Rape and murder threats

[Anthonyhcole]

The administrators' noticeboard discussion as it stands at 14:30, 13 September 2015 (UTC) and now.

Discussion on Jimmy's talk page as at 14:52, 13 September 2015 (UTC) and now.

A woman editor has been subjected to years of death and rape threats on Wikipedia. The most recent are coming from a Telstra Australia IP range. The Wikipedia administrator corps can block Telstra IPs from editing Wikipedia; Telstra can identify the subscriber behind the IP and give the evidence to the Australian police. If they want to. Personally, I think the admins should hard-block all Telstra IPs from editing until Telstra boots the guy off its network and gives the police his identity.

[Midsize Jake]

A woman editor has been subjected to years of death and rape threats on Wikipedia. The most recent are coming from a Telstra Australia IP range. The Wikipedia administrator corps can block Telstra IPs from editing Wikipedia; Telstra can identify the subscriber behind the IP and give the evidence to the Australian police. If they want to. Personally, I think the admins should hard-block all Telstra IPs from editing until Telstra boots the guy off its network and gives the police his identity.

Agreed, and they've blocked entire countries before for a lot less than this. To be fair, they often get hammered in the media for big range blocks, but in this case I wonder if they wouldn't be doing themselves some good, PR-wise.

Someone in Australia might want to chime in and confirm this, but based on a cursory search or two, Telstra is far from being the most popular Australian ISP - it looks like it competes mostly on price, because apparently its speed rankings are terrible and it gets lousy customer-service ratings. That's not to say there wouldn't be a few decent potential n00bz inconvenienced, but it's not like editing WP is something decent people should be getting into now anyway.

[Anroth]

Someone in Australia might want to chime in and confirm this, but based on a cursory search or two, Telstra is far from being the most popular Australian ISP - it looks like it competes mostly on price, because apparently its speed rankings are terrible and it gets lousy customer-service ratings. That's not to say there wouldn't be a few decent potential n00bz inconvenienced, but it's not like editing WP is something decent people should be getting into now anyway.

Telstra is ex-public/gov owned. So it owns the network for probably most of Australia. The other ISPs in large parts of the country piggy-back of it. So even if you did block 'Telstra' (which by the numbers probably has the most customers due to network coverage - not price - due to being the only option in places out of the big cities) you would hit a lot of other ISP's.

Blocking 'Telstra' would quite effectively 'Block Australia'.

And no one has ever convinced an Aussie to do something by force. They inheirited their stubborness from us Brits afterall.

Complaints to ISP's (and mobile carriers etc) by people who are *not their customer* do not get anywhere unless legal get involved. Then, unless the police get a judge to sign off on a court order, they will not release any information. The best end-case scenario is that Telstra, facing a massive backlash from its own customers at lack of access to wikipedia, terminates the offender's service.

However I really dont think given the Aussie mindset, a bunch of wikipedia admins are going to cause Telstra's customers to rail at their provider, and even if they did, they dont have any leverage. Large parts of Australia have no alternative.

-edit- Its not like the WMF have done anything about Grawp is it?

[Anthonyhcole]

...Someone in Australia might want to chime in and confirm this, but based on a cursory search or two, Telstra is far from being the most popular Australian ISP - it looks like it competes mostly on price, because apparently its speed rankings are terrible and it gets lousy customer-service ratings. That's not to say there wouldn't be a few decent potential n00bz inconvenienced, but it's not like editing WP is something decent people should be getting into now anyway.

It's unpopular in the sense of unloved, but Telstra is Australia's biggest fixed-line internet provider. In mobile, it's seen as providing better coverage at a higher price than the others.

If Anroth is right and it's not possible to block Telstra IP addresses without also blocking all IPs in Australia, then that's a shame. Are you sure about that, Anroth?

[Anroth]

Not all as in *all*. But a significant amount that it would cause a lot of hardship for consumers *who dont even pay Telstra*. And since without working at Telstra anymore (I did years ago) I couldnt tell you which other providers piggy back at this moment....

