Anyone got a list of the heritage foundation leaders and big players?
It’s only fair
I’ll never contribute to Wikipedia because they block VPNs
They should really unblock them. I know it’s not always easy to combat these problems, but a dedicated individual can break articles using non-VPN IPs like mobile data IPs
They not only enforce IP bans on account creation but on every single edit you make, even if logged in…
I’ll note too that even absent Heritage Foundation threats, this can be useful to spur development of the project (i.e. for people who don’t want a permanent account but don’t feel comfortable having their IP permanently, publicly attached to edits). Probably the reason it hasn’t been done in the past is it’s almost certainly going to make it easier for bad actors to fly under the radar. Before, you either had to show your IP address (which can reveal your location and will usually uniquely identify who edited something for at least a little bit; you also can’t use a VPN without special permission) or you had to register a single account (where if you created multiple, a sockpuppet investigation would often find out).
So there’s an inherent trade-off, but I think right-wing threats of stochastic terrorism really tipped the scales.
Doesn’t Wiki still have the data? So a bad actor’s behavior pattern can be seen at aggregate behind the scenes?
There are only 846 administrators on the English Wikipedia. This is across 7 million articles, 118,000 active registered users, about two edits per second, about a million files just on Wikipedia (most of them are hosted on Wikipedia’s sister project, Wikimedia Commons), and over 60 million total pages (articles, talk pages, user pages, redirects, help pages, templates, etc.). So although they have this data, it’s not useful if somebody doesn’t notice and investigate it. Administrators are stretched thin with administrative functions, and that’s not even accounting for many of them participating as normal editors too (tangent: besides obvious violations of policies, administrators have no more say over Wikipedia’s content than any other editor).
Contrary to the idea that new editors sometimes get of Wikipedia as a suffocating police state run by the administrators, usually when edits get reverted it’s because regular editors notice this and revert it citing policies or guidelines without any administrator involvement (every editor has this power). If an administrator intervenes, it’s usually because a non-admin noticed and reported (what they perceive as) bad behavior to an admin, two editors are locked in a stalemate, or there’s some routine clerical issue to be resolved.
Sockpuppeting, copyright violations, etc. are often (even usually) found by regular editors who notice something amiss and decide to dig a bit deeper. Even with automated tools that will flag an edit that replaces the article with the n-word 500 times in a row, and even given that some non-admin editors have tools which let them detect some issues, there’s just only so much that 850-ish people can find on a website that massive. For example, one time a few years back, I just randomly stumbled across an editor who was changing articles about obscure historic battles between India and Pakistan to have wildly pro-Pakistan slants – where treacherous India was the aggressor, but brilliant, strong, and courageous Pakistan stood their ground and sent pathetic India home crying with shit in their diapers. The bias was oozing from the page (with poor, if any, citations to match), and I can imagine this would fly under the radar for a while on a handful of articles that collectively get maybe 30 pageviews a day.
TL;DR: Too few admins.
Well you say you can use a VPN, but you may often see that you’re not able to edit using a VPN IP if that IP block has been used for vandalism in the past. So then you’d have to potentially revert to a coffee shop or library which would still identify your location.
Point of clarification: I said that you can’t use a VPN, and that’s because those IPs are blocked. As noted, you need to ask for a special exception, which for most people isn’t navigable and may not even be granted without a good stated reason and/or trust built up through good edits.
Oh whoops, my bad I must have been reading too quickly. Thanks for clarifying!
I was surprised I was blocked from editing even after logging in. They do hate some IP blocks.
Make a list of necessary changes then go to your local cafe.
Sounds like a nice plan.
I might have to go lookup their implementation. I feel like a good way of addressing your concern would be a secure hash of the IP address combined with a persistent random number.
The same IP would always map to the same output and you wouldn’t be able to just pre-compute it and bypass everything.What’s the persisted random number? Sounds like a salt, but usually each user has their own salt right? I assume we are not talking about logged in users here? Or are we?
Since the goal is to create a correlation ID that maintains privacy, you need the result to be consistent. Hashing four billion IPs might take a minute, but it’s fundamentally doable in a reasonable time.
By using some much large value that you keep secret, you’re basically padding the input to make the search space large enough that it’s not realistically able to be enumerated.
Normally each user would have their own salt so that if two users have the same password, they hash to different values. In this case, you would want two users with the same IP to map to the same value, and simply for that value to not lead to an actual IP address.
