UDWiki talk:Administration/Vandal Banning/Archive/2012 05

May

User:Iamnotaporpoise

Seems to me that if we don't have a policy or precedent to do so, we shouldn't be banning people. It's fine if we decide that proxy usage should be bannable, but it isn't fair to ban people who couldn't have known it would get them banned at the time (obviously not talking about vandal alts who would be banned anyway).--Shortround }.{ My Contributions 10:54, 1 May 2012 (BST)

Also, has anybody contacted the user to tell them not to use proxies?--Shortround }.{ My Contributions 10:58, 1 May 2012 (BST)

I don't think anyone is talking about banning users using proxies. In cases where proxies are used to vandalize (sockpuppetry is a good example) its ban the proxy, warn the user. I think the current discussion is a push to consider all open proxy use vandalism. Honestly there are very few circumstances that I can think of where an open proxy could be used without the intent to conceal one's true identity. It is a question of whether that alone should be considered bad faith. Its a turbulent subject and if its to go forward in discussion, open proxies should be clearly defined and sysops who are unfamiliar with the differences would do well to stick with the old tried and true policy. ~ _{15:49, 1 May 2012 (UTC)}

Well I used a proxy to access the wiki just the other day when I was having problems with my adblock. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for using proxies which all come down to accessing the wiki when you might not be able to (work, university, school, holidays, etc.) I don't think we should ever be denying users access if they aren't in some way hurting the wiki. Obviously we ban proxies as we learn about them to stop use by bots or vandal sprees, but if somebody just uses one when they need to get around some kind of system block then I don't see why they should be punished for using a device which wasn't already blocked from accessing the wiki.--Shortround }.{ My Contributions 16:49, 1 May 2012 (BST)