, of course!). We need to have a serious discussion now, since I was under the impression that not only does RationalWiki not use rangeblocks EVER, but also that a policy decision this important is not made on the fly by one person, but instead by some bureaucratic orgy of ineffectiveness like usual.  So, I give the mob two topics of discussion:


 * 1) Rangeblocks. Are they kosher, and if so, under what circumstance/what decisions need to be made and what prerequisites need to be met before one is issued, and is there a policy to go about issuing one.
 * 2) For the LAST GODDAMN FUCKING TIME, we NEED some sort of effective framework to make decisions. And don't just say "Oh, we have the Loya Jirga now, it's all peaches and cream and rainbow unicorns now!".  I'm talking about a framework through which the community (I mean the WHOLE community) can effectively and fairly reach a decision, and quickly, too.  Especially one that is not tied down by bureaucratic nonsense.

Let's face it, the current system isn't working(for the umpteenth time), and something needs to be done this time. -- 02:03, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * In addition, these were rangeblocks against someone using a proxy. Which probably is a really bad idea. Rodlen (talk) 02:04, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not in favour of rangeblocks. I am in favour of the actually being used at some point since we went through all that trouble of seeing it up. I think the rangeblock issue, like many other things, can be resolved by popular vote P-Foster (talk) 02:07, 18 April 2010 (UTC):
 * Going back a long way I don't remember "don't block" being a rule. In fact before we had the vandal bin we issued blocks and even range blocks to persistent trouble makers/vandals. Every now and the someone will go Galtish and undo all the blocks because they decided it makes us "too much like Conservapedia" but by that time the moron had lost all interest so it didn't matter if they were blocked or not. So long story short, if the block is enough to make them go away and is not excessive, do it. 02:10, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * We never used rangeblocks, and our normal blocks were of a very short duration, then Trent built the vandal brake. 05:49, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Pi, this isn't about blocking, which I fully support, incidentally. It's about dropping a /24 or /16 block on thousands of innocent users because we can't grit out a day of vandalism until the troll inevitably gets bored and goes away.  -- 02:24, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That is slightly disingenuous, it depends on how the range is being used. The photocopier at work has a unique IP address and I doubt it will be effected by being blocked here. 02:28, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't recall rangeblocking ever. Last resort was block & then only for token times. 02:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "and even range blocks to persistent trouble makers/vandals." REALLY? When? P-Foster (talk) 02:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * He might be confusing MC's bitching about thousands of users being blocked with a rangeblock, which it wasn't (wasn't a rangeblock, that is). -- 02:25, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The earliest rangeblock is Genghis to himself, I got bored looking after that. They were never common that is for sure. 02:28, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't find any, I withdraw that statement rather than keep looking. 03:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * RW is growing and evolving and has been getting more attention from trolls recently. It would probably be a good idea to decide on a policy regarding rangeblocks. Nx does tons of work for this wiki, he has good sense, and I support his actions against trolls/vandals who make wasteful annoying/obscene/offensive posts that are not wanted and contribute nothing positive to the wiki. The rangeblocks look to be for one week or less (unlike CP which blocks infinitely). Refugee talk page 09:50, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Rangeblocks?

 * 1) If appropriate, yes. 02:11, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 02:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Refugee 09:46, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Firstly, a /25 (and that's the lowest Nx went; he undid the /24 and made it a /25) block is only 128 IPs (not users), not this "THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT USERS!" rubbish. Secondly, Nx didn't even block them for longer than one would expect a serial vandal to be blocked. Support  10:05, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

No Rangeblocks?

 * 1) P-Foster (talk) 02:06, 18 April 2010 (UTC).
 * 2) Rodlen (talk) 02:07, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 02:17, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) -- 02:22, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) rangeblocks = conservapedia/wikipedia = bad Meaghan!!!!!!!!!!!! (talk) 02:37, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Acei9 02:47, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 4)  02:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) What's the problem with reverting stuff again? Anyway, if you block, people get around it. They're nothing more than quick fixes, hence why you block for 10-15 minutes to get things calmed down, moved to the bin and encourage the little shits to move on with the minimum of fuss. Making a big deal of it; dropping /16 bombs everywhere, huge posts on the subject (okay, guilty here) and making a massive point of it gives whoever is doing the dicking about the attention that they want. All you need to do is have the calm, cold rationality to deal with it in a quiet and effective manner; revert the vandalism, ignore and do not respond to the bait, do not even leave an edit comment when moving troll posts and don't even call them "troll" in the process. Basically, the same advice professional psychologists give the media following mass-killings to prevent copycat attacks (although the media regularly outright ignore this advice).  08:08, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) That's what we have the VB for. Unless we all get checkuser too. Then I too can get all stalkerish like TK. -- PsyGremlin  11:40, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I don't see the point. Come on, we have instructions on this site on how to use proxies to get around them!   05:51, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) To quote something I wrote on another wiki: "it takes you far longer to write it than for one of us to click Undo, mwahahahaaa." Totnesmartin (talk) 20:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Goat.

