Block New Accounts from Tor users

We aren't trying for all-out bans. We want to prevent future uses of Proxies by trolls.

Unless you are either 1: In a country where TV Tropes is blocked, B: Have an ISP that blocks TV Tropes for some reason, or III: Ban-Evading, you really have no reason to be behind a proxy while editing. Reason B is not that widespread to my knowledge, though Reason 1 is something worth considering. Reason III, however, is what has been seen to be the biggest use for Proxies to edit TV Tropes.

edited 30th Aug '12 10:54:10 AM by VmKid

^From 1 and B, I'd say that such a Tor or proxy block would warrant a whitelist available for mods.

Just wondering: Is TV Tropes actually blocked in any country?

Not in Iran or China. Are there any other major countries that I should do research about? If not, this makes bypassing country-based firewalls a non-issue.

In which case, maybe people connecting from proxies could be asked to provide extra information to ensure that they're not trying to trick the mods into giving them full access?

Explanation of the goofy numbering

edited 30th Aug '12 11:19:16 AM by VmKid

Let's just say that we've identified a direct correlation between Tor usage and banned accounts, to the point where a legitimate user from a Tor exit point is a rarity.

TV Tropes is not a banned site in any country that we know of, so any restrictions that would lead you to use proxies to evade them are entirely localized — such as a school, a workplace, or a parental control. In those cases, it is not in TV Tropes' interest to accommodate your desire to evade those restrictions.

If your use of Tor is out of a tinfoil-hat concern for privacy, well, sorry. Too bad. There's nothing on TV Tropes that would require such privacy, and if your situation is such that you fear being discovered to be using the site by an authority figure... well, there are ways to manage that that don't require anonymizing proxies.

edited 30th Aug '12 11:21:47 AM by Fighteer

So as far as you're concerned, Tor users are trolls or paranoid crazies? Yeah, thanks for that. Never mind that Tor use is supposed to be covert, so of course the only time you're likely to notice is when it is used for trolling. I use Tor when using someone else's wifi because it encrypts what I'm doing from my computer to the first Tor node, bypassing anything that the operators of that network may have put on a public workstation or on their wifi to monitor and/or capture information of users. This has nothing to do with TV Tropes in particular and everything to do with good Data Hygiene practices.

You do not need to go to war with Tor users because you have a trolling problem. You could easily stop trolls from registering new accounts over Tor by making the Tor exit node list give the IP-already-registered message on attempted signup. I think it's serious overkill to block all edits over Tor (especially because clearly there is a list of IP addresses associated with accounts and you can still ban the account and block that IP if a problem does occur, even via Tor).

Nobody said we were blocking all Tor edits. Calm down. However, I should point out once again that your security concerns are not ours. Our concerns are for the integrity of the wiki. Accommodating users who wish to remain anonymous is not one of our major concerns.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:07:40 PM by Fighteer

On most networks, attempting to bypass monitoring of traffic is against the network's Terms of Use. If you're using another person's Wi-Fi without their permission, that's illegal. If that person DOES give you permission, chances are they're not monitoring what you're doing, sending you back into Tinfoil hat territory.

I personally agree, however, that a user should be able to use normal editing/posting features while editing through a proxy, so long as the account was created on a non-proxied network.

Nornja'd

edited 30th Aug '12 12:15:55 PM by VmKid

I'm not saying you have to share my security concerns; I'm simply disagreeing with this proposal and explaining my reasons. That's how discussion works.

If this were a proposal asking you to do something tricky to include a minority of users, I would understand you saying the site can't accommodate, but this is different. It's not about making special accommodations, it's about 'not' writing and installing special blocks.

I'm talking about wifi at internet cafes, Starbucks, Mc Donalds etc. Not about stealing wifi. You may trust the owner of the internet cafe down the road, but I think he's a pretty shifty character.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:17:33 PM by StarValkyrie

If you can't trust a network enough to respect your privacy, then just don't connect. TV Tropes is not that vital of a service that you must be connected wherever you go. If you think that they are going to snoop, then don't give them your business.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:37:11 PM by VmKid

Above, Fighteer said a legitimate user from a Tor exit point is a rarity. Therefore, a block like the one being proposed would help reduce vandal account creation and it's a good idea. Exceptions for a minority of users within that are what you are asking for.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:25:50 PM by Telcontar

I don't know what evidence mods have compiled. I know Eddie said he would look into it before making a decision. What concerns me based on other incidents of Tor being block across the board on other sites is that findings showing 'most trolls use Tor' will be taken as 'most Tor users are trolls'.

And I'm just saying that I think there is already a system in place which could easily be extended to prevent people from registering a new account at a Tor IP address without (imo unnecessarily) affecting the use of the site by already registered users who sometimes use the Tor network.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:39:13 PM by StarValkyrie

In point of fact, our evidence shows that trolls use other anonymizing proxy services besides just Tor. However, a person using a Tor exit node to edit the wiki does have an overwhelming likelihood of being a troll, especially if they registered from it. The correspondence is not 1:1, but it's close.

We're going on empirical evidence here, not wishful thinking. If we could reasonably block (or at least greylist) all anonymizing proxies, we probably would.

And Tor makes its list of exit nodes public, and we can grab that. We aren't idiots.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:45:33 PM by Fighteer

Re-read the OP and the title. We're discussing just that-keeping Proxy users from creating new accounts.