If a provider laid their own cable, its reasonably safe they wouldnt be hit. However they dont do it everywhere. So a customer in Sydney might be using their providers own backbone, and someone in Perth might be piggy-backing on Telstra. (And its Telstra who assigns the IP's in that situation)

[Anthonyhcole]

Not all as in *all*. But a significant amount that it would cause a lot of hardship for consumers *who dont even pay Telstra*. And since without working at Telstra anymore (I did years ago) I couldnt tell you which other providers piggy back at this moment....

If a provider laid their own cable, its reasonably safe they wouldnt be hit. However they dont do it everywhere. So a customer in Sydney might be using their providers own backbone, and someone in Perth might be piggy-backing on Telstra.

OK. So, you're certain that it's not possible to distinguish (and block) IPs served by Telstra on the Telstra network from IPs served by Optus on the Telstra network? Whenever I look up WHOIS it seems to know the difference.

[Anroth]

So, you're certain that it's not possible to distinguish (and block) IPs served by Telstra on the Telstra network from IPs served by Optus on the Telstra network? Whenever I look up WHOIS it seems to know the difference.

Its not technically impossible to do it if you know how (given how rangeblocks on wikipedia work). The problem is that if you do that, you essentially leave a big open back door that voids the point of blocking Telstra in the first place.

(Although it may have changed, when I was there Optus didnt piggy-back off Telstra....)

-edit- Although this is really beside the point, any blocking of Telstra is unlikely to have any effect as they are *not responsible* for their customers actions anymore than the WMF is responsible when editors malign, smear and outright steal (Monkey-selfie looking at you here) on wikipedia. Its a huge double standard to punish others for one person's transgressions while not taking (and denying) any responsibility for its own.

[Anthonyhcole]

So, you're certain that it's not possible to distinguish (and block) IPs served by Telstra on the Telstra network from IPs served by Optus on the Telstra network? Whenever I look up WHOIS it seems to know the difference.

Its not technically impossible to do it if you know how (given how rangeblocks on wikipedia work). The problem is that if you do that, you essentially leave a big open back door that voids the point of blocking Telstra in the first place.

(Although it may have changed, when I was there Optus didnt piggy-back off Telstra....)

-edit- Although this is really beside the point, any blocking of Telstra is unlikely to have any effect as they are *not responsible* for their customers actions anymore than the WMF is responsible when editors malign, smear and outright steal (Monkey-selfie looking at you here) on wikipedia. Its a huge double standard to punish others for one person's transgressions while not taking (and denying) any responsibility for its own.

WMF is responsible for any harm done on Wikipedia that could easily be anticipated and prevented by imposing responsible policy on the project. That they hide from that responsibility is a problem that will some day catch up with them. I'm talking about what the admin corps can do and what Telstra should do; whether WMF gets involved is up to them.

I didn't understand

The problem is that if you do that, you essentially leave a big open back door that voids the point of blocking Telstra in the first place.

[Ihatemyusername]

Can any admin easily block all Telstra IPs if they so wished?

If this is the case I'm surprised nobody's done it yet. Only one of Wikipedia's 1000+ admins needs to act, it's been publicised on the most watched page on wikipedia and it's not as if admins don't do bizarre and controversial stuff daily.

[Anroth]

The reason they want to block Telstra in whole is because the user swaps IP's through a fairly large range of Telstra. If they exclude any from that block any ranges that they can reasonably determine to be resellers, the vandal can just switch to one of the resellers. I doubt this actually is someone out in the bush/farming communities so they will have other options.

And they would need to publicise explicitly that they have not blocked other networks otherwise the news story in Australia is 'Wikipedia hates Australians!'.

[Anroth]

Can any admin easily block all Telstra IPs if they so wished?

Yes if they want to. Its a really stupid idea. There have been blocks of entire countries before.

[The Adversary]

Although this is really beside the point, any blocking of Telstra is unlikely to have any effect as they are *not responsible* for their customers actions anymore than the WMF is responsible when editors malign, smear and outright steal

I agree, Telstra are *not* "responsible".

