Editing Tor and Wikipedia (section)

== How is Tor blocked on Wikipedia ==
=== Extension:TorBlock ===

There is a MediaWiki plugin called [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TorBlock Extension:TorBlock]. Source code is in [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/TorBlock a Phabricator repository].

What we can tell about how it works:

* during a period from XXXX to 2013 it read from the Tor Project bulk list service (https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=)
* after Jan 2013, it pulls from the newer "Onionoo" service (https://onionoo.torproject.org/details?type=relay&running=true&flag=Exit)
* pulls perioditically, typically from a cronjob

Questions:

* Although we know when the commits were made to the git repository that added/switched features in Extension:TorBlock, we don't know exactly when things were deployed to WMF servers. It's likely on a delay, but probably not an enormous one. But it clearly bounds it.
* We don't know when the cronjob was run if the timing of the cronjob has been consistent over time.

=== Blocked by Administrators "by hand" ===

* Blocks are recorded in Special:Log (e.g., [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_thanks_log=1&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_tag_log=1&hide_review_log=1 ENWP]).

=== Blocked by a Bot ===

* As above, blocks are recorded in Special:Log (e.g., [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_thanks_log=1&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_tag_log=1&hide_review_log=1 ENWP]).

There are at least some bots that seem to automatically find and block open proxies:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ProcseeBot ProcseeBot] (apparently closed source but we could contact the author/operator [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Slakr Slakr])
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:TorNodeBot TorNodeBot] is a bot that blocked people who were editing over Tor. It is designed to block Tor nodes that the TorBlock extension failed to notice due to a technical error. In particular, TorBlock only detected ''current'' Tor nodes (nodes that are active at the time of checking) and blocked them, and so sometimes a Tor exit node was detected, but later disabled after being block would later show up as not being a Tor node (maybe overlooked by TorBlock extensions because it stores the blacklist in a cache). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/TorNodeBot Bots/Request for approval] explains this issue in some detail. TorNodeBot got deactivated in 2014 and managed to block 32123 users.