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Community health initiative/Blocking tools and improvements/Open proxies

< Community health initiative | Blocking tools and improvements

As part of the WMF's Anti-Harassment Tools team's work on blocking tools and improvements we are considering enabling a bot or other tool to automatically set global blocks on open proxies.

This page documents a feature the Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team may build. Development of this feature has not been decided or prioritized.

🗣   We invite you to join the discussion!

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T166817

Background

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Editing from open proxies is globally not allowed on Wikimedia wikis as a way to mitigate spam and vandalism. See No open proxies and WikiProject on open proxies for more information.

ProcseeBot

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ProcseeBot started operating on English Wikipedia in 2009. The bot sets 2 month blocks on IP proxies. The bot will "harvest" proxy IPs by checking external sources and verify they are proxy IPS before setting a block. More specific details can be found at the request for approval: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/ProcseeBot

This bot is built and operated by User:Slakr. Slakr does not share the source code of the bot and would be open to enabling ProcseeBot on Meta to make global blocks, so long as he does not have to share the code of the bot publicly, per BEANS.

I looked on Slakr’s talk page archives (the bot’s talk page redirects here), ProcseeBot failed twice in 2017 due to server issues. This doesn’t seem like a major issue. I found no other requests, other than one small request to add a whitelist. The conversation was very brief. I could not find any other recent conversations about the bot's limitations or opportunities.

Blockbot & ProxyBot

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French Wikipedia had two bots to block open proxies, Blockbot (2013-2015) and ProxyBot (2007-2015?). It does not appear they have a bot actively running to block open proxies.

In the vote for adminship, Blockbot (sometimes called ProxyBlock) was enabled because ProxyBot "is not very active and works rather in big waves" with large time gaps in its functioning. The vote for adminship for Proxybot was in 2007.

PxyBot

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PxyBot is used on Japanese Wikipedia to identify and block open proxies. On the Small Wiki Monitoring Team the bot will report the proxy as open and blacklist it on a bot page used to monitor edits. PxyBot is built and maintained by User:Rxy. The bot doesn't proactively search for proxies, it evaluates every new IP address that makes an edit. More information can be found at https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%A9%E7%94%A8%E8%80%85:Rxy/Bot/ProxyBlock

Proposed changes

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  • Enable ProcseeBot (or create a similar tool) on Meta to make global blocks of identifiable open proxies.
  • Alternatively, we could create a shared list from which to block.

Next steps

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  • Discuss as part of the larger Blocking tools discussion
  • Consult with Stewards if we want to enable this bot.
  • Decide if we'll build anything
  • Build and/or assist with building
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