Block New Accounts from Tor users

It seems that lots of repeated Trolls and Vandals and Troll Vandals have taken to using Tor to keep from getting themselves permanently banned and/or bounced.

Tor has a way to query their servers for a list of I Ps that are used by Tor. I suggest that we keep users from creating new accounts under a Tor node. This will allow people who legitimately use Tor to still browse and post on the wiki, but in order to create an account, they will need to use their own IP address and their own browser.

Any thoughts?

How would you determine it is a TOR node?

The other wiki has TorNodeBot and the TorBlock extension, for reference to Fast Eddie's question.

Tor keeps track of its Exit Nodes, and sends them to a service they call TorDNSEL. More info can be found here. They also have a manual export feature that returns exit nodes that allow connections to a certain IP. However, it should be run frequently to keep the list up-to-date.

Here is the list for TV Tropes.

edited 21st Aug '12 4:27:21 PM by VmKid

Huh, that's a fairly straightforward node list. Should be relatively easy to block.

Groovy. Not sure I'd use it for straight-up blocking. But requiring people to be off of TOR when they make an account would definitely be an incremental improvement.

Would it be just be "be off Tor when making an account" or "Be off Tor when logging in period"? Not much difference, really, but some would just go and get known from a different proxy or public computer, then use Tor to edit.

Or is that not an issue at all and I'm just complicating things?

I'd think that by the time a user could get a proxy set up or travel to a public computer to create an account, they'd use that same proxy to edit. Tor is arguably the easiest means to make junk edits, and Eddie said it himself: "Trolls deserve all the extra work we can make for them."

Also, how many public computers could one person have access to, and honestly, who would be THAT dedicated to travel a long ways just to make a few crap edits where they can be easily undone?

edited 21st Aug '12 8:18:49 PM by VmKid

Utterly pointless seems to be the zone where these guys are most comfortable. Making it so you can't edit from TOR doesn't seem too onerous, though. Not blocked from reading, just from editing.

Seems fair to me. Now the question becomes do you tell them it's because of TOR or is it left ambiguous?

I think you'd have to say why you are refusing an edit.

I meant that it could redirect to the generic Edit Banned screen or there could be a TOR-exclusive screen.

"Sorry, we don't allow edits from anonymizing proxies?"

That might be good. However, it implies that we're blocking more than just Tor. We might be able to find and add more and more info about proxies and their exit nodes as time goes on.

edited 22nd Aug '12 7:09:55 AM by VmKid

Well, we run into a problem with that, because we clearly do not and cannot block all proxies, especially ones that don't identify themselves as such. However, making it clear that we're blocking Tor and only Tor just tells people to use a different proxy service.

How about: "Sorry, editing from this IP address has been disabled."

edited 22nd Aug '12 7:11:14 AM by Fighteer

Fair enough.

I feel like that could be too easily mistaken for a standard ban screen; I think the first "anonymizing proxies" version is more useful.

But as noted, we don't (and can't, realistically) block all anonymizing proxy IP's. So someone getting that on Tor but not some other proxy service might conclude that we're just a bunch of idiots that can't do what we say we will.

"Sorry, we don't allow editing from this IP address. This does not mean that we don't like you, personally, but that you're connecting to the wiki in a way we don't like."

edited 22nd Aug '12 9:38:34 AM by Fighteer

That looks good. It tells the user what's wrong but is vague enough to not be taken like we think we're doing something we're not.

I'd like to build some data first. The assumption that problem editors come in via TOR is just a guess.

The vandal yesterday with TVT-related names claimed to.

Word of a vandal isn't the most reliable thing, to be fair.

We have access to more data than just the vandal's word in the matter. Eddie's looking into this.

edited 22nd Aug '12 2:01:04 PM by Fighteer

How much traffic does TV Tropes get from countries where Internet access is heavily censored? Might there be some value in a set of trusted proxies operated by trusted tropers for trusted tropers, like TOW has?

You realize that most Tor exit nodes already have accounts associated with them right? And that means you just get the "this IP address already has an account, email us is that's an error" message (or whatever it says). Now I absolutely do not agree with blocking Tor users out of the idea that we're all trolls but if you really must, why not just make it so that same IP message shows up for every Tor exit node? That way the average Tor user could still edit as long as they made an account at their own IP and your heavily-censored Tor users who must use Tor for circumvention would have the instruction on what to do automatically presented to them - i.e. email explaining the situation.