But, at least I, with my internet-provider, has to *sign* something to the effect that I will *not* use my internet-connection for any illegal activities. And threatening people with murder or rape is still illegal (at least in my country.).

So if I say, said that I would "kill Anroth" or "rape him from behind" (hmmm, rather difficult for me; that...), anyway; if my internet provider caught me making such threats, they would have all the "legal coverage" in the world, taking the internet connection away from me.

It seems to me that the WMF is taking the wrong approach, here: concentrating on the legal (police force, etc) aspects, when they should go straight at the "jugular", so to speak, at Telstra. So Telstra don´t want all that bad publicity from having its IP customers not being able to edit Wikipedia?

Fine: *you* (=Telstra) find that *one* customer who is responsible for this, and kick him out.
End of story (..at least for Telstra)

[Midsize Jake]

...Its a really stupid idea. There have been blocks of entire countries before.

I'm of two minds about this and I generally don't like to show sympathy for these folks, but the time they blocked the entire nation of Qatar, it was actually because Qatar's (state-run?) internet services were all being routed through a single gateway. I forget the precise technical explanation, but it was almost like everyone in the country was using the same router, so what seemed like a seemingly-innocuous "tertiary" range block affected them all. At the time, lots of people (especially us, on WR) were eager to claim incompetence and/or excessiveness on their part, and "Wikipedia Blocks Qatar!" was a nice, simple, eye-grabbing headline for the tech media to run with. They had range-blocked entire ISPs, entire towns/suburbs, entire college campuses, and so on before that, but I'm not sure they'd ever managed to range-block an entire country - and if they've managed to do it since then, I personally don't recall.

IMO, what it all really means for WP is that any big range-block is kind of a crap-shoot as far as their PR situation is concerned. They could easily get away with it, maybe even score kudos for it (as I suspect might be the case here), or they could also get hammered for it. They could even get hammered in one place and praised in another - it just depends on who the reporters are, what the slant is (if any), and how they want to write it up. And there's a good chance it will never be written up at all, of course - there's a significant technical angle to this that media entities will shy away from just due to their not wanting to bore people. Which, I fear, is what I'm starting to do on this post right now.

[Triptych]

Can any admin easily block all Telstra IPs if they so wished?

Yes if they want to. Its a really stupid idea. There have been blocks of entire countries before.

Another aspect of anonymously crowd-sourcing Wikipedia's administration, which is the WMF model, is that it also lowest-common-denominators it, meaning that the most suspicious or most stupid among the 600 or 700 active administrators can completely block Australia, even if an hundred before him or her looked it over and said "nah."

[MMAR]

Perhaps I've missed something, but where is the actual financial/ethical motivation for Telstra to give a toss about all their customers being denied the ability to edit Wikipedia without creating an account, if the alternative is potentially blocking an actual paying customer on the say so of a bunch of complete amateurs?

And perhaps if Telstra knew that Wikipedia's rule that 'anyone can edit' is not only inaccurate on the face of it (IP users cannot do several things registered users can), given the screwed up culture on the site, it is more properly framed as 'anyone can edit, but really, to be even taken seriously and actually be allowed to edit without being automatically assumed to be up to no good, you need a registered account and at least a month's worth of contributions deemed worthy, and even then, if you're editing a controversial topic you're still going to be suspected of being up to no good', they'd care even less.

I say bring it on. The issue is Wikipedia's, not Telstra's - it's Wikipedia who decided to make promises to its users that its open editing and volunteer governance model cannot keep. If I was a Telstra executive, I'd give anyone in the media who wanted a comment on how Wikipedia just 'blocked' the whole of Australia because they didn't do something, Drmies' phone number, and tell them he is the Wikipedia community's spokesman on all things harassment (which is not technically untrue) and he is the person who took the decision to block the country, and let him justify it. It's truly disgusting the way he's acting all upset over the abuse Huldra is receiving, as if people can't see that the only reason he's getting involved at all is because he wants to get back at the WMF for trying to act against the sort of harassment frequently seen from his best buds, Eric and Malik - the former being a serial harasser of women and general disbeliever that they should even be made welcome at Wikipedia, the latter being an admin who resorted to racism as a way to respond to alleged racist abuse, who, with Drmies' help, is now trying to deceive people into thinking it was Wikipedia's failure to spot that alleged racism that provoked his racism - a narrative shown to be a lie on this very forum.