Can someone please ELI5?
The Heritage Foundation has threatened to doxx the editors of wikipedia because the greatest threat to authoritarians is information
ELi5 please: how can heritage foundation track an IP address to a particular person? and what happens if the editor simply makes edit via VPN? and why does WP show the IP adresses anyway?
Your IP address says far more about you than you think. Your IP address can generally automatically identify what country and continent you are on. Who your ISP is. Possibly narrowing down to even your local region. At which point they simply need to find some marginally plausible reason to petition the ISP to identify who that IP address was leased to during x period of time. And then all of a sudden you’re not very anonymous.
I had a guy contact me about buying a Minecraft account a few months ago. It was an account held by a highschool friend of mine with a three-letter username that is a word, making it incredibly unique.
He identified the now-unmonitored email address associated with it, found that email in leaked logs from a forum, then searched for other hits from the same IP in the same time range. That forum access was from my house, so he found my email associated with it elsewhere.
He successfully identified another friend of ours at the same time. All from a single dynamic IP fifteen years ago.
Wikipedia blocks edits from pretty much all public VPNs and is very harsh with IP bans in general. They do allow edits without accounts though, so they show the IP so that an accountless user can be identified when making multiple edits or posting on the talk page. Hashing it would probably make more sense.
- Wikipedia shows IPs instead of usernames for anonymous edits, which the heritage foundation can see. Wikipedia now automatically creates “temporary accounts” for anonymous edits instead of showing the IP
- Wikipedia blocks most VPN edits because they cull malicious edits by IP, so while possible, it’s difficult to make an edit from a VPN since the IP is likely shared with bad actors
- See above. In an effort to limit malicious or nonhelpful edits, anonymous edits are shown by IP in the edit history, though this now stops that
TIL that anonymous edits show your ip address.
We must all do this anonymously editing in coffee shops and libraries.
Wikipedia attempts to shield editors from being Doxxed and harassed by right wing nuts and their followers over writing accurate information.
Right wing nuts take offense at not being able to shape the narrative/history.
I can’t wait for the ring wing nuts to fall back behind so behind from this massive web of lies they’re concocting for themselves. They’re now saying “vegetables are toxic and that you shouldn’t eat them”…
To be fair, most plants do manufacture their own pesticides that may harm small reptiles.
How is that defensible? Are there no laws to tamp down online terrorism from bad actors like Heritage? I’d imagine they’re 100% in the wrong for making threats of any kind but I’m just a wee layman.
The issue with “Wait that’s illegal” is that it never work in practice.
If the heritage foundation decide to dox an editor tomorrow. The editor in question would have to file a lawsuit and go against an army of layers the heritage foundation can afford. Even if the editor win at the end, it will be a long and drawn out legal battle where heritage risk almost nothing.
And this is not accounting for the editor having to deal with harassment due to being dox while having to pay for a layer and fighting a legal battle.
And that is why making such terroristic threats should be criminal in the first place.
The laws exist to protect bad actors like Heritage
Even if there was, look who’s in power. Even if judges ruled against Heritage, I’m not holding my breath of them getting any sort of accountability.
No laws? Sir/ma’am, we have the 2nd amendment. I can’t think of any law higher.
Too bad the 2A nutjobs and right wing nutjobs are the same people.
Once you go far enough left, you get your guns back…
You’re not wrong…
Well theres the 1st admendment. The 2nd is for when the 1st is being denied…
The 2nd was meant to ensure the 1st was respected.
The internet is, by nature, problematic in terms of legal compliance because it is not wholly under the jurisdiction of any singular country.
You can go after hardware physically located within your own jurisdiction, and you can go after operators under your jurisdiction. But if you start going after folks/hardware outside of that, you’re rightfully going to be told to fuck off. (Which is why IP holders burn so much money on anti-piracy lobbying and get practically nowhere)
Its the same reason encryption bans are laughably idiotic.
how is that not blackmail
There’s a lot of crimes happening nowadays by members of this administration. Add it to the pile.
What administration? The Wikipedia admins? What the fuck you talking about?
Sorry, did you think the internet was only for and about America? Fuck you.
Dude, check yourself.
The Heritage Foundation is an american organization. Wikipedia is an american organization. Do the math.
I imagine this has been underway since whenever that legal kerfluffle in India happened
What is the reason?
Pshhh. You’ll upset the Americans. They don’t want filthy foreigners in their fediverse.
