See this log.

You will note several occasions when IP addresses were blocked as
sock puppets of particular users, thereby outing the IP addresses
of those users. There were also occasions when pseudonymous
accounts were blocked as sockpuppets of legal names, thereby
outing the real names of those pseudonyms.

From this, we can conclude that the WP community as a whole does
not actually oppose outing. They are simply classist - they protect the
privacy of those with higher rank while sadistically violating the privacy
of those with lower rank. (As disclaimer, I am sure there are many
members of the WP community who do not agree with the community
as a whole on this.)

Actually, it's really a catch-22, If we DON'T mention who it is in the block log, and say "Sockpuppet" or "Checkuser-proven sockpuppet" not only is there no transparancy in the process, but we get clobbered with accusations that it's not reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly a sockpuppet or proven by checkuser, but just blocking folks we don't like.

And the real name thing is a subset. If someone is proven to be a sockpuppet of the account Joe Schmoe (Joe's real name was used for an account).. can we get by just by saying "Sockpuppet of a Real-Life name account?" or would we get called on that as well?

AB, what do you suggest be done in future, in view of what SirFozzie points out?

I want to be sensitive to privacy concerns and yet at the same time be as transparent as I possibly can be, without impeding the efficiency and efficacy of checkuser investigations. That gives you at least three different competing things that pull in different directions.

I'm open to suggestions. I suspect there is no perfect answer but improvements are welcome.

I appreciate the dilemma. The catch is only introduced by the inconsistency of the Wikipedia policy, which is that everyone can edit anonymously unless we decide you are abusing the system where we then can reveal this information.

Wikipedia does not state this explicitly. I don't think I would have a problem with that, except that it is clear that there is a strong belief that some of those trusted with this information cannot actually be trusted. I'm not sure I even have a problem with that: the simple answer is that if your privacy is important to you, don't edit Wikipedia.

It has been made clear, with the attitude to Tor (not TOR!!!!) that it is not acceptable to hide your identity from Wikipedia, yet I think there are now plenty of people who are so distrustful of the powers that be that they do not understand why that should be the case. Yet, it is also clear that there are those who operate within Wikipedia who see it as their right to hide and appear to be sock puppetting or meet puppeting and are taking advantage of their privileged position to hide their actions. Yet, it is incredibly difficult for those not in the system to fight that abuse.

The solution is simple - real identities and live with it (some people will not use the system, some people will abuse the system anyway), or anonymous and live with it (sockpuppeting and the like - you can adapt). Don't kid yourselves that Wikipedia has sufficient trustworthiness to allow it to be the guardian of that information that allows a middle ground.

All Checkuser drama is a function of allowing pseudonymous editing. Require IRL identities for editors and you protect the public, especially BLP victims, and avoid the drama. AB won't like this, but it would produce an atmosphere that many others would be willing to participate. Perhaps allowance could be made for editors living under repressive regimes or other well founded fears. Those users might be permitted to use proxies and operate under pseudonyms. They would be unlikely to take the form of "Armed Blowfish,""SirFozzie" or even "GlassBeadGame" as the whole point would be to be discrete. The decision related to this limited use of pseudonyms should be placed in the hands of a trusted third party, and not the "community."

This set of IPs is interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lon...use/HeadleyDown

Clearly HeadleyDown comes from

24.147.97.230
Massachusets
66.176.129.11
Miami
80.189.81.19
London
203.186.238.160
Hong Kong
62.25.106.209
London
And so on

HeadleyDown is ubiquitous? In fact, it looks like FT2 is identifying anyone and everyone in disagreement with NLP, zoophilia promotion and anti-pedophilia. Its not so much an outing of socks, rather an outing of FT2's admin abuse.

Some people have trouble dealing with the possibility that they may have more than one nemesis.

It's what Kant might have called —

«Unifying The Manifold Of Dissensuous Oppressions» («UTMODO»)

Jon Awbrey

it could also be open proxies or TOR proxies, but I do agree with you.

It's only a problem because the WP community and checkusers
are so prideful that they cannot accept that they are not infallible,
that innocent people get blocked sometimes, and for that matter,
that there may be good reasons (ethically) for sockpuppetry.

