Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/United States Congress

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[edit] centralisation of discussion

Can we centralise all discussion here? It would be far better I think, as WP:AN is way too bloated, and it concerns entire IP ranges. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It would be better to move everything here. Mushroom 09:19, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

(I have been looking for a place to add my two cents,but am not sure where is the correct place, or the correct avenue. So, if this is not it... Sorry.) Why doesn't someone just Post at the beginning of the pages where the violations happen the exact violation and who did it; wouldn't that effectively reverse the effect of the violation? If they make an untrue statement, or edit, and it is told to the world; e.g. "bill bob (R/D)(or I.P) edited this page to make the featured congressmen or senator look better, or worse than, they are in the following way" :Violation, Violation, violation. It would be an interesting to see the violations have the opposite of intended outcome.

-Christian

[edit] Moved from WP:AN

[edit] Congressional Staffer Edits / 143.231.249.141

This IP 143.231.249.141 (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) has been featured on news reports recently.(13 articles and counting). Looking back at the edits they :

  • Added Libelious statements
  • Removed content with malice
  • Added childish insults
  • Violated Wikipedia Policy

[edit] Potential staffers involved:

  • Emily Lawrimore, Communications Director, Congressman Joe Wilson, emily dot lawrimore at mail.house.gov
as represented by her [entry] requesting someone "update his bio with information from the following official bio too?" and then blanking her own request.
Important note from Jimbo: this was an 'excellent' edit to a Talk page, after this staffer emailed me to ask about the appropriate way to request an update to Wikipedia. I suggested that she post information to the talk page, and she did so. After she did so, she blanked herself and emailed me again, essentially not REALLY sure this was ok. Her actions were 100% perfect in every respect, treating us appropriately. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jimbo Wales (talk • contribs).
Exactly. This is the model way all other's should have been done. Don't include this one on a list acting as if she erred. - Taxman Talk 15:48, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
In fact, this is a very important distinction to make, because it provides the WP community with the opportunity to use the proverbial carrot in addition to the ban stick that's being swung so widely. --Dachannien 22:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Someone who has spoken to [Phil Crane]
as represented in the [entry] saying "I spoke with Mr. Crane last week and he was never a staff member to then former VP Richard Nixon."
  • Chris Taylor, (someone proclaims) American political star, Assistant Press Secretary to the Speaker of the House
as represted in this [entry]
  • "Noah" staff member to Jim Ramstad (who someone believes is "the best ever")
as represted in this [entry]
  • Philip Schmidt (communications director for Congressman Jose E. Serrano)
as represted in this [entry], someone believes he is "He's one hell of a model American."
  • Laurent Crenshaw, Former Deputy Press Secretary to the House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, and Legislative Assistant to Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-49).
as represented in this [entry], someone added him to the list of Famous alumni of Stanford University.
  • Nick Culp, staff assistant to Fred Upton
as represented in this [entry], with someone saying he "is the best looking employee in all of Congress."

Be careful in not crossing the line where editors of wikipedia accuse real people of things they have not done. Anthere 18:47, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Actually if people want to engage in this kind of campaigning I'd just as soon they did not use Wikipedia facilities. If they make false claims based on conjecture then this would place the Foundation in a difficult legal position, and those in the public eye who were falsely accused might well feel forced to sue to clear their name. While we don't want Wikipedia to be abused in any way, I certainly don't want this to backfire on Wikipedia through careless handling. . --Tony Sidaway|Talk 04:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I think the only claims that are being made here are that these names have been entered by the IP address in question. I don't think they are accused of anything other than "being involved," and given my previous statement I would say it is fairl factual they are involved. -- 68.50.103.212 05:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Partial list of bad faith edits

(more complete list at the talk page)

This IP needs and indefinite block for theese reasons

  • To show (to the media) we do not accept this
  • As punishment To prevent further abuse. Change of heart, see below. Cheers, —This user has left wikipedia 15:03 2006-01-29

[edit] Comments

Blocks are preventive, not punitive. --cesarb 15:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I would have thought libelous statements would be enough, not blocking them would be a stain for Wikipedia's credibility, especially in the media. I crossed out the punishment anyway. —This user has left wikipedia 16:02 2006-01-29
As you can probably see, the IP has been blocked for a week. I hope no administrator will unblock it. Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:04, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Based on the seriousness of the vandalism, I think a week is too short. If the vandalism reoccurs, I think it should be blocked for a month. If that doesn't work, an indefinite ban should be considered. -- Kjkolb 16:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I think a sockpupet check is needed to review further edits from this group, (from registered users). See: request here —This user has left wikipedia 16:42 2006-01-29
An indefinte block would be far too much, given the paucity of previous blocks. A more appropriate response would be to contact the IP's contact [1] and request that something be done at that end. Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:45, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Having reviewed all the (registered) users coming from that place, they all seem to be good faith editors. Following the media blitz and the increased awareness of this IP I highly doubt we will be seeing things like this again. Thus I no longer support an indefinite ban, the one week ban currently in place should be just fine. —This user has left wikipedia 19:38 2006-01-29


Something weird is going on here. Marty Meehan is a Democrat, yet the majority of the alleged bad faith edits above favor Republicans. That makes absolutely no sense, unless a hell of a lot more Congressional staff members are messing around with Wikipedia than we think. Is 143.231.249.141 a static IP covering half the computers at house.gov or something? --Aaron 16:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
The range is 143.231.0.0/16 which is assigned to the House of Representatives. Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
A wise move would be not to consider party affiliation at all, as that could backfire. Lets' instead focus of cleaning up the articles what what has been potentially been deleted/modified/vandalized. Achille 17:07, 29 January 2006
I'm not attempting to make this a partisan matter; I'm pointing out that I think this is potentially a far wider-ranging scandal than is currently thought. Right now, one little-known Massachusetts congressman has been outed by his local paper for bad faith edits. It looks like there could be several more - maybe dozens more - staffers involved who work for a number of much more famous members of the House. If true, the amount of media attention on Wikipedia could potentially go through the roof, with the results ending up making the Seiganthaler mess look like a walk in the park. --Aaron 17:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
A user has just heard this story on TV in Massachusetts. This is a big thing. Mushroom 17:21, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

