User talk:82.148.97.69

Attention:

Iff you came here from a news headline saying that Wikipedia has banned all of Qatar, please pop right back over there and post in the comments that the story is not true. This IP number was temporarily blocked for less than 12 hours, and a block of an entire nation would go absolutely against Wikipedia policy. In the English Wikipedia, such an action would require approval of at a minimum the English Arbitration Committee and/or me personally, and would never ever be undertaken lightly, nor without extensive attempts at direct negotiation with the ISP and/or nation in question.

To any and all reporters, from Slashdot, TechCrunch, mainstream media, etc.: You may email me and ask me for my personal cellphone number, which I will answer 24 hours a day to confirm or disconfirm any such story of this type.

--Jimbo Wales 03:32, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Attention:

This IP address, 82.148.97.69, is one of the IP addresses assigned to Qtel's proxy servers. Qtel is the only ISP in Qatar. Consequently, comments left on this page may be received by other users of this IP and appear to be irrelevant. Caution should be used when blocking this IP or reverting its contributions without checking.

If you are an unregistered user operating from this address, note that this need not necessarily be the IP address of your machine. In many cases, it turns out to be the IP address of a proxy server that communicates between your browser and the Wikimedia servers. Such proxies are shared among a huge number of users compared to the number of persons using your particular machine. If you are frustrated by irrelevant comments appearing here, you can avoid them by creating an account for yourself.

However, you might still be unable to edit Wikipedia if the IP you are using is blocked due to a MediaWiki "feature". In such a case you could request to be unblocked.

This IP has been repeatedly blocked from editing Wikipedia in response to abuse of editing privileges. Further abuse from this IP may result in an immediate block without further warning. Notify an administrator • contribs • block • block log

Technical note

FWIW, due to the technical workings of an automated censor imposed by the sole national high speed ISP, this IP represents the entirety of the country of Qatar, which means effectively that the entire country has been blocked from editing anything. I'm sorry to see that there has been a significant amount of vandalism coming from the country, and understand the reason for the block, and see the fundamental problem as being the fault of the required censorship; however, if there were a finer grained way to do the block, it would certainly be preferable for non-vandalising users in the country.

Perhaps it would be possible to find some compromise involving limited account creations and blocking on a per-account basis; I'm sure that Qatar is not the only nationality/organization with similar technical restrictions.

Are logged-in users coming from this IP still allowed to edit? If so then this is only blocking anonymous editing by Qataris. PermanentE 07:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes; the ban is only for anonymous users 89.6.43.167 17:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

PermanentE, I don't know whether logged-in users can edit because I can't create an account: "Account creation from this IP address (82.148.97.69) has been temporarily restricted. This is probably due to persistent vandalism from the shared IP address you are editing from, most likely from your school or internet service provider." I'd also like to add that by blocking Qatar, wikipedia is blocking the majority of Al Jazeera journalists - so much for impartiality <nwetters@cpan.org>

Can't the users from Qatar use a proxy to get a different IP, and create an account. Maybe they can log in with that account once it's active, even though their IP is banned? MasterDirk 10:44, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Banning a million people from anonymous posting seems an over-reaction to some vandalism Ngourlay 12:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems all these people are effectively using the same IP address. Can you suggest a technical solution distinguishing them from each other? On a separate note, can Qataris with an existing user account log on and edit? WLior 14:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Banning a million people is not the reaction to the vandalism. It is an unintended secondary consequence. The IP block has occured due to vandalism. It might be however that the block is reconsidered *because* of the unintended secondary consequence. Toby Douglass 15:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I feel the claim of partiality is utterly - ridiculously so - incorrect. The IP was blocked due to vandalism, not because Al Jazeera journalists use it. I would agree with the points made that the impact of this block is serious, but Wiki IP blocking works well with the large majority of countries; Qatar is the exception, and is the exception because of its own behaviour. Toby Douglass 15:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

the US has a lot of vandalism coming from it as well. shall you ban all american ip addresses? in fact, on the larget internet, a large amount of spam originates in the USA. if other countries were as 'wise' and 'logical' as the wikipedia rulers, they would ban the USA from contacting the outside world. then write a bunch of hurt and offended garbage reasoning about why its not discriminatory, was 'the only option', was 'totally necessary', and a bunch of other simple minded, foolish, thinking. as for your statements 'qatar is punished because of its own behavior', i hate to tell you this but a country is not a person. qatar is a nation of millions of people, and 99% of them did not do anything wrong, and yet are being punished by this 'wise' and 'logical' action. please tell me which historical philosopher of society would have found that acceptable or reasonable? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.185.250.195 (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2007 (UTC).

The US does not apply a State-wide firewall to Internet access. As such, net access comes from a very wide range of IP addresses, unlike Qatar, where all net access comes from one IP address. Accordingly, when vandalism occurs from the US, that specific IP address is blocked and the vandal is thus dealt with without blocking other users. There is no wish, desire or intent to block all US users because of that one person, just as there is no wish, desire or intent to block all Qatar users because of their vandals. Qatar, however, due to its State-wide firewall for censorship and monitoring of private access to the Internet, has led to matters being such that banning one IP address blocks all annoymous users in Qatar. As such, your question is wrong ("the US generates plenty of vandalism, so why are we not blocking the entire US?"), since it implies that *all* Qatar was *specifically and deliberately* blocked because of the vandalism from a few Qatar users. This is *NOT SO*. All Qatar was *inadvertantly* blocked, *because of how Qatar has arranged its net access*. If Qatar had normal arrangements for net access, only the IP addresses performing vandalism would have been blocked, and this is the wish, intent and desire of the blocking action. It is not for the Wikipedia to endure vandalism so that Qatar can continue with its unusual net access arrangements (which, I might add, are deeply unethical, since they are used to intervene in the lives of others for reasons other than self-defence). Toby Douglass 22:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Is the per captia volume of spam from this IP address higher than any other, given the number of people it is shared by? If not, what justification is there for blocking it over any other IP? A block amounts to guilt by association. Some people seem to be treating Qatar as a single unit (eg. using the phrase "its own behaviour". What is "it"?) It is people being dealt with here, and they should not be lumped into some faceless mass. How would you like it if your IP address was blocked, through no action of your own? It might be convenient to block the IP address of a 840,000 people, but is convenience really an excuse for trampling people? John Dalton 23:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Qatar is a single unit - it is a single country. That unit's (read: country's) behaviour is to route traffic through a single IP address, and by doing so, they are implying that they want to be treated (electronically) as a single entity. The people are being trampled by Internet censorship, and being blocked from Wikipedia is another consequence of said censorship. --Rossj81 07:16, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Dear people...

I have no idea what the hell this is all about, I don't recall editing anything.(except for that one time on the Jew wiki)

Perhaps it is my ISP doing justice again by giving most people the same friggin' IP.

PS: Feel free to remove any thing I edited (as I edited nothing).

I'm sorry for the inconvenience. You should now be able to create an account so that you can edit the site freely (a change to the block was made by another admin). Note to any admin that modifies this: please leave a conspicuous note on this talk page about the change. -- Kjkolb 14:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

gyuh hyuk. 67.164.71.230 19:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Message

Whoever gets this message, please do not have a "test of wikipedias abilities..." in your edits. While we realize that this IP belongs to an ISP that services the entire nation of Qatar, that does not mean that you should in any way disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. We apologize for what had to be done, but we now realize the issues at hand with this ISP.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 07:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for unblocking , this is now much more better . 82.148.97.69 13:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)