I can guarantee you they are not infallible. There are no foolproof
methods of identifying sockpuppets. IP addresses do not
correspond 1:1 to human beings,* writing analysis is even more
fuzzy, and they aren't experts at it. At best, its probabilistic, but
their pride blinds them from being aware of that. One would think
confessions, at least, would be reliable, but when a confession can
be the only way to get unblocked, are they really so reliable?

Innocent or guilty, its still a privacy violation. The consequences of
outing can be severe, and a semblance of an encyclopaedia isn't
enough to justify that. Preventing certain types of sockpuppetry is
a WP rule, not a higher ethical principle. And, if innocent, that's salt
in the wound, since it is also defamation.

The solution, then, is to drop all pretence of justice. No privacy
violations, no defamation, just block because 'it's our site and we
feel like blocking you'. And don't make the block logs public - it's
no one's business, too many people think WP has good judgement,
when in fact it's judgement is so bad it doesn't even know it has
bad judgement, so it is necessary to hide the block log to protect
the reputations of the blockees. Hell, most sites do not publish
their block logs - they just block people at whim. It works fine.

WP needs to stop pretending to be the High Court of the Internet
and just admit they block people on whims. That would be honest.

* Checkuser yields imperfect results. IP addresses simply do not correlate 1:1
to human beings, or even computers. Reasons for this include:

• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - IPv4 addresses are limited in quantity,
  and IPv6 is not catching on. So, rather than needing an IP address for each
  separate client (where a client may be a computer or a NAT, as explained later),
  an Internet Service Provider (ISP) only needs enough IP addresses for the number
  of clients that are online at one time. The automated nature of Dynamic Host
  Configuration Protocol (DHCP) also makes it convenient. Note that there are
  different degrees of dynamicness - an IP address is assigned for a limited but
  adjustable period of time, and a DHCP server may or may not try to give a client
  the same IP address as it had before (note that there are ways of getting the DHCP
  server to give you a new IP address). Dial-up tends to be highly dynamic.
• Overloading or overlapping network address translation (NAT) - This is another
  solution to the IPv4 address scarcity problem. Basically, multiple clients share the
  same IP address, with a router converting packets sent to that IP address to packets
  sent to various local IP addresses, and vice versa. This can be done at multiple
  levels - a household, a school, library, or business, or even an entire ISP.
• Shared computers - internet cafes, libraries, families. Note that a group of computers,
  at an internet cafe for example, are quite likely all behind the same NAT anyway.
• Things change. People switch ISPs.
• Do anonymising proxies - both closed and open - even need to be listed?

Chances are, you are either behind a NAT of some size, have a dynamic IP address,
or, quite likely, both.

What, you mean Citizendium?

I like Citizendium far better than WP. Saying up-front you want
real names is far better than pretending to allow pseudonymity,
only to ban, out, and send violent thugs after people just for
trying to protect their privacy. I refuse to edit Citizendium, but
neither have I heard of them hurting anyone, so I have nothing
against them. No need for Citizendium to make exceptions - as
long as they don't pretend that 'anyone can edit', it's fine, really.

The main point is - it must needs be voluntary disclosure of a
person's personal information, not forceful disclosure by WP (or
anyone else, but how can WP expect others to respect their
contributor's privacy when they themselves do not respect
their contributor's privacy?).

I would ask you not to lump everyone into the same bucket.

I am a CU and I don't think I'm infallible and I accept that I do make mistakes, and appreciate them being brought to my attention, I'd like to think fairly gracefully (although maybe not?). Further I think it's important to try to correct mistakes once discovered wherever possible. I think you'll find Allison is of a similar mindset.

CU is an imperfect tool and bad blocks do happen. You'll never hear me say that CU proves anything in particular, only that it supports/indicates/corroborates etc. I do think it's a useful tool just the same though as long as one is aware of its limitations.



The WP privacy policy is written to try to disclaim that there may be situations in which information is disclosed. At least that was my read of it. It may not be clear enough on that point and perhaps could stand rewriting.

I don't edit pseudonymously, my identity on line is tied pretty tightly to my real life identity so I may not be the most suited to understanding the privacy needs of those who edit anonymously but I try very hard to respect them wherever possible.

I have an ID at Citizendium but I have not as yet contributed anything significant there. I think it's an interesting experiment but there are too many other differences from WP for it to be a good test of just pseudo vs real... multiple variables and all that.

You want I look at your log, too?

I see you have also violated people's privacy by blocking IP
addresses as sockpuppets of a particular user.



