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Wikipedia:Open proxies

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mercury~enwiki (talk | contribs) at 04:17, 4 June 2007 (well, it is the truth / added editors to administrators). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

List of policies No open proxies
 
This policy is copied from Meta:No open proxies. Edits should be made to that page, or they will be lost in the next update.

Users are prohibited from editing Wikimedia projects through open or anonymous proxies. Although Wikipedia encourages anyone in the world to contribute, such proxies are often used abusively. If you have been blocked as an open proxy, please see Help:blocked. Proxies are left open due to deliberate or inadvertent configuration or because hackers have changed the configuration. No restrictions are placed on reading Wikipedia through an open or anonymous proxy.

Open proxies are banned from editing Wikimedia projects. Anonymizers and other companies or organizations that offer open proxies may be blocked indefinitely by an administrator. Non-static IPs or hosts that are otherwise not permanent proxies typically warrant blocking for a shorter period of time, as the IP is likely to be transferred, the open proxy is likely to be closed, or the IP is likely to be re-assigned dynamically.

Once "closed", the IP address should be unblocked. Wikipedia administrators and editors frequently check IP addresses from which vandalism originates, to see if they might be proxies. There is also a Wikipedia project, the WikiProject on open proxies, which seeks to identify and block open proxy servers.

This policy is known to cause hardship to some editors, who must use open proxies to circumvent censorship where they live; a well-known example is the government of the People's Republic of China, which attempts to prevent its citizens from reading or editing Wikipedia. Chinese readers who wish to edit Wikipedia should read Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor to bypass the Great Firewall.

See also