Re: Wikipedia & Tor & ... moderators?

[Jimmy Wales <jwales@xxxxxxxxx>]

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> If you're using them, you can just add Tor exit points into your
> RBL subscription, in the unlikely case they are not already there
> (trust me, they will be there).

Yes, we are usually blocking Tor exit points as a part of our broader
blacklisting strategy.  (We don't use outside services for this.)

This works just fine for us -- with the side effect that Tor is that
much less useful for the people we want it to be able to help.

> As long as Tor doesn't support pseudonyms, and prestige accounting
> there won't be a better way. Anonymity by definition is associated
> with zero prestige. Current Tor is designed for anonymity, not
> pseudonymity. A hidden trusted server could be used as a hack to
> implement pseudonyms and prestige tracking. This would not scale,
> and be easy to DoS, however.
>
> If it is not to be a hack a distributed cryptographic filestore
> need to be added to the Tor client. It would require nym prestige
> to prevent floods. This is not easy to get right.


I am not an expert on the design of such things, and I only offer what
seem to me to be fairly straightforward ways of dealing with this
problem.  I am well aware that getting it right is not easy.  But it is
not an easy task that we have chosen for ourselves, so try we must.

> I hope I'm being clear. From your comments, I'm having the
> impression we're talking orthogonally to each other.

The main thing I want people to take away from this conversation is that
answering questions about abuse of services like Wikipedia by attacking
Wikipedia as privacy-hating or by saying that we should ask people for a
credit card before editing or etc. etc. is not acceptable.  It is
important _for Tor_ for the _goals of Tor_ that these problems be solved
to the maximal extent possible _by Tor_.

Wikipedia is a friend; we will do what we can.  But you're not designing
 a system which should only be usable with privacy-friendly websites.
You're designing a system which, to the end user, should to the maximal
extent possible allow them to speak privately and _on equal footing with
everyone else on the Internet_.