As far as "all of the Tor nodes will be taken eventually" goes, you're forgetting that Exit Nodes aren't the same at any given moment. More and more are added all the time.

I'd hope for a greylist, not a full and total ban.

edited 30th Aug '12 12:45:56 PM by VmKid

Before we go too far, there are still some things to establish. We have good data supporting the assertion that trolls use TOR. We do not have good data asserting that all TOR users are trolls, or even that they are a majority of TOR users.

We can find out how many handles edit from a TOR exit IP. We can see how many/what proportion of those are troll's handles. This will tells us what a balanced action would be.

A lot of sites do block Tor, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people who regularly use Tor have no problem switching to direct access for specific sites. Aside from trolls and the serious tinfoil hat crowd, I don't think many people will be inconvenienced.

That's not the way Tor works anymore. It used to be you could click a button in your regular browser to switch between direct access and access through Tor but that was found to be pose several risks over varying severity so now Tor is accessed from a separate browser and setting that browser to access a list of sites without going through Tor is strongly, strongly discouraged.

• Step One: Open a different browser
• Step Two: ?????
• Step Three: Profit

edited 30th Aug '12 3:38:16 PM by VmKid

I understand what you're trying to say but it's not even that simple. Closing the Tor Browser clears your clipboard too. Tor is in the business of saving people from themselves. And anyway, what I was trying to point out is that people are making accusations and suggestions when all they know about Tor is rumors.

Then don't close Tor. Unless your computer is running MS-DOS, it's perfectly capable of multitasking.

Our accusations come from the fact that using Tor or a proxy to access TV Tropes is not required by anyone. It has been abused by trolls repeatedly, to the point where in the time spent banning their many accounts and sockpuppets and cleaning up the crap they leave behind, we could have spent actually improving our articles.

I am a TOR user and came in here from Ask The Tropers when, today, I tried to create a page and found out I could not do so with a forbidden error.

Even if those of us concerned with privacy are the "tinfoil hat crowd," somehow that justifies hatred toward us? Sometimes we have very good reasons for wanting to preserve our privacy, including that the site itself doesn't even use secure password hashes. If TVT is hacked, we could be traced back. Hence, why I use a username no one can connect to any of my other activities and a throwaway password AND why I use TOR.

Privacy isn't just about the "tinfoil hat" crowd, some of us are artists and other individuals who would rather not connect our TVT activity to our lives outside of TVT, and that decision should be respected by the site. Some of us would like to be anonymous, and anonymous doesn't always mean troll.

Also, a friend of mine who uses TOR also pointed out a gray area: not ban evading but evading another person's ban. Someone else using their I Ps got banned for some drama (not even of a trolling/vandal nature, but more of just being a disagreeable asshole involved with another wiki and a bit of a crusade) and therefore their IP is banned, they got a message from a mod but their account is blocked so they can't access the message to read it, and they don't want to have to pay to go out somewhere just to access the site - especially since if someone looks up the IP logs and sees the "bad" IP they'll be banned and all their posts erased anyway.

There are some legitimate reasons for using TOR:

1) Privacy and keeping TVT activity segregated from one's persona/career/life off TVT

2) Evading a ban on one's router or IP incurred by someone else who uses the computer, by someone who lived at the address before, by someone who also trolls from the coffee shop or net cafe, etc etc

3) One does not like to use non-anonymized browsers for ANY reason

4) Keeping the sockpuppets one has entirely separate (yes, on TVT one is allowed sockpuppets, and maybe someone does NOT want their forum sock or their anime sock tied to a sock that edits a side that sees the anime fans as creepy pedos or the forumgoers as taking things too seriously etc...)

I would say if you are so concerned with obliterating anonymity for the sake of security, that a better idea would be to start requiring signups be tied to e-mail address. It would have almost the same (bad) privacy impact as banning TOR nodes, but it would be far better for stopping trolls (especially if you blocked mailinator or mailmetrash or similar mail generators), because only the most dedicated of trolls would sit around creating tons of new gmail or hotmail addresses...

I'm sorry, but your interest in privacy does not supersede our interest in maintaining a site that is free of vandalism. Nearly all TOR activity to this site is disruptive in some way.

edited 27th Nov '12 4:55:16 PM by Fighteer

(Disclaimer: I am not a moderator or admin. This is my opinion and mine alone.)

First, you can use that pencil on top of your posts to edit them. No need to double-post.

Second...

1: TV Tropes isn't a porn site. We have things like the P5 to keep objectionable material off the site. If you have a problem with other people knowing you browse TV Tropes, your browser has a Private Browsing mode.

2: If an account already exists, ask a mod to free up your IP for creation of a new account. We only block Tor users from editing, not from creating new accounts. Make your account, unknow yourself in a non-anon browser if already known, and bake a new cookie.

3: That's not our problem.

4: That type of harassment is a banning offense. If someone harasses you for something like that, holler for a mod.

We aren't saying that all of you guys are here to vandalize the wiki. However, we are saying that it is pointless for us to have to spend time cleaning up after vandals so that a very small microcosm of the wiki can feel safe from, as you list above, other users and your own friends and family.

That, or I could be ninja'd.

edited 27th Nov '12 5:23:11 PM by VmKid

Look at it this way, was there anything in that list that was a benefit to the wiki? Because there doesn't seem to be any benefit to us that outweighs the hassle. On a cost/benefit analysis, it is all cost.

edited 27th Nov '12 6:41:51 PM by FastEddie