Wikipedia talk:Blocked IPs

Brion VIBBER, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Shell, Larry_Sanger, Koyaanis Qatsi appear to be the de facto editorial/censor board. Should there be links here to the "reasons why"? Not necessarily for disputes, but to establish an accountability trail.

That will matter later, I'm sure.

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Well, I've blocked IPs too, so go ahead and call me a "censor," but it's not something I did for political reasons so the term would be inappropriate. Anyway, I can't speak for anyone else, but I blocked people who were consistently adding patent nonsense. One of the IPs also adds his share of relevant info, as Axel Boldt (& LDC) pointed out, so I took him off the list. Originally I thought the ban was just for a short time, like 30 minutes or something, but it turns out the blocks aren't lifted automatically, and I just found out how to lift them manually. So that's that. There's been discussion of the ways that IP blocking should and should not be used on wikipedia-l, if you're interested. That's also archived at nupedia, if you'd care to take a look at what's been said already. Koyaanis Qatsi

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See examples of discussion in VANDALISM IN PROGRESS and Talk:VANDALISM IN PROGRESS; after I've overhauled the software a bit, there will be a comment field in the IP-blocking tool for a quick explanatory note there as well. Note also that anyone with the ability to block IPs also has the ability to unblock IPs -- and everyone can see who did which. (Larry, by the way, is no longer involved in Wikipedia.) Brion VIBBER, Tuesday, April 2, 2002

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Thanks, that is very helpful, especially for newcomers learning the ropes. Without Larry it will be interesting to see how "the ability to block IPs" and "the ability to unblock IPs" will be managed. Presumably some political process for deciding this must evolve... "electing sherrifs" or whatever... although probably not soon, as we are still figuring out editorial stances on some very fundamental stuff.