It might be useful if someone with SQL access to the database could generate a list of all non-empty contributions histories from 143.231 accounts; there's potentially 65,535 other IPs that might have been engaging in this. Hopefully there weren't many IPs from the range doing this, but this is indeed potentially troublesome. Antandrus (talk) 17:23, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest a similar check be run on 156.33.*; if House staffers are doing something, there's a good chance they've told some of their Senate buddies to try out the same thing. (Perhaps only a 156.33.195.* check would be needed on the Senate side; I'm not that great at deciphering IP allocations.) Also, 143.231.* is used by the House as well, though I'm not sure in what capacity. --Aaron 17:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Just for the record, I was privately given the list of registered users (that will not be released) from that IP. No vandalism from registered all those users, I reviewed all 16 of them:
  • 8 are good faith editors
  • 6 have no edits
  • 2 make political edits but still good faith editors / no vandalism
That's a relief =D —This user has left wikipedia 19:22 2006-01-29
I've searched the last 500 edits made to articles on the US Senators from Alaska through Georgia for edits from any 156.33.* or 143.231.* users. There were only a handful, and the addresses used did not have extensive edit histories (typically 3 or 4 edits, and without any too overt POV slant). I suspect this means "Wikipedia spinning" is not rampant among Senate staffers. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Good idea... here's some semi-notable Senate IP's
  • The 156.33.15.27 Biden edits seem particularly egregious. Perhaps that IP should be blocked? I'm going to try to revert what that IP did to that page, but since it was over six months ago, a lot of the text has changed; I'll have to pick through it. --Aaron 21:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm running a script to fetch the last 500 edits from the rest. Should be done fairly soon. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:03, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

The following 156.33 or 143.231 users have edited Senator articles. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

This is the first attempt at a powerful outside group using Wikipedia for POV-pushing. This will not be the last. We need to take this very seriously and apply prejudice to future edits from US Congress IPs. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 21:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

It isn't the first. This was tried in germany a while back. It would probably be mildy interesting to see what a tralw of other goverment's IPs turned up.Geni 21:43, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
We've long been aware of edits coming from the Canadian House of Commons. Overall their edits were not much worse than any random group of anons. - SimonP 02:04, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

To centralise discussion, I've filed an RFC at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/United States Congress. Please comment there. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 08:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This may be illegal activity. It is against federal campaign laws to use use government resources to promote political candidates. This could be a huge can of worms if Congress gets wind of this and takes it serously.

Ok, so lets hand it over to the Federal Election Commission and the Office of Personnel Management when all the research is done and lets see what happens.--Silverhand 22:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits coming from the senate

Great job!, here's a compiled list of the most significant edits to Senator Pages (from Senate IP's):
Nice work. Thankfully there seem to be a number of edits from both sides of the aisle, so at least we should be able to keep this from becoming a partisan issue if anyone on the outside starts to notice. --Aaron 21:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm doing the US Representatives now - stay tuned. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:51, 29 January 2006 (UTC) ... Here's the equivalent list from edits to articles about any member of the House. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

  • My review of all Senate edits is now complete and available below. Hope it helps. --Aaron 02:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reviewing the US Senate edits

Eelow is my review of the edit histories of all United States Senate IP addresses uncovered by Rick Block's research above. I've labeled each as legit user, bad faith editor or vandal. The first number is the number of total edits by that IP, followed by the number of edits specific to Senate- (USS) or House-related articles (USH), if any (or other political articles). --Aaron 02:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

(Thanks to Ec5618 for fmt fix on the table.) --Aaron 23:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

  • 143.231.249.141 (talk • contribs) - Already blocked. The infamous Meehan IP.
  • 156.33.5.19 (talk • contribs) - Vandal. 2 eds; 2 USN (nasty vandal attack on Coburn).
  • 156.33.23.46 (talk • contribs) - Legit, sort of. 4 eds; 4 USS (3 legit but pro POV edits to Craig, possibly WP:AUTO violations, 1 legit edit to Congressional Subway.)
  • 156.33.24.195 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 3 eds; 1 USS (minor edit to Crapo).
  • 156.33.27.18 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 1 ed; 1 USS (minor correction to Evan Bayh.)
  • 156.33.30.25 (talk • contribs) - Tester. 2 eds; 2 USS (quickly added and reverted a bit of nonsense on Harkin way back in Nov 2004. Our first scout?)
  • 156.33.30.37 (talk • contribs) - Bad Faith. 3 eds; 3 USS (2 blankings of embarrassing paragraphs on Harkin, 1 technically legit but unnecessary edit of Grassley in order to call him a "lifelong politician." [4]
  • 156.33.43.214 (talk • contribs) - Vandal. 2 ed, 1 USS (blanking and vandalism of Byrd), 1 vandalism of George W. Bush.
  • 156.33.43.22 (talk • contribs) - Vandal. 2 ed, 2 USS (major vandalism and rv war on Byrd). Appears to have been working in direct tandem with *.43.214 above.
  • 156.33.46.154 (talk • contribs) - Bad Faith. 2 eds; 2 USN (major pro POV rewrite of Coleman, all of which was rv by TheKMantalk. This took place just two days ago; perhaps the user heard about us via the Meehan story?)
  • 156.33.52.40 (talk • contribs) - Bad Faith. 1 ed; 1 USS (blanked negative section on Burns, replaced it with empty pro-Burns PR pablum.)
  • 156.33.56.17 (talk • contribs) - Bad Faith. 1 ed; 1 USS (added anti-Bush POV to single sentence in Reid, created unusually poor stub for Richard Ziser, who was Reid's opponent in 2004.)
  • 156.33.56.67 (talk • contribs) - Bad faith. 3 ed; 3 USN (extremely pro POV adds and rv war on Reid). Appears to have been acting in concert with *.56.17 above; the two IP's edits of Reid all took place within 24 hours of each other.)
  • 156.33.59.155 (talk • contribs) - Legit, sort of. 1 ed; 1 USN (added pro but factual (I think) graf to Lautenberg). Goes against WP:AUTO, I think, but otherwise okay.
  • 156.33.74.18 (talk • contribs) - Bad Faith. 4 eds; 2 USS (legit edits on Wyden), 1 extreme POV rewrite to Rambus (see diff), 1 POV edit to Liliane Bettencourt.
  • 156.33.76.34 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 1 ed; 1 USS (added comma to Dorgan).
  • 156.33.91.136 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 1 ed; 1 USS (minor edit on Allen).
  • 156.33.96.28 (talk • contribs) - Bad faith. 49 eds; 14 USS (major in progress edit war on Rockefeller, blanking negative material, has lasted off and on for over a month, IP has received only one warning on talk page thus far.)
  • 156.33.129.73 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 1 ed; 1 USS (Conrad pro/neutral minor edit.)
  • 156.33.130.84 (talk • contribs) - Tester. 4 ed; 2 USS (Landrieu pro POV edit and rv), 2 USH (Melancon anti POV edit and rv).
  • 156.33.140.21 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 3 ed; 2 USS (1 Coleman, 1 George Galloway.)
  • 156.33.141.169 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 1 ed; 1 USS (minor edit of Allen).
  • 156.33.148.107 (talk • contribs) - Possible minor bad faith, otherwise legit. 28 eds; 3 USS (legit minor edits on Snowe. 1 questionable edit of College Republicans (see diff at [5].) Turned William Swain Lee from stub into legit full article.
  • 156.33.165.75 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 1 ed; 1 USS (minor edit to Smith).
  • 156.33.168.72 (talk • contribs) - Legit. 1 ed; 1 USS (minor edit to Domenici).

