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SamHB
Joined April 28, 2008
More on IP blocking
[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] 14:29, 7 May 2008 (EDT)
[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] 14:29, 7 May 2008 (EDT)
==Further thoughts on IP blocking, and blocking in general==
After a lot of looking through block logs, talk pages, users' contributions, vandal edits, and various controversies, it has become clear that the policy of blocking any appearance of duplicate IP addresses is counterproductive, and a total waste of effort.
:In fact, I think the entire blocking policy is being done in a nonproductive way, but that's the subject of a much longer essay in the future. But people might want to ask:
:* Is the current way sysops operate actually effective in stopping vandalism?
:* Is arguing over the statistical methodology leading to the conclusion that people in show business have a higher incidence of breast cancer distracting from more productive activities?
Getting back to IP blocks: They are completely counterproductive. Look through the contribution logs of the "vandals" that were accused of being socks of me -- AnthonyT, ArnieS, FrankD, and NormanTebbitt. They never committed vandalism (well, one of them used an off-color word.) Nor did I, nor did Deborah. They are not socks of me. I have no idea who any of them are.
The IP blocking policy is ostensibly in place to prevent people, who have been blocked based on the content of their edits, from evading the block by creating another ("sockpuppet") account and continuing what they were doing. A check of Wikipedia shows that they also have a policy against sockpuppets, but that it is only invoked when there is actual evidence of sockpuppetry. Such evidence is based on content and other factors, not on IP addresses.
Here in the 21st century, people use varied IP addresses for an enormous number of reasons. The internet is used from cell phones, "internet cafes", airports, corporate firewalls, and many other places that make it hard to draw conclusions about a person's identity. Drawing conclusions about who a person is based on the IP address from which they access the internet is just wrong. Anonymity is everywhere. One may not like it (the police and FBI sure don't), but it's a fact of contemporary internet life. Even the apparent policy that one has to use one's own name to create an account at Conservapedia is futile. '''You can't censor or police the internet!'''
As if that weren't bad enough in general, there is now a booming business of "anonymizing proxies" designed to get around censorship. These appear to have started as a way of cicumventing the Chinese government's attempts to censor the internet. A couple of years ago I could find only about 5 such. There are now thousands, playing cat-and-mouse games with corporations, schools, and anyone else who tries to censor the internet. '''You can't censor or police the internet!'''
It appears that what connects me to AnthonyT, ArnieS, FrankD, and NormanTebbitt is that we used the same public proxy at one time or another. '''You can't censor or police the internet!''' Banning people for using the same IP address (or for saying things that sysops don't like) bans all the wrong people. Just look around at the block logs.
[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] 22:36, 14 May 2008 (EDT)