Voting for nym

[Matthew Seth Flaschen]

> I would see a proxy as being, from Wikipedia's point of view, like an
> ISP. It would be like aol.com or, more analogously, momandpopisp.com,
> some ISP with a number of users. If one misbehaves at Wikipedia they
> probably don't block the whole ISP. That would be an unfriendly action
> that would give them a bad reputation. Instead they probably make an
> effort to contact someone at the ISP responsible for abuse and tell
> them about the user who caused trouble, letting the ISP block him.
> Only if an ISP were persistently unresponsive to abuse complaints
> would they be justified in blocking the entire ISP, and I imagine that
> this is exactly what they do.

To the best of my knowledge, we've never blocked an entire ISP, largely 
because it is difficult to determine all the relevant IP ranges. 
However, when large range blocks are done, that may block an entire ISP 
or organization.  I would also note that ISPs have been very 
unresponsive to our abuse compliants.

> BTW Jimmy Wales himself suffered some embarrassment a few weeks ago
> when it came out that he had edited his own Wikipedia entry (an action
> that is frowned upon) to change it and make himself look better and
> more important. 

You're right that he has made edits to the page.  Some have made himself 
look better while others have been neutral factual edits (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimmy_Wales&action=history for 
a record of all edits to the page). However, he now expressed regret for 
making any edits. More importantly, he made those edits from his 
established account, with no attempt to hide his identity.  It is wrong 
to imply he was trying to be secretive.