Status: Complete. I hope this turns out to be of use to someone. --Aaron 02:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Interesting. There are also a few that fit into the "Test" (minor and self reverted) and POV pushing. Are those covered by "Vandal"? — TheKMantalk 23:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Not as of yet. The ones I've labeled "Vandal" thus far were incredibly blatant: page blanking, insertion of profanities, etc. I'll use some other term for 'testers'. --Aaron 23:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

How stable are any of these IPs anyway? I mean, we don't exactly want to block everybody who works in the House or Senate offices just on account of their employment. Quite a few of these would be skilled writers and researchers who, if they're willing to abide by our policies, could be very useful contributors. --Michael Snow 04:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we necessarily have to block any of them. Warn the vandals and POV pushers, thank and welcome the good faith contributors. — TheKMantalk 05:06, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
What about 143.231.249.141? -- Pakaran 05:11, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I was mainly referring to the Senate IP range, that one from the House is something else, and a temporary block was in order. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure of how static these IPs are within the Senate, since there are similar edits on two different IPs (though, it is possible they were from two different computers).[6] [7] — TheKMantalk 05:53, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Those are the same /26, could also plausibly be two employees sitting near each other and on the same subnet. -- Pakaran 06:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
From the evidence compiled in the earlier section, it's clear that this House IP has been assigned at various times to different people who work for different Representatives. Some of these people are clearly acting in good faith and trying to respect our policies - Jimbo even personally noted that one of them took an "excellent" approach in requesting changes to an article on the talk page. I've gone ahead and unblocked that one again too. Really, I think we should stay away from blocks here and just monitor contributions as necessary. Congressional staffers are busy people, it's not like they can afford to spend all day vandalizing Wikipedia. --Michael Snow 06:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it the IP addresses are static. There might be some public computers for use by anybody in the Senatorial House, ie. perhaps in a lobby or lounge, or Wireless LAN or something, and some directly route to politicians' offices. Except some of the static IP's of course, get used by everybody. This would explain why some IP's seem to have more contributions than others. The infamous Meehan IP might be the one in a lounge or something. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

'

[edit] moved from ani

Wikinews has news related to:

I think a 1 week ban previously put should be reinstated. Since the beginning I actively requested (ON IRC) to have the Congressional IP banned just to create positive media attention. And it worked! Stories on slashdot, digg, metafilter, and even published stories, also here are reporting that congress has been blocked. The message brought out was is that vandalism on Wikipedia will get you banned. Currently, those reports are not true since the block has been lifted. I am not advocating a punitive block, we block as a preventative measure and it should be taken note by the media. This block is important to prevent headlines such as Wikipedia: It's free, but it's also fallible. The positive name of Wikipedia in the media is more important than congressional staffers edits. I urge an admin to block IP so they complete their one week term. —This user has left wikipedia 02:41 2006-01-31

  • Many editors are now watching this IP, so there is no need to block it from editing. It will be interesting to see if there is a reply to the RfC. --JWSchmidt 03:40, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I do not believe you understood my reasoning at why they should be blocked. Nothing to do with future vandalism, but for the public perception and trust of Wikipedia. —This user has left wikipedia 03:47 2006-01-31
      • Blocks are preventive, not punitive. --cesarb 03:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Fully agreed and endorsed I am not advocating punitive blocks. —This user has left wikipedia 04:42 2006-01-31
          • No, but you're advocating blocking people just to make a point. --Michael Snow 06:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
            • Thats a non-official, non-authoritative policy —This user has left wikipedia 07:10 2006-01-31
              • But the consensus appears to be that 143.231.249.141 is a proxy or similar aggregation point, which makes your proposal equivalent to a range block, and there is an official and authoritative policy for that. Unless there has been recent activity from the IP, the action is essentially punitive. Also, the RFC proposes the blocking of 3 Class B address ranges for substantial periods of time, which would clearly require a change in policy. DrWitty 11:11, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • That's an interesting case. It's somewhat like asking whether the ends justify the means, or whether a few innocents can be sacrificed to the benefit of many, because indeed, blocking the IP for a week would be rather symbolic; but it has its ethical repercussions (as well as the fact that there are some legit contributions coming in, but they are relatively minor). Of course, all of this depends on something the press has already overexaggerated. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 07:32, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Senator vandals! OMG! Where is my syonide capsule? So any vandals from the house of represenatives? --Cool CatTalk|@ 16:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
      • The most infamous vandal is from the House of Representatives. Look at the RFC and you'll see that's how it started. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 22:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved from User talk:143.231.249.141

[edit] Congressional edits?