Let those who are without sin, cast the first stone.

[Triptych]

The administrators' noticeboard discussion as it stands at 14:30, 13 September 2015 (UTC) and now.

Discussion on Jimmy's talk page as at 14:52, 13 September 2015 (UTC) and now.

A woman editor has been subjected to years of death and rape threats on Wikipedia. The most recent are coming from a Telstra Australia IP range. The Wikipedia administrator corps can block Telstra IPs from editing Wikipedia; Telstra can identify the subscriber behind the IP and give the evidence to the Australian police. If they want to. Personally, I think the admins should hard-block all Telstra IPs from editing until Telstra boots the guy off its network and gives the police his identity.

I see there yesterday where the WMF's James Alexander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jalexander-WMF) also says he's been getting Wikipedia rape and death threats. For ten years!

[Casliber]

Can any admin easily block all Telstra IPs if they so wished?

Yes if they want to. Its a really stupid idea. There have been blocks of entire countries before.

I think there were more of these blocks a few years ago than now FWIW

[Vigilant]

Can any admin easily block all Telstra IPs if they so wished?

Yes if they want to. Its a really stupid idea. There have been blocks of entire countries before.

I think there were more of these blocks a few years ago than now FWIW

Have you looked into the long term range blocks that are still active ?

There are septillions of IPV6 addresses that are indefinitely blocked and not as cloud servers or proxy or whatever.
Go look.

[Moral Hazard]

Perhaps I've missed something, but where is the actual financial/ethical motivation for Telstra to give a toss about all their customers being denied the ability to edit Wikipedia without creating an account, if the alternative is potentially blocking an actual paying customer on the say so of a bunch of complete amateurs?

And perhaps if Telstra knew that Wikipedia's rule that 'anyone can edit' is not only inaccurate on the face of it (IP users cannot do several things registered users can), given the screwed up culture on the site, it is more properly framed as 'anyone can edit, but really, to be even taken seriously and actually be allowed to edit without being automatically assumed to be up to no good, you need a registered account and at least a month's worth of contributions deemed worthy, and even then, if you're editing a controversial topic you're still going to be suspected of being up to no good', they'd care even less.

I say bring it on. The issue is Wikipedia's, not Telstra's - it's Wikipedia who decided to make promises to its users that its open editing and volunteer governance model cannot keep. If I was a Telstra executive, I'd give anyone in the media who wanted a comment on how Wikipedia just 'blocked' the whole of Australia because they didn't do something, Drmies' phone number, and tell them he is the Wikipedia community's spokesman on all things harassment (which is not technically untrue) and he is the person who took the decision to block the country, and let him justify it. It's truly disgusting the way he's acting all upset over the abuse Huldra is receiving, as if people can't see that the only reason he's getting involved at all is because he wants to get back at the WMF for trying to act against the sort of harassment frequently seen from his best buds, Eric and Malik - the former being a serial harasser of women and general disbeliever that they should even be made welcome at Wikipedia, the latter being an admin who resorted to racism as a way to respond to alleged racist abuse, who, with Drmies' help, is now trying to deceive people into thinking it was Wikipedia's failure to spot that alleged racism that provoked his racism - a narrative shown to be a lie on this very forum.

Let those who are without sin, cast the first stone.

You really are a twisted spiteful obsessive.

[Anroth]

Just add him to ignore list. Cleans up the disgruntled troll posts fairly well.

[MMAR]

You really are a twisted spiteful obsessive.

Says the guy who reflexively insults me in the worst possible terms whenever I mention either Drmies or Eric, for whatever reason.

