Re: Wikipedia and Tor - a solution in the works?

[Jason Holt <jason@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> Jimmy Wales proposed what he described as a "simple solution to the problem
> of Tor users being unable to edit Wikipedia." Here it is:
>
> "trusted user -> tor cloud -> authentication server -> trusted tor cloud ->
> wikipedia"
>
> "untrusted user -> tor cloud -> authentication server -> untrusted tor cloud
> -> no wikipedia"
[...]

We're ahead of you on this one.  I wrote nym to solve this problem:

http://lunkwill.org/src/nym/

It limits pseudonym creation by the same criteria that wikipedia uses, 
scarcity of IP addresses.  Then you swap your blinded, scarce token for an SSL 
client certificate, and MediaWiki uses that instead of an IP address to block 
you if you misbehave. There's even a javascript client so you don't have to 
install any software on your machine:

http://lunkwill.org/src/nym/javascript/jsnymclient.html

I also wrote a very simple patch for MediaWiki to accept the client certs 
issued by nym:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3729

And a paper that describes in detail how nym works:

http://lunkwill.org/cv/nym.pdf

I've prodded them to accept the patch several times now.  Perhaps they'd take 
us more seriously if we started using the "vote" feature on the bug report 
page.

					-J