The Lowell Sun is running an article saying the Marty Meehan entry was edited by this IP address from the US House of Representatives. The edit in questions is, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marty_Meehan&diff=prev&oldid=32874128 . This is one of many edits relating to political officials and topics. These edits range from benificial and informative to libelous and childish. I would seriously recommend admins reviewing the entries of known political IP Adresses. 68.50.103.212 12:41, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Such people possibly using this IP Address are:

  • Emily Lawrimore Communications Director Congressman Joe Wilson emily.lawrimore@mail.house.gov
as represented by her [entry] Creating a Talk Page for her boss and requesting someone "update his bio with information from the following official bio too?"
Important note from Jimbo: this was an 'excellent' edit to a Talk page, after this staffer emailed me to ask about the appropriate way to request an update to Wikipedia. I suggested that she post information to the talk page, and she did so. After she did so, she blanked herself and emailed me again, essentially not REALLY sure this was ok. Her actions were 100% perfect in every respect, treating us appropriately.Taken from the administrator noticeboard
  • Someone who has spoken to [Phil Crane]
as represented in the [entry] saying "I spoke with Mr. Crane last week and he was never a staff member to then former VP Richard Nixon."
  • Chris Taylor, (self proclaimed) American political star, Assistant Press Secretary to the Speaker of the House
as represted in this [entry]
  • "Noah" staff member to Jim Ramstad (who believes he is "the best ever")
as represted in this [entry]
  • Philip Schmidt (communications director for Congressman Jose E. Serrano)
as represted in this [entry], he believes he is "He's one hell of a model American."
  • Laurent Crenshaw, Former Deputy Press Secretary to the House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, and Legislative Assistant to Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-49).
as represted in this [entry], he added himself to the list of Famous alumni of Stanford University.
  • Nick Culp, staff assistant to Fred Upton
as represted in this [entry], saying he "is the best looking employee in all of Congress."

Other politicians and political articles edited with this IP Address are:

[edit] Nice propaganda from the Politburo!

I think this malicious propagandist vandal shouldn't ever be allowed to edit again. An attempt to identify him or her by name, and figure out under what auspice he or she is working under would be rather instructive.

This is actually quite frightening and insidious. When employees of the government are inserting propaganda into the Wikipedia, during working hours (and presumably getting paid for this activity), we have to wonder what their goals are. Spoiling the Wikipedia?

Such malicious propaganda is apparently more widespread than many of use realize. Perhaps a block from all .gov domains for a month or two should be made, to allow people to clean up the mess these propagandist shills have made of the Wikipedia!\

Sukiari 02:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I doubt such action would have any effect, except to push Wikipedia policy to more aggressive measures. And for what? To "teach" people ethics? They know what they are doing. All we can do is pass the word and tell the story straight. Widespread banning is crude and ineffective. We can't make the world perfect, even a virtual world. All we can do is educate. It's always been an uphill battle, but at least on Wikipedia we can all pitch in. --Vector4F 02:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
It would make a statement, though, no? That Wikipedia is not a place of deceit, lies, and misinformation. I am all for permanent banning of this IP. -- KneeLess 03:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
The problem with your plan is that as far as I know, permablocking shared IPs is frowned upon as it also affects legitimate editors working from that IP. This has been a problem when dealing with vandalism from shared IPs for a long time (Several Telstra IPs shared by New South Wales Public Schools and AOL are some particularly notorious examples). Unless you're advocating a change in policy where we'd permablock shared and dynamic IPs due to vandalism from some if its users I really don't see the point in permablocking this particular one. Sure, vandalism is annoying to deal with, moreso when its from people who really should know better, but if they really want people to know how they're no better then some bored juvenile AOL kiddie then I say, let 'em. -Loren 05:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
It is my belief that our politicians start behaving themselves once they realize someone has an eye on them (in this case, Wikipedia, and more importantly, - the reporters). Let the 1-week block sink in, but a permanent block on this shared IP would be a mistake. — TheKMantalk 06:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
In the end, there may simply be an irreconciliable conflict between abusers and legitimate users using a shared IP. If there is enough concern at that IP over lack of access to Wikipedia and other resources that use IP addresses to establish trusted reputations, presumably there will be some effort made there to reduce abuse or to provide different externally-visible IP addresses for different users.--69.142.116.122 06:28, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that, perhaps, a long term block of an IP range that has shown consistently to be used by vandals and not utilized by legitimate contributors would be beneficial. If there are users in that block who wish to make good faith edits, then perhaps the block will encourage them to stop the vandals in their organization. Maybe a peer review system should be implemented, where edits by users from known vandal IP blocks have to pass some sort of consensus before they are put into the Wikipedia proper. I can see this sort of Orwellian activity forcing Wikipedia to change its policies more than all the goatsex and tubgirl vandalism combined. Sukiari 09:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that all the IP's are static, just that some are available for use by any representative, ie. a computer sitting out in a lobby, or a Wireless LAN kind of thing in the houses, as I have suggested above. We can thus trace stuff back to the individual computers. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
And permablocking shared IPs just because some vandals also happen to use it isn't Orwellian? -Loren 16:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I meant that static IP's would be easier to trace (or get a subpoena for?) hence we could trace them to individual offices. I just didn't want to rule that out. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 02:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I think in this case a judgement of the quality of edits coming from that IP address or range needs to be made. How many good edits, that are factual and not POV, have come from Congress? Any? People will certainly be free to go to the library or any other place which has an internet connection and edit all they like, but the mere fact that all the edits by this IP appear to be outright propaganda and childish vandalism leads me to believe that we won't be cutting off any legitimate voices. If there is no ban instated, and the congresscritters see that they can edit the Wikipedia as much as they like, I can see each one having a dozen or two College Republicrat volunteers work full time inserting their propaganda, blackening their opponents articles, and generally turning this place into a war zone. Can we compete with that sort of manpower only to have an article remain neutral for 15 minutes a day? Should we have to? What the heck does the Congressional internal network need to edit the Wikipedia for anyway? Sukiari 00:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
The fact of the matter is that we block individual users, not groups. As such we may keep an eye on contributions from suspect IPs such as those from schools or certain ISPs, but we do not perminantly block them en masse, even if most of their contributions are vandalism. By you reasoning anyone using AOL to edit Wikipedia is (if you'll pardon my language), shit out of luck considering how much junk we get from there daily. Short term blocks on the order of an hour I can accept to stop vandalism in progress. However punitive permanent blocks on a shared IP where we know there are legitimate users, like what is being proposed just smack of being vindicitive retribution. The mentality displayed is like that one would expect at a witch hunt in the Middle Ages, or a lynching, or if I may, "kill them all since they all look like terrorists anyhow". Nor will blocking a shared IP stop organized POV pushing as you state. Neglecting the fact that the vandalism has been pretty bipartisan, if they can't edit from the House, your "College Republicrat volunteers" will just walk down to the nearest Starbucks and edit from there. Sure, a complete block of Congressional IPs might make you feel better for all of 5 minutes, but in the end it will do nothing to stop organized vandalism, and will hurt Wikipedia more then any vandals. No one is advocating giving vandals free reign, however our response must be based upon reason, rather then just lashing out unproductively. -Loren 07:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How many times can a user be blocked?