As I explained, sockpuppetry detection is probabilistic, never
certain. If you have enough evidence, it is not a mistake to
say the person is probably a sockpuppet. The mistake part
comes in when you say probably is definitely. And if you
don't think these user names and IP addresses are definitely
sockpuppets, not just probably, then why are you violating
their privacy and calling them sockpuppets? You might be
outing and defaming people who haven't done anything
wrong. Why not play it safe and block them for some reason
that won't damage their privacy or reputation?



The WP privacy policy? 'What the text giveth, the fine print
taketh away.' Please, drop the legal speak and talk ethics.

Outing people can have many negative consequences,
including enabling threats of violence. Sure, you don't need
to know who someone is or where they are to threaten
them, but it's certainly difficult to make a believable threat
of violence against someone you have no clue how to find.

Do you think threats of violence against banned users are
acceptable? Or is sockpuppetry on some website claiming
to be an encyclopaedia worse?

An example I've noted before is List of Czech and Slovak Jews. This should be a list of all Jews from the Czech and Slovak areas, just as say List of French Jews is a list of all Jews from France. User Kazakhstan rocks (= Antidote) deleted loads of names because he decided that they were somehow not Czech enough. Several people opposed him and were all blocked as socks of Runcorn. At least one was in America; Runcorn allegedly used secret tunnels to go under the Atlantic. And Acalamari reverted to Antidote's version, although it is clearly wrong.

And, of course, when they're wrong, and yet they publicly
state their blocking reason, as it seems they always do,
it's defamation.

Supposing, theoretically, that WP blocked people in a
human manner. No privacy violations, no defamation or
any other reputation damage, no harm period, other than
simply preventing the person from editing. No justice,
necessarily, but no pretence of it either, just blocking
people because it's their website and they can do as
they wish with it. Then it would not be good for people to
circumvent their blocks. Not an ethical issue or anything
important like that, just a matter of courtesy, respecting
WP's right to control access to their site.

And, if people's honour as good netizens wasn't enough,
then I guess they would have to rely on their supposedly
superior sockpuppetry detection methods. But I think it
would be enough, in many cases.

However, when WP violates someone's privacy, or defames
someone, then that person henceforth owes WP absolutely
nothing, not even refraining from circumventing their blocks
or bans.

By violating privacy and defaming people, WP makes
sockpuppetry perfectly honourable.

(Disclaimer: Honourable is not the same as wise. Just
because it may be honourable for you to sockpuppet does
not mean it is necessarily wise to do so.)

P.S. All Jews? Even Jon Do no one cares about? That sounds
rather creepy. Not to mention, reducing people just their
ethnicity and religion is rather demeaning. I would prefer the
entire lists were deleted.

Obviously not, only ones who have, or should have, articles on Wikipedia.

Well, we might disagree on who 'should have' an article on WP.
I'm all for deleting all BLPs, or at least limited them to only ones
other encyclopaedias have written about. That would solve
many, but not all, of WP's privacy violation and defamation
problems.

Look at that list, and see how many are BLPs.

About eleven.

HeadleyDown is a fairly well-established compendium of socks, meatpuppets and editing from proxies, and his/their MO is fairly obvious once you get to recognize it. There's a current kerfuffle on an article which has hit AN/I a number of times which is almost certainly one of his/their playgrounds. (And not an NLP, zoophilia or pedo article )

Remember what I said earlier about the WP community being
so prideful that y'all cannot accept that you are not infallible?
You are proving my point.

An MO gives you a probability, nothing more. It cannot ever
give you certainty. What's more, there isn't any way to do a
statistical study of how accurate, what probability it gives
you, since there is no way to be 100% sure (well, other than
meeting everyone in person, which would prove 0% accuracy).

Did it ever occur to you that multiple people in the world share
the same goals, the same modes of operation? You may as
well just write policies against whatever modes of operations
you don't like, and block people for violating those policies.
That would be far more honest, non-defamatory, and it would
put the ridiculousness of blocking someone for having a
particular mode of operation out in the open. However, if you
want to be ridiculous, that's your right. Defamation? That's
not a right.