Do you honestly believe people are taken in by this? There's not a shred of principle or even logic in your actions, yet you persist as if it somehow has value, or will somehow advance their cause. Odd, to say the least.

[The Adversary]

Wnt (T-C-L) here:

So we should explore our alternatives - abuse filter alerts, a cadre of volunteer editors, people to explain and belittle his incessant threats, but not censoring Australia, and absolutely not appeals for prosecution [..] That country's censorship and surveillance of communications is a crime against humanity, and we should neither validate it nor become collaborators with it.

Gosh, I didn´t know Australia was a part of North Korea?

[Poetlister]

I noticed Huldra and Favonian edit-warring (no diff comments or talkpage activity of course) some IPs on the question of whether Jerusalem should be described, point-blank, as "Jerusalem, Israel" (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... on=history).

Indeed, Favonian is altering the article to agree with his POV and then using his admin powers to protect it in that state - naughty.
Edit
Protection log

Nope, not really.
I have never seen Favonian edit in the I/P area; what he does here is standard anti-vandal procedure: protect the version the vandal does *not* like.

Anyway, I suggest any more posts about this subject goes into the other thread viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6806

OK, replying in this thread though it's rather off topic here. The IP wasn't vandalising, unless you define vandalism as any edit contrary to your POV.

[The Adversary]

OK, replying in this thread though it's rather off topic here. The IP wasn't vandalising, unless you define vandalism as any edit contrary to your POV.

It is standard anti Grawp-procedure, though: revert on sight, each and every edit. And yes; good edits, or border-line edits gets reverted too. I´ve seen editors get many, many hundreds of edits -in a single day- reverting him. And it is about sending a message: some people are *extremely* unwelcome on WP. (Typically: a person who I will not name, but you have surely heard of: initials AM; also has each and every edit reverted: also good ones.) When you get edits like this, do you blame them? Or they first Welcome a Telstra IP, and then gets a rape threat from the same IP; do you still think they should "engage" with new Telstra IPs, making generally the same type of edits?

(We could debate wether the Telstra IP is Grawp, or not, but one thing is sure: if he isn´t, then he is a direct copy-cat: same treatment)

If a pro-Palestinian vandal was as nasty and prolific as Runtshit and/or Grawp, exactly the same procedures would be in place; rest assured.

[Poetlister]

Ah yes, Bauder's Law.

Tsunami Butler was properly blocked as a sockpuppet. Such determinations are not based on checkuser but on aggressive editing which fits the same pattern as a banned user. Obviously a different person may be involved; the violation is mirroring the behavior of the banned editor. [[User:Fred Bauder|Fred Bauder]] 11:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[Triptych]

Ah yes, Bauder's Law.

Tsunami Butler was properly blocked as a sockpuppet. Such determinations are not based on checkuser but on aggressive editing which fits the same pattern as a banned user. Obviously a different person may be involved; the violation is mirroring the behavior of the banned editor. [[User:Fred Bauder|Fred Bauder]] 11:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I was blown away to find that an attorney (yes now, I've read, disbarred) said this. It's so completely antithetical to reason, law, fairness, justice, and training. I thought "could he have meant this tongue-in-cheek or ironically" but I gather, no, he actually advocated this.

An additional irony is that this principle is actually employed in a great number of blocks.

[Vigilant]

Ah yes, Bauder's Law.

Tsunami Butler was properly blocked as a sockpuppet. Such determinations are not based on checkuser but on aggressive editing which fits the same pattern as a banned user. Obviously a different person may be involved; the violation is mirroring the behavior of the banned editor. [[User:Fred Bauder|Fred Bauder]] 11:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I was blown away to find that an attorney (yes now, I've read, disbarred) said this. It's so completely antithetical to reason, law, fairness, justice, and training. I thought "could he have meant this tongue-in-cheek or ironically" but I gather, no, he actually advocated this.

An additional irony is that this principle is actually employed in a great number of blocks.

That he was disbarred for trying to force one of his clients to fuck him, the charge was soliciting prostitution, just makes this all the more funny.