Why bother even unblocking such an obvious waste of wikipedia resources? --Frantik 23:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

We expected our representatives to contribute something useful... :) Ashibaka tock 00:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Let me quote a slashdot user on this: Coming up after the break, we'll have the weather, and Tom will present his special report, "Are All Politicians Scumbags?" The answer may surprise you.[8] —This user has left wikipedia 01:27 2006-01-30

[edit] RfC discussion

[edit] Mailing list notified

See [9] and [10]. Johnleemk | Talk 11:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Full list of Congressional IP editors on Wikipedia

I am currently compiling a complete examination of all edits from the 156.33.0.0./16 range, which is controlled by the United States Senate Sergeant at Arms. From what I have seen so far, many of the edits appear to be by Senate pages and interns that are still in college or transferred to the page program from high school. There are other suspicious edits that seem to focus on removing unflattering information, adding libel, and POV pushing articles related to US policy. There are plenty of good faith, test, vanity, POV pushing, and bad faith edits that originate from this range. Results will be posted when complete. — TheKMantalk 13:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused. How is this different from the review I did above? --Aaron 19:18, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
This will include all IPs in this range, and some additional statistics. The above list is missing IP addresses. — TheKMantalk 19:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I have the complete list of Senate edits here (175 IP addresses), plus the House IP, CIA IPs, and Department of Justice IPs,. Summaries are pending, there is some overlap with the list above, so help merge if possible. — TheKMantalk 22:21, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Removing my little work, I will instead direct readers to see: WP:AN#Edits_coming_from_the_senate, etc. 「ѕʀʟ·✎」 09:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Note, material has been moved here. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 09:40, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Permanent bans aren't a good idea

Eloquence recently gave very powerful arguments against permenent user ban on wikinews, based mostly upon the very negative experences of the German wikipedia [11]. His reasoning is more correct when the "person" involved is a well financed political campaign. A better suggestion is to watch all edits from any government or advertising agency IP ranges. This could efficiently be accomplished by enhancing the watchlists functionality of MediaWiki:

  1. Allow users to watch edits by other users and IP ranges, as opposed to just pages.
  2. Allow users to create, edit, & share lists of pages, users, & IP ranges which could be included in anyone's watchlist.
  3. Create a featured list functionality where users vote to feature some such lists, and all anonymous edits from featured lists are identified by list membership.

We'd almost immediately have accurate & maintained lists of government, millitary, advertising, corporate, etc. IP address ranges. Anyone who wanted could watch the edits by such lists whenever they felt like it.

We might need to restrict some such functionality to admins (or check users), but it should mostly be avialble for all. Logs should be kept of all non-list based IP watches, especially below 256 addresses. Such logs should be available to admins & check users, allowing them to prevent users from narrowing down registered users IP addresses.

For example, if "U.S. congress" is deemed accurate & interesting enough to become a featured list, then anyone sees "U.S. Congress" appear next to any anonymous edit from the ranges & users in that list. Check users might also see this for registered users not in the list, but using such an IP.

It'd be a bit of code, but it'd solve the problem, wiki-style. JeffBurdges 14:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, it'd be best if the lists of IP ranges could be hosted on commons or meta, and didn't need to be updated on all wikis seperately, although this is problematic WRT watching lists of registered users. One could also imagine some very complex functionality where you only watch edits of some page lists by some users, but this is unnecissarily complex at present. JeffBurdges 14:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I immediately thought this upon seeing that the IP is blocked. 95% of Congressmen don't know the first thing about Internet technology, but they'll catch on that we can block certain locations when their aides find themselves blocked, and just tell them to edit from home. What we need is a "high-risk" category of some kind, whose IPs are assigned to agencies that would have ulterior motives for editing substantial parts of Wikipedia—basically, any IP block used by businesses or similar entities rather than average people. The biggest ranges would be government IPs, of course, probably with a few corporations large enough to get their own range from an RIR. This list will then be composed solely of people editing from work, who would be much more likely to make intentionally POV edits.

It's important, however, that this stay quiet. Adding labels to IPs would be a no-no, because then people would catch on. For an ideal automation level, the "edit patrol" feature could be turned on for these address blocks alone, with any registered user (whose IP isn't itself on the list) able to patrol an edit. This shouldn't be too time-consuming to add to the software, it will just require a smallish tweak to the edit-patrol code.