You are quite right; however a recognition of an MO gives you more of a clue of how to approach the issue. Despite the fact that the LTA page says that suspected HeadleyDown accounts can be blocked on sight, in my experience they are pretty much recognized by behaviour and then blocked (or not, in some cases) after more detailed edit analysis and (certainly on the accounts I've looked at) a Checkuser. (Aha! Durova-style Sooper-Sleuthing!). You'd have to ask FT2 and others for details of all the accounts on the LTA page, but I'd be surprised if anyone has ever been blocked as a HD sock when they weren't, and if they have I'd be interested to see the evidence.

If Headley Down is a consortium of umpteen people, it's impossible to prove that any given person sympathetic to their views is not in the consortium. Indeed, you could argue that they are in it by definition.

I must use that as the note in my next block "Unable to prove that editor isn't HeadleyDown". Seriously though, note the use of CU, as I mentioned. HD socks last so long not because they are not disruptive, but because (as the LTA page points out) they are often so subtle (including taking opposing viewpoints and arguing against each other on a certain article) that they don't get CU'd until recognized.

Well, if overconfidence was your first mistake, then that is
your second mistake. Sockpuppetry investigations should
be as double-blind as possible. It is imperative that a
person who has collected one piece of evidence not share
with a person collecting another piece of evidence.

The human mind has an incredible ability to see patterns.
Andromeda in the stars, man in the moon, canals on Mars,
that sort of thing, Virgin Mary in the windows, that sort of
thing.

Being told to expect something in particular makes the
problem even worse. An investigator looking for Loch
Ness can look at a log and see a sea monster.

See Believing is Seeing by Robert Novella, Assistant Editor,
New England Journal of Skepticism, Volume 4 Issue 1.



Mathematically, I can show you that you can never be
100% certain. Assuming a random distribution of MOs
throughout the IP range, if you have a 30% chance of
two users being sockpuppets of each other based on
MO data and a 70% chance based on IP data, that
does not add up to a 100% chance. Rather, it is a
.7 + .3(1.0-.7) = .7 + .3(.3) = .7 + .09 = .79 = 79%
chance.

Now, if you block 100 people who have 79% chances
of being sockpuppets, and each time you publicly give
away their IP addresses and say they are sockpuppets,
that's 100 privacy violations and an estimated 100-79=21
defamations.

Of course, you don't even know what probabilities you
are dealing with, but you get the idea. Since nothing
can give you 100% proof of guilt, it's like that old idea
where you go half way, then half of the remaining way,
and never make it all the way there.

Besides, MOs are not evenly distributed throughout the
IP range. Family members are quite likely to share MOs.

As some checkusers have been trying to tell you guys for a while now, checkuser is not magic pixie dust. It has a possibility of error, even when you get a result of "confirmed". Therefore, if the only evidence you have is a checkuser result, you do not have nearly sufficient evidence.

Long, technical explanation of why up at the bottom of that post.

Hell, is no one else infuriated by the rampant
privacy violations and defamations?

Outrage exhaustion. We found out that Wikipedians have no problem with stealing from banned users, so there's not much outrage left for their engaging in privacy violations.

Hmmm... have they ever run out of outrage about the
(often reciprocal) outing that occurs over here?

Well, I guess it's easier for them, since they have more
people to spread it out between.

They're hurting themselves, really. 'twould be easier
for me to argue that y'all shouldn't out people if they
stopped violating people's privacy in such a proud,
routine manner.

There is enough blatant dishonesty and distortion from FT2 on that list of editors to assume FT2 has conflated it for reasons of self-interest. I have no doubt that HeadleyDown is using a lot of accounts, and continues to edit. From the diffs, its clear that the edits are pretty sound and are working to present facts that FT2 does not want to have on certain articles of unhealthy interest. FT2 seems to add random personal attack accounts and IPs to the list in order to keep a high degree of paranoia over the articles FT2 wants to protect from fact presenting editors.

I don't see anything on the first page of 500 but I think one instance where he said it was a proxy blocked as a sock. Also I have found over the years, Morven is one of the more better checkusers in my opinion.

There are othercheckusers who tagged an IP as Jon Awbrey even though the IP never edited. Why can't checkusers keep this private?

Then there's how vandal pages had lots of IPs listed. Here is the worst one now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayjg/Alberuni -- this is way worse than the one similar one someone hosted on their user subpage and got deleted because it wasn't in project space. But this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayjg/Alberuni is done by Jayjg so Jayjg gets his way. Alberuni I think only edit wars and never vandalizes, but Jayjg marks all IPs the guy has used.

