Wikipedia:Open proxies

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Exquisite-opera.png This page is an official policy on the Simple English Wikipedia.
Many people agree with it. They see it as a standard idea that all users should follow. When changing this page, please check that the other people agree with your changes. Use the talk page when you are not sure or when you want to suggest a change.
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This page provides information about the use of open proxies to read and change pages on the Simple English Wikipedia.

If you have received a message that you are blocked from editing as an open proxy, please see this help page.

Contents

[change] Policy

Open or anonymising proxies may be blocked from editing for any period at any time. While this may affect legitimate users, they are not the intended targets and may freely use proxies until those are blocked. No restrictions are placed on reading Wikipedia through an open or anonymous proxy.

Proxies are left open due to deliberate or inadvertent configuration or because crackers have changed the configuration. Non-static IP addresses or hosts that are otherwise not permanent proxies should typically be blocked for a shorter period of time, as it is likely the IP address will eventually be transferred or dynamically reassigned, or the open proxy closed. Once closed, the IP address should be unblocked.

See also: Wikipedia:Blocking IP addresses

[change] Explanation

Although Simple English Wikipedia encourages anyone in the world to contribute, open proxies are often used in a bad way. MediaWiki, the wiki software that powers Wikipedia, depends on IP addresses for administrator intervention against abuse, especially by anonymous users. Open proxies allow malicious users to rapidly change IP addresses, causing continuous disruption that cannot be stopped by administrators. Several such attacks have occurred on Wikimedia projects, causing disruption and occupying administrators who would otherwise deal with other concerns.

This policy is known to cause difficulty for some editors, who must use open proxies to circumvent censorship where they live; for example, citizens of the People's Republic of China, from which access to the Chinese language edition of Wikipedia is currently blocked by the government's Golden Shield Project.

[change] Checkuser

When a Checkuser detects that an account has been using open proxies, this information may be considered when evaluating suspicions of sock puppetry or other editing abuses. If there is an appearance that an account has been using open proxies to circumvent policy, the account may be blocked.

[change] See also

[change] External links

Retrieved from "http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Open_proxies"