As for maintaining the list, it might be most sensible to maintain it at Meta as admin-editable,(like the anti-spam list, no?). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, okay, you might be right, that it shouldn't be advertised. But I think "high risk" is too subjective. Let average users maintain lists for all sorts of things. JeffBurdges 09:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal

This is another good example of where the proposal needs to be implemented in code. Some IP's really should be able to be blocked for a while but still allow logged in edits. Patches have been submitted, but nothing is happening. - Taxman Talk 16:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

If you used the "featured watchlist" procedure I describe above, you'd just see AOL next to all anonymous users posting from AOL accounts. Any editor would be free to access the probability of vandalism themselves. JeffBurdges 16:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
See resolution for bug 550. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 06:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 156.33.96.28

Wikipedia servers are amazingly slow at the moment for me, so all I can try to do is alert you to the posts made by this particular IP on my talk page. I was going to take a proper look at his/her contributions but afraid I can't with WP servers the way they are at the moment (takes like 10 min to load a page). Petros471 19:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC) PS. Hope this posts ok, and apologies if this is a double posting, feel free to remove all except the oldest. Thanks.

[edit] parliament.uk IPs

I did a little googling, and ran across this, which tells me that parliament.uk web access often comes through 194.60.38.10 (talk • contribs). This does indeed resolve to in.parliament.uk, and whilst the edits there seem mostly okay (one adulatory nn-bio about a SU president, which probably is worth deleting, and a minor bit of test vandalism, but otherwise good)... it might be worth keeping an eye on this one, and looking at other IP addresses in the range mentioned. Shimgray | talk | 19:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Tsk... What are those MPs doing? Vandalising Wikipedia instead of serving the people!? :P -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 05:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Just a thought on double standards

Just a few quick thoughts for everyone advocating a complete block on U.S. Congressional IPs.

  1. Contributions from Congressional shared IPs include both good faith edits and vandalism. We're dealing with many editors from this one IP, both good ones and malicious ones.
  2. This isn't the first time we've faced vandalism from shared IPs. Anyone who's worked on the RC Patrol has encountered vandals coming from behind proxies and shared IPs such as AOL and Telstra just to name a few. Probably more often then vandals from Congressional IPs.
  3. The general policy when dealing with vandals behind shared IPs is to monitor them and revert any malicious edits they may make. Blocks are limited to short ones of 2 hours or less for only the worst offenders (I'm talking about the ones who vandalise pages every minute or so), in order to minimize collateral damage on good faith editors also using that IP.
  4. Why should this case be any different? If the WHOIS on this IP returned AOL, Telstra, or some other ISP instead of U.S. House of Representitives, would you be clamoring for a permablock, knowing full well that under the current system you would end up taking out good faith editors as well? As a matter of fact, would we even be having this RfC if this wasn't a high profile IP? There are probably at least two dozen other shared IPs that vandalise just as much, if not more. Why the double standard?

Doing a permablock on a shared IP because of a few bad apples is akin to carpet bombing a city block because you think there are a few criminals hiding amongst the general populance there. It's complete overkill and in the end, won't do a thing. I'm certainly not advocating that we ignore vandalism, on the contrary I'd support careful monitoring of edits from this IP, however I think a permanent range block will hurts us more then any vandals. I'd urge everyone to read the official policy on vandalism at Wikipedia:Vandalism and blocking policy at Wikipedia:Blocking policy before votingendorsing. Is the goal of creating a free and open encyclopedia really served by permablocking these IPs? And are you basing your decision on logic or emotion? -Loren 23:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • "voting"? This is an RFC, not a poll. Endorsements are just that: signing one's name against a view by someone else that one agrees with. (Please note that it is thus completely superfluous to add "Endorse" to one's signature, as so many editors are doing here.) Uncle G 16:35, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other institutions

Another example of this kind of activity can be found at the Alan Dershowitz article (see Talk:Alan Dershowitz) which Mr Dershowitz and his assistants have used Harvard computers to blank and vandalize his biography and make uber-flattering edits. Dershowitz, the most famous lawyer in the US, vandalizing his own article - pretty incredible. Example edits - "an international treasure" and blanking. Unlike Congress, he seems to have got away with it. What other institutions need looking at? All government institutions for a start, followed by major corporations, and lobbying organisations. - Xed 22:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anonymous -- credibility ratings

Has anyone considered applying a credibility rating to a page that is based on the number, frequency, and size of overwrites? The greater the amount of contention over content then the lower the credibility. Over time, the content should settle out to something that's acceptable by a larger audience. Such a rating system might even be objective and possible to automate given existing metrics.

It's been suggested and the current verion of the wikimedia softwear has a rateing system in it. Currently trying to come up with a version that wont kill the servers.Geni 03:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User Ratings?

Further to this, should a 'user rating', similar to the way it is done in eBay, be implemented? Users whose edits are subsequently approved or left unchanged by other users get their rating hiked up. Only users that have achieved a certain rating should be allowed to edit content that is in further stages of development. For new users - they can either be given a high rating to start with (allowing them to edit content), and then this rating can be lowered if bad content is submitted, or alternatively - users that are just starting up can get their ratings increased by adding content to stubs, and newer articles.

belive me every form of rateing system know to man has been suggested at some point.Geni 03:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
a rating system fundamentally assumes that the average opinion of wikipedians over a user or IP ranges reliability actually measures something. Take a look at my proposal above: expand watchlist to include IP ranges & users, or shared lists of such. Anyone would be able to watch the whole U.S. congress if they liked, and no one would know who was watching who. JeffBurdges 14:32, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
This system makes Wikipedia look like a popularity contest. No. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 16:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quick procedural poll

Here's a quick question: Does DrWitty's expressed view on this qualify more as a Response or as an Outside View? (Keep in mind that we may want to keep the "Response" section open for someone from Congress to use.) — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quick, informal, not-necessarily-binding poll

[edit] Response

  1. Voting for your own view is rather poor form. I doubt that anyone but the two of us are going to contribute to this pointless exercise. DrWitty 01:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outside View

  1. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 01:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unwilling to contribute to this pointless exercise

  1. Ashibaka tock 04:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is this page serious?

I think Wikipedia should not make a fool of itself - by creating pages like this. Parody does not fit in an Encyclopedia.