Should I point them out, then?

I feel like I'm outing people for a second time. Dates, then.

Occasions when IP addresses were blocked as sockpuppets
of particular users:
20:58, 25 February 2006
21:26, 25 February 2006
03:14, 27 August 2007

Hmm I think that might be past the first 500 and require digging. It took me a long time to search through the first 500 just that.

It all fits on one page for me.

Does your browser have a search function? Most do. You
should be able to activate it with / or Ctrl+F, then find future
occurrences of the phrase you are looking for with n, F3, or
Ctrl+G. (Which keys will work depend on your browser. And,
if it's a graphical browser, you could also use the menu.)

I suggest the phrase 'sock'.

Alternatively, you could skim for IP blocks and then check
their blocking reasons.

As far as I can see, admins with CheckUser permissions, have no accountability or transparency. This is unacceptable since personal IP addresses have clearly been revealed, in contravention of Wikimedia's privacy policy.

While the details of the result of a checkuser should be private, USE of Checkuser should be logged, publicly, with an indication of WHO performed a CheckUser, when, WHY, and on whom. The type of results returned should also be given, showing whether they are conclusive, negative, or how they have been interpretted.

I'd also like to see a requirement for all CheckUsers to require a second Admin to confirm a check, with both names logged.

One argument advanced against this is that in some cases, even revealing that there is a check can out someone, and therefore that some checks should be kept private for the protection of the innocently accused. I can give an example of how that would work if you don't follow it.

I want to reiterate something here that I said, but that think has gotten lost. I don't think Checkuser is perfect. I am very reluctant to mark anyone as "confirmed", and if I do, I try to remember to caveat that as meaning "it's our highest probability judgement, but it's still not a certainty". I don't think I am perfect either, and I welcome people trying to help me be better/fairer/more respectful of privacy concerns/etc at what I do.

To the log issue I confess I'm at a loss as to how log things in such a way as to avoid a determined analyst making a connection between IPs and users. I'm open to suggestion as to how to log things going forward but I'm not sure the suggestion to omit mention of socks completely is workable, that is, it doesn't solve the correlation problem.

Consider this somewhat simplistic (but fairly realistic) scenario: Serious vandalism is discovered, and editing patterns strongly suggest that vandal users A, B and C might be related. When a check is run, it's discovered that they all edit from the same IP address (or small range), and that the only other users have ever edited from that address on that wiki are also vandals D, and E not yet discovered as being associated with A, B and C, and sleeper accounts F, G and H, which have never yet edited. I choose not to block the IP at all to avoid association, and to avoid any possible collateral damage. Blocking just A B and C without blocking the IP subsequently results in creation of new vandals I, J and K, more vandal activity by D and E (arguably they should have been blocked the first time), and (on investigation, discovery of creation of 20 new sleepers) as well as activation of previous sleeper accounts F, G and H, so the case is revisted. It's now clear that the IP needs to be blocked, as the IP is clearly not the source of anything useful at all. If I now block F, G and H and the IP at the same time, since F, G and H carry tagging showing them as socks of A, B and C, anyone looking at the block record is going to deduce that hey, the IP must go with F, G and H (and by extension A, B and C since both are tagged) because it was the only IP blocked by Lar at the same time F, G and H were.

Not blocking the IP isn't an option. (maybe it's a small range rather than a single IP so autoblocking isn't going to work).

What, in this case, should be done? As I say I am very very open to suggestions and to changing what I say in block messages, and if it makes sense, lobbying for other CUs to adopt the change. So tell me what you think should be done?

Again, why do Wikipedians insist on addressing this on such a low level? Require IRL identities for editing. Either allow a trusted outside entity to provide exceptions for editors with well founded fears or just do not create any expectation of privacy at all. Make participation in the project a public act. IRL identity for editing is the single, easiest reform that would profoundly improve Wikipedia. It would end most vandalism, end the MMORPG like "patrols," frustrate POV pushing and provide a modicum of respect for people with real credentials. I believe WP admins will fall over themselves with "how can I make it better" nonsense and can not address a true solution because it lessen their influence in the project.

I'd like to think I don't really care about influence, or power, or whether everyone fears me or respects me or likes me or whatever. I can't say that's always true, but I do think I at least try not to care... (after 25 years in online communities I think I've gotten better at not caring, I'd say), and I try very hard to do the right thing if I possibly can, because I care about doing the right thing.