 * Have a beer, calm down, it's only a commercial! - David Gerard (talk) 11:28, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I would support range blocks on the condition that they only be used against MarcusCicero. He's the only persistent troll who uses a dynamic IP within a certain range.   05:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I nominate you for RW creepy stalky troll of the year. WTF are you even talking about?  08:18, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not a stalker, just an archivist. And did you forget I used to be the most active editor on RationalWikiWiki?  I have whole files on you guys.   08:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wow. Not sure if that is funny or just creepy. I'll run with funny.  09:04, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's quite impressive anal retentiveness, but also remarkably useful. It'd be interesting to block that range and see if he just goes around it into a new range - evidence, theory, hypothesis and testing and all that. Although that might not be possible for much longer. 10:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * "I have whole files on you guys" - You're TK.jpg 11:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

To clarify
NOT ONE /16 block has been made, so everyone talking about "dropping /16 bombs" is being alarmist. The widest range used, excepting the /24 block which was changed, was /25, or 128 IPs. 10:12, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Either way, it's overkill and wrong. It's a bad slope to start on, slippery or otherwise. 10:14, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Whether it is overkill depends on information I don't know, like whether the vandal was using multiple addresses in a fairly small range. Also, unless we have the ridiculously arrogant view that everything connected to the internet wants to edit us, the chance of a legitimate user being collateral is miniscule. 10:16, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * (Apologies if this sounds pissy) Range blocking is just trying to find an easy solution to a problem that doesn't really have an easy solution. Frankly, it's just plain fecklessly lazy to say "let's just block so we don't have to deal with it". People intent on "lulz" via vandalism will find a way around it, leading to more blocking, more range blocking and eventually we hit a "blocking the planet" situation - it probably won't get as bad here as on Conservapedia where they block entire countries but range blocking is only effective if you do go wide (it's just to easy to get around otherwise so essentially pointless). On the other hand, a revert and ignore policy achieves two things (although it requires effort, and fuck forbid we ever ask anyone on this site to try effort as a solution) firstly the damage to the wiki is removed (and you have to do this anyway before you block a wandal) and it deprives the little shits of the attention they're craving. 10:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "...eventually we hit a "blocking the planet" situation..." No we don't. Have you spent so much time looking at CP to have forgotten that blocks should never really last more than a week? And have you forgotten that a /25 block is in a totally different league to a /16 block? To make even one /16 would take 512 /25 blocks, all of which would need to be blocked because of persistent vandalism across each range. Most of the slippery slope arguments are very poor. 10:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Different leagues maybe, but they're still absolutely the same game - it doesn't take much for someone to think "ah, this /25 thing isn't enough, let's just change the number a little to widen it" and that's exactly how CP got itself into the situation. And it's still a fundamentally lazy way to deal with things that's totally ineffective. 10:48, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Look at this. Do you see that massive upsurge in /16s, starting in November 08? That's TK regaining blocking powers. CP's situation derives mainly from TK's trolling, not well-intentioned blocking of vandals. 10:54, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Rant
If you bin someone they are binned forever. This isn't so bad for users, but what about IPs? We bin them indiscriminately after the first sign of vandalism, or even just POV editing, but oh, it's okay, since they're not really blocked and they can still edit once every 30 minutes. In one case I checked the contribs of an IP before binning, and decided not to do it because there were good contribs too (obviously a shared IP). Someone else probably did it though. And then there's the issue of autoblocking, which if you apply on a binned user, all IPs they ever try to use will be binned FOREVER. (compared to blocking with the autoblock option, which only blocks for a maximum of one day). So don't come crying to me about thousands of innocent IPs losing their God-given right to edit RW when your use of the vandal bin is arguably just as bad, or worse.

Also, I recall the vandal bin was created to allow users some on-wiki way to protest their bans. PROTIP: "Allow this user to edit own talk page while blocked". Of course what the vandal bin also allows is the troll to keep posting, albeit at a more manageable rate, so you can keep feeding them (and the assumption that if a user is binned they are less likely to try to evade it, since they can still edit, doesn't hold much water either).

As for the rangeblock, it is meant to prevent the user from hopping to another address and continuing their vandalism when it is clear they are using a small pool of IPs. Is it a lazy solution? Maybe, I'd prefer to call it proactive.

But I see RW's version of Godwin wins again, so I've disabled rangeblocks altogether.

Oh and we can play the whole "let's not revert trolls on talk pages, let's not block them, we're not conservapedia" game, if I remember correctly last time we did that we had everyone crying about a single troll destroying the wiki and leaving and never coming back because RW has become a troll playground. -- Nx  / talk 11:06, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * In light of this, I suggest that the VB table be emptied, and we start afresh. If we kkeep using the VB, I suggest it be emptied regularly. 11:18, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't actually know this! I thought it was a timed thing ... - David Gerard (talk) 11:29, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It really stems, like this whole mess, from the fact that people think that because an action is superficially similar to one done at CP, it is equivalent and it's the first step on the road to authoritarianism. That, and people like Armondikov's inability to distinguish 65000 from 100. 11:39, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 65000 is 100 (in base 256, anyway). 23:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "I've disabled rangeblocks altogether." Another unilateral move, or is that based on the !vote above?  05:55, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Just enforcing RationalWiki policy, since some people think they can just ignore the rules -- Nx  / talk 08:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)