This concerns government employees using government facilities to interfere with and subvert the operations of a volunteer organization for political purposes. If Congressional staffers got in the way of the Red Cross there'd be an uproar. Why is it different when we're trying to educate the world? — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I see edits from that blocked IP to articles about Rambus and alkaline earth metals (if I recall correctly)...
Wikipedia may seem foolish, but I don't think this violates RFC policy. Nonetheless - the fact that this has garnered national attention (and statements from Congress) makes it, in no way, close to "foolish". Dtrinh 02:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion moved from the main RfC page

From a news story that come out 2 hours ago:

...Jon Brandt, a spokesman for the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the House computer network, confirmed House ownership of the address.
For security reasons, he declined to say to whom the address is assigned, whether it's a central launching point for all 10,000 House employees...

Blocking them would be akin to blocking all AOL users for the behaviour of just a few bad apples. —This user has left wikipedia 18:20 2006-01-30

I think a fundamental difference here is that an AOL account may be an individual's only connection to the internet, whereas everyone who works from those IP addresses is (demographically speaking) almost certain to have a home connection as well. None of these individuals are being silenced (they can easily contribute from home), just an organization that appears incapable of policing itself. Stephen Aquila 23:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
we've blocked the whole of AOL a few times.Geni 01:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to block anon editing from those IPs, yet allow logged in use? After all, people are generally more fearful of attempting to add bad faith commentary into public discourse when they know that their names are attached. Furthermore, such an ability would allow for more lattitude in determining who these vandals are and dealing with them appropriately. --Thephotoman 22:08, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This has been proposed many many times.Geni 01:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Checkuser on the IP

Just wanted to add this, taken from Requests for Checkuser:

Checkuser shows about a dozen users coming in on this ip. Most are not political edits. Fred Bauder 18:43, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Just for the record, I was wrong, no vandalism from registered all those users, I reviewed all 16 of them:
  • 8 are good faith editors
  • 6 have no edits
  • 2 show interest in politics but still good faith editors
That's a relief =D —This user has left wikipedia 19:22 2006-01-29

Again, I'd like to endorse the 1 week ban currently in place and nothing more. —This user has left wikipedia 03:27 2006-01-31

[edit] Look but don't touch

I think Wikipedia stands far more to gain from silently watching what the congressional staffers do, than noisily insist that they stop doing it. We're not going to stop politicians doing anything, no matter how much we try and delude ourselves. The best we can hope is that they keep doing it from behind the same IP so we can quickly detect and fix it. Otherwise, they will quickly go underground, and keep making exactly the same sorts of repugnant changes, but will be much harder for us to catch. Stevage 22:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This is the most sane argument yet. If we block them, we're only serving to get rid of our best asset against them. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 23:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Not to mention that wholesale blocks defeat the purpose of creating a free and open encyclopedia. -Loren 23:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Agreed -Frogan 00:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Disagree. As election time comes nearer, more and more people will be relying upon the Wikipedia to get their information regarding various candidates. If we allow them to insert frosting and powdered sugar, without any show of force, surely they will simply hire some low wage flacks to sit around and have revert and edit wars continually - perhaps several flacks per article. Can we compete with them, from a manpower perspective? It will be clear when they hire and utilize outside propagandists to whitewash their sometimes sordid pasts. We can deal with those IP addresses the same way will hopefully deal with the ones responsible for this latest fiasco - with a long term ban. Identifying the responsible parties and exposing their activities will hopefully give PR companies and the congresscritters that hire them a black enough eye that they'll be afraid to do it again. Sukiari 00:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
And what will stop a determined vandal from simply using an anonomizer to disguse their IP (like some already do)? What we are dealing with here is a combination of good faith and malicious edits from many different users. Aside from being unfair to the good faith editors, all a permablock will do is provide a false sense of security. Committed vandals and POV pushers will still find a way around it, and all the block will have succeeded in doing is driving away good faith editors. It is a far better idea to keep a close eye on potential target articles and iffy IPs. When there's a high crime neighborhood you'd hope the cops would increase patrols there, not blow the whole place up. -Loren 00:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
You aren't seeing the point that Stevage was making. There are literally thousands upon thousands of other IPs that the government turds could be using to make these comments. If we ban them permanently, they will go to those others IPs, making it near impossible to keep an eye on them. If we allow them to continue as they are but instead, say, flag changes made by known U.S. government IPs, then we have an easy tool to keep an eye on them. One would not be able to keep up with perma banning each IP as it comes up, and some of them may be dynamic IPs that could potentially be used by other people. You may as well advocate removing anonymous edits altogether. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 01:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  1. Endorse.THANK YOU I got rid of my Wikpedia link cause of this nonsense from gov't. Do not allow any gov't ip to enter...period (UTC)
Agree. There is already a policy for locking pages that are being vandalized/reverted repeatedly. That solves the vandalism problem from every IP, which keeps them from using their home dial-up or broadband link. Except the tinfoil hat scenario of the admin corps being infiltrated by evil PR/POV minions who unlock disputed pages for their own benefit. Being the technical type, I see this whole dispute as evidence that better tools are needed to vet changes by unregistered and new/abusive users before they go live to larger audience. Locking pages against repeat vandalism in the election cycle should allow good protection for people relying on Wikipedia for their information who are too lazy to check the cited sources (if any). - wac(talk contrib) 01:08, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Endorse Semi-protect the pages in question as per requests for page protection. Vandalism. --DolphinCompSci 01:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  1. Endorse As the lobbyists like to say when they don't like a new regulation, "We could solve this problem if we just enforced the rules already on the boos." Locking pages is the best solution, based on the KISS principle (aka Wikipedia:Occam's_Razor. Sure, if abuse got prevalent enough, a trust rating system, one that might, say, require newbies to win trust points before getting edit privileges, might be in order. But that would be a damn shame, and damned complicated. Locked pages can still be Talked about, after all, and active page contributors located in the History and contacted with suggested additions or corrections if the page is unavailable for edit.--24.46.99.28 03:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