Personally, I like the idea of real names only. My real name is out there for all to see, after all. I wish WP was set up that way and wish it had been so from the very start. It might cost WP some very good editors to be sure, but on balance that's my preference.

But it's not set up that way. And I'm not going to stop contributing to WP because of that. I got a Citizendium account but I haven't contributed much there, I think it has different challenges.

Given that larger context, I'm asking how others think, specifically, I should do things differently in a specific limited context. If no one gives me any constructive suggestions I can't well change how I do things or lobby for others to change, can I? If you don't want to give input, that's fine, but I do want to make that point clear. Remember I'm here at least in part to understand valid concerns and try to where possible act on them.

Within the framework of "WP has anonymous users" and "I'm a CU and a steward and I have no plans to stop being either of those things", if you have things I ought to try to do differently I want to hear about them.

(To draw a real world analogy, I personally believe the US should abolish the income tax and drastically cut the size of government (libertarian macho flash warning!!!), but I'm a realist and don't expect that to happen any time soon, and despite that belief, I'm not going to move out of the US in protest... but I can and will solicit advice about how to improve my tax filing ability or how to maximise my deductions, and I don't see that as a compromise of my principles to do so)

This type of activity is better suited for an internal WP process than a critic site.

Perhaps I'm wasting my time here then? I'd like to think not...

It depends on:

• What your goals are.
• Who you're talking to.

Some folks at The Wikipedia Review think that Wikipedia can be saved, others do not.

Some of us have had a lot of experience participating in Wikipedia, others have spent a lot of time in the stands, sans helmets if not sine cure of souls, others appear to be either utter noobs or maybe just eternally naive despite their mix of participant and spectator experience.

For my part, it's worth spending more time thinking about how to engineer a more perfect e-cyclopedia, but it's just not worth wasting any more words on a project that has proven itself recalcitrant to every direction of sensible course correction.

Jon Awbrey

The problem is that right now wikipedia has people and they do helpful edits, they revert vandalism, and all so they can at the same time just sneak in disruption and harassment of users and get away with it. People like that are also masters at manipulating others, like for every person as good at manipulating others to climb the power structure and control articles, there's others with that same manipulative skill that just to get away with causing problems while staying low in the power structure.

I also see a common thing of an editor if they just got blocked, to come back, act like they're not new and if someone asks they're not new they say something like, "Unfortunately, I had to abandon that account due to persistent harassment." I remember User:Mr._Carbunkle said that and people believed him and later people found all these disruptive accounts associated with them (or it was User:Takenages). What I'm saying is there are lots of people on Wikipedia there to cause trouble and also good at manipulating people so they get away with it.

What's bad is if someone is really there to cause disruption they can hide their IP, switch ISPs, dial long distance so it looks like they live somewhere else.

Then you bring real names and those same kinds of people will fake their identity. Wikipedia can only do so much to check out a person's background before just accepting it. Then you'll have these kinds of people go in with everyone else using their real names and they will provoke the people who aren't using fake names to do something that later embarrasses themselves badly. Or the fake ID people provoke someone with their real name into getting mad, getting banned, and then there's the person's real name out there forever.

And then there's a third position, which has to do with what the Wikipedia experience tells us about human learning (or non-learning, as the case may be).

Well, in this case Mr. BeadGame does have a good point. And just so we're clear on this, to me the obvious solution would be to disallow AnonIP editing altogether, but for now let's assume that isn't going to happen...

Essentially, MediaWiki doesn't really give you the kind of tools you need to effectively manage even a small user community, much less an enormous one like Wikipedia's. We have better tools on this site for dealing with "community" problems. On WP, you can't block users from editing specific namespaces/categories/pages but not others, for example - it's site-blocking or nothing. Just having that sort of "granular blocking" would remove a huge amount of whatever stigma there may be from being blocked in general.

With AnonIP's who are suspected of being named users who are banned for some reason, MediaWiki should allow for "secure block summaries" - i.e., only admins or some sub-class of named users should be allowed to see the secure version, and the non-secure version would say, "IP suspected of being a banned user." (Someone using the specific IP should also be able to see the secure version, IMO.) This certainly reduces transparency, but is the AnonIP person going to complain? Who cares if he does or not? It's an AnonIP!