  • Back during the December 2005 mayorial election, Bloomberg's staffers did the same thing, no one seemed to care, nor did anyone even suggest that it was inappropriate for them to do so--205.188.117.68 02:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Do you have proof of that? It was speculated on the talk page, but I don't recall seeing any evidence. --Michael Snow 02:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bmgoau's proposal

  1. Oppose This statement is in direct opposition to Wikipedia's mission -- 68.50.103.212 05:38, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I acknowlege your opposal, but wish to point out that restrictions on contraversial articles have already taken place for unregistered users on a number of articles (Hitler, etc.). Useing the same restriction on political catagory articles towards government IP's I believe creates a realistic and evenhanded response that continues to allow contributions, but protects content from off-handed vandalism. I would also like to state for the record that vandalism on behalf of these users is also against wikipedia's mission. Bmgoau 06:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Except +sprotect is temporary. That's the issue. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 06:11, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blind hypocrisy

Yet another example, here, and a public one, of how Wikipedia flaps its gums about blocking troublemakers but in the end does nothing about it. - User:Hephaestos

Before you start making accusations about hypocrisy, perhaps you should examine what we do when it comes to shared IPs (WP:AOL). Blocking legitimate editors because they happen to share their IP with vandals is frowned upon and avoided whenever possible. If we are directly contacted by a legitimate editor behind a blocked shared IP, standard procedure is to assume good faith. If anyone is being hypocritical here, it is the people clamoring to permanently ban this particular shared IP simply because of who owns it. -Loren 16:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's to prevent "Wikipedia Sanitation Services" from being a product for sale?

Any PR firm could include it in their list of services, I suppose; in which case the whole thing would be legal,I think, and this issue would be moot,perhaps. Neutralizer 23:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The hundreds of grunt work Wikipedians and their power to block IP and IP ranges. --Oldak Quill 01:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
A refined version of my proposal above has been posted here. It would simplify the grunt work enormously. JeffBurdges 16:12, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
We already fight off people like seos and such. Kim Bruning 17:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The established conduct methods have not been used

Both the Senate and the House have established ethics bodies which, so far as I can see, have not yet been used in an attempt to resolve this matter. Those bodies can also link IPs to offices and perhaps individuals as part of their investigations. Since we have not yet used the usual ethics process, I suggest that no long-lasting action is taken until the matter has been referred to the House ethics committee and Senate ethics committee so they can remind members and their staff about proper conduct. Jamesday 01:24, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Sounds like a plan! Kim Bruning 01:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment -- Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but only members of the respective body can refer matters to the ethics committees. --Dragon695 03:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment -- However, members do sometimes respond to constituent requests about things. One could certianly write or email one's congressman, expressing whatever view they felt was appropriate including requesting an investigation if warranted. For the record, I know my congressman does have someone read and respond to incoming email, since I have received responses in the past. Is there a cogent summary of the issue yet developed? I suspect that asking a staffer to slog through the whole RfC (to see what the issue is) might not result in the desired action. ++Lar: t/c 05:30, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
  • An excellent general principle is that in order for abuse to be controlled, there MUST be consequences for abuse. If Congress fails to control the abuse from its network ITSELF, wikipedia MUST defend itself by imposing consequences. Just reverting the abuse is IMO insufficient a consequence. I see several appropriate,moderate options: We could for a significant period (months) ban only anon edits from the range, and/or only political page edits, and/or mark/flag for review edits from such IPs; I endorse all such options. Elvey
  • Endorse. Everybody's trying to figure out how to keep the bad guys out on our end, when they can just be controlled by their peers, who actually have the authority to punish them. Great idea. --Rory096 19:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contact the network admin?

Has anyone actually taken the step of contacting the network admin very politely and see if there is anything they can do to help out? Perhaps the proxy could be bypassed for Wikipedia so we could block the vandals, not the whole proxy. - Taxman Talk 19:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not limited to Federal politicians

Now that the Meehan story is out, it's open season on Wikipedia. Witness, for example, the rewriting of Phil Bredesen's article. Sounds like a promotional brochure for someone trying to get re-elected to me. And of course the editor is an anonymous IP with no previous history. What can we do about this before it gets worse? Kaldari 18:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The best we can do is identify and revert as necessary. If abusive anonomous IPs point back to a government organization, it may be a good idea to post them on the Administrators' noticeboard for further examination, comment, and action. — TheKMantalk 18:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World Wild Web editorial in USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-02-07-wild-web_x.htm ... posted online on 7 Feb, the editorial deals with the congressional staffer editing we are talking about here. It also appears in the 8 Feb paper edition. ++Lar: t/c 16:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Investigative reporting

This situation may be self-correcting if journalists and opposing campaigns expose the biased edits. I suspect a few public scandals will temper this behavior. When these attempts backfire they highlight the politicians' mistakes rather than conceal them. They give the voting public fresh information about ethics and honesty.

While this issue is obviously more serious than vandalism from anonymous high school or university IP addresses, the free press addresses that difference much better than Wikipedia can. I suggest Wikipedia treat this type of user abuse exactly the same as it treats any other: without regard for the parties and politics involved.

The brilliant thing about Wikipedia's transparancy is that while anyone can edit, those edits leave an electronic trail that anyone else can follow. Durova 19:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Washington Post article on the debacle

Wikipedia's Help From the Hill: Edits Lead Site to Block Some Lawmakers' Offices --Aaron 21:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Filing a complaint with the appropriate agency

Seeing as the law was broken here by using government computers to promote candidates for office, any citizen can file a complaint with the appropriate agency (election oversight board?). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.94.206.171 (talk • contribs).

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