But given that MediaWiki doesn't allow for this, then in theory someone could set up a procedural workaround, probably involving a secure external website available only to selected individuals, in which IP addresses are logged with who's suspected of using them. But that's a lot of work and expense just for something like that. It would almost have to be custom-built - IOW, you'd want someone on the IP (or range) in question to be able to see who they're accused of being, and of course the "trusted" members of the external site too, but nobody else. If the AnonIP wants to publicize the identification, so as to challenge it, that would be his/her right - the most common reason, of course, would be that the IP has been passed on to another person via DHCP, specifically at the ISP level.

Unfortunately, this latter approach might easily turn a 30-second process of blocking an IP and typing in a summary into a 3-minute or even 5-minute process, and that makes this idea a non-starter. And this, I suspect, is the basis of Mr. BeadGame's comment, no? If WP is going to set something up to allow for this, it's really a technical discussion, not an ideological or philosophical one. Our role is mainly just to identify the problem and maybe try to determine the extent of it. Any concrete suggestions from us are likely to be immediately dismissed as, well, coming from us.

If they disable IP editing, then vandals will make accounts and it will be harder to track them. It will then result in most of the administrators getting checkuser.

If they disable anonymous/pseudonymous registration and require all editors to divulge their academic credentials, most of the problems will subside.

GlassBeadGame, do you seriously think they're going
to let me say anything on WP itself?

Anyway, it is criticism, just a different sort of criticism
than your own. Whether WP eventually gets
drastically reformed or destroyed or whatever, in the
mean time, it's hurting a lot of people, and I wish
that damage could be minimised.

In the block log, simply write 'ciao' or 'goodbye' or 'audiós' or 'aurevoir'.

Then e-mail the person with the full explanation of why they were
blocked, along with permission for them to share it.

If they don't have e-mail enabled, you could ask them to enable e-mail,
or explain on their talk page, with the understanding they could ask
for the explanation to be deleted or oversighted. Block log entries, on
the other hand, are not deletable or oversightable. You could even
immediately blank it and leave a link to the page history to prevent it
from ever being cached by Google.

Actually, that's probably the wrong order. It would really be best to
let them know why you are blocking them before you actually do so, in
order to give them time to prepare a defence, say their goodbyes, or
offer to quietly leave without needing to be blocked.

What disturbed me about the reason given by KillerChihuahua when she indefinitely blocked me was that the reason given was a 'theory of mind' that she had concocted out of thin air, and which was trivially refutable.

KillerChihuahua gave as her reason that (to her mind) "I had no interest in writing an encyclopedia." I have no idea where she came up with that novel theory about my interests, but it was trivially refutable by the easily discoverable fact that I had previously co-authored an 8-page peer-reviewed encyclopedia article in a real (print) encyclopedia just a few years ago, signed with my real name.

What troubled me about my block was not the fact that she blocked me (or that she wanted me blocked), but that she couldn't come up with a valid and credible reason for it.

I don't mind getting negative feedback, but the feedback should contain valid and reliable information that is not already in my possession.

I must say, I find your indefinite block one of the stranger things I've seen. It strikes me that you were blocked, essentially, for talking much as you do here, in a manner which some might find tedious, but often insightful as well, and certainly not malevolent.

When I look at this RfC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...comment/Moulton
Something "odd" leaps out at me.

If User:B's allegations were correct (I've been told that they're not, but we can revisit this evidence from another angle,) the process was compromised even according to its own (very low) standards.

And if there's one thing that RfArb/Mantanmoreland proves (well there are many, but here's one,) it's that even the most compelling allegations of sockpuppetry will be overlooked or denied if the accused is well-liked by those who matter. Therefore, to say "The Arbitrators looked into it, and determined no wrongdoing" is no longer credible. At all.

Which brings me back to the Orderinchaos/DanielT5/Zivko85 socking issue - I was told in stark terms to back off, and warned against bringing the matter to ArbCom, while being assured that exculpatory information - which, naturally, couldn't be shared - had been provided.

But you look at RfArb/Mantanmoreland, and, well…who can trust their judgment? What they see as "exculpatory" might be as little as "he denies it, we like him, and how do we really super-duper for sure know?" And that was CU-confirmed.

So, I'd be interested in revisiting this matter of your indefinite block, both the substance of it, and approaching with an open mind the question of whether your RfC wasn't adminsocked.