User talk:78.140.196.174

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Happy editing! — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 11:59, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Godsy as it so happens you've been lead astray by a recent and rather silly change, that is quite contrary to longstanding-policy. And this is one of the more odd invocations of bureaucracy for bureaucracies sake. I've closed dozens of like discussions in the past year alone, one where I haven't been particularly active, and will likely continue to do so to clear the queque. If you wanted to redo all of my deletion closes that would easily amount to thousands of pointless and borderline cosmetic edits.

In fact, in accordance with policy I do sometimes close discussions in other circumstances, usually WP:SK1 situations where the nom withdraws but does not know how to close the discussion, but occasional WP:SNOW closes as well, or more rarely very obvious and uncontroversial keeps. I'm not the only who does this. 192.76.8.80/24 will close obvious keep rfds every so often. 2601:1C0:4401:24A0:C0D7:275F:595C:9A8A/64 will also close stuff on the noticeboards periodically, though admittedly that's outwith the purview of NACD. Point is, as one of the less active of the long-term IP group I'm just the tip of the iceberg, and you could end up spending a long-time reclosing things if you're really determined to make those edits.

And just so we're clear, no I'm not making an account meatball:LoginsAreEvil. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my IP is currently hopping all over eastern europe; I'm generally disinclined to follow-ups given the potential for impersonation, but given the obscurity of this page this may be an exception. Regards, 188.232.146.110 (talk) 02:31, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Please register to contribute to project space

I notice you are making constructive contributions to project space, specifically WP:MfD.

Have you ever registered an account? If yes, you are required to use that account when editing project space. It is a violation of WP:SOCK to edit projectspace while logged out.

If you have never registered, please WP:Register to continue project space contributions. This is important for your accountability for your actions. Other people could use your IP and be mistaken for you. You could have a change in IP and be assumed to be a different person. SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:57, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: short version, I have no intention of registering, I am fully aware of the disadvantages this entails to myself and have long accepted them. There are many points to be made both for and against registration, and people can in good-faith disagree on which choice to make. I would prefer to have a static IP, but you don’t always get what you want.

Long version below (and this will be long, and even so will not fully be able to fully cover the topic of registering vs not registering so I apologise in advance).

It helps to remember that IPs have always edited internal discusions, even befor there was a projectspace, here’s 62.253.64.xxx participating in the earliest formal version of our xfd process. For that matter 61.9.128.xxx was an admin for months prior to registering. Certainly, through the years the participation of unregistered users in projectspace has been questioned from time-to-time, but always upheld in subsequent rfcs. If I had to guess, I’d say that proportionally long-term IP participation peaked in 2006 and has since declined (although I've been away for years at at time so you can take that FWIW), but it’s not as though we’re gone. Our visibility may be lower, but there are still quite a few long-term IPs that contribute significantly to projectspace. 192.76.8.80/24 is more active in xfds than I am these days. 207.161.86.162 will drop in on projectspace discussions every so often, 98.179.127.59 has participated in a few rfds, 2601:1C0:4401:24A0:C0D7:275F:595C:9A8A/64 has a long history of counter-vandalism work, and 70.175.192.217 has also begun to get involved in that area more recently. That’s just a spot check of the first few IPs with sustained recent activity that come to mind. There’s at least a few dozen of us around at any one time with non-trivial projectspace contributions these days depending on how you measure activity. That excludes of course IP hoppers such as myself who are difficult to track so the actual total is in fact significantly higher.

I am just as accountable for my actions as a registered user, perhaps more so. IPs that engage in disruption are given far less leeway than established users. I’ll try to get around to my current IP situation in a bit, which is less than ideal I’ll admit, but my style and long-held opinions are so distinct and identifiable that it’s highly unlikely I’ll be mistaken for different users and I would probably be unable to provide that impression even if I tried, after all it would appear you can tell when I hop between addresses. Why assume that other editors would be unable to make the same connection?

If other people use any of these IPs to edit enwiki (and odds are low for reasons I’ll get to) then so what? If they’re vandals, block them, if they’re contributing in good-faith then who cares? I’m confident that stylistic and knowledge differences would make misidentification somewhat unlikely. The vast majority of users, registered and unregistered alike, are here in good-faith; if for some reason a misidentification is made, chances are they’ll let you know.

Incidentally the SOCK situation is a bit more complex than that. Only your primary account may generally be used to edit projectspace, however if a user has abandoned all accounts and is not evading any blocks/bans/restrictions then projectspace may be freely edited as any other namespace (essentially your IP becomes your primary account), as one recent example see the SchroCat SPI which was rather explicit in this (the IP in question would later receive a lengthy block, but for disruption not socking).

The arguments both for and against registration are so varied I couldn’t hope to encompass them all in a short space; I’ve probably forgotten most of them anyway. I remain convinced that broadly speaking meatball:LoginsAreEvil. As applied to WP specifically WP:WNCAA while tagged humourous, offers some fairly persuasive arguments. While dated User:69.145.123.171/registering continues to encompass the thoughts of many of the long-termers; solidarity alone will probably keep some of us from ever registering, even when the WMF does get around to banning all logged-out contributions. Moving beyond just those arguments, because IPs have little social capital (see my comments here) you have no choice but to make high quality arguments that are firmly rooted in the PAGs if you hope to persuade others. Edit filters force you to think through some contributions (e.g. those adding external links), and protections keep you from inadvertently stumbling into hot topic areas that are huge time-sinks for everyone involved. I can expand upon this significantly, but my goal is not to convince you to logout forever, which I have little more likelihood of achieving then you have of convincing me to register, but just to give some background.

Having said that, due to the way in which mediawiki handles it, unregistered editing has faced increasing difficulties with communication. At one time, static IPs were the norm and you could often hold on to them for months or even years. There were challenges even early on (e.g. AOL users were quite hoppy), but not so many as today. Now everyone, excepting large organisations, is typically assigned dynamic IPs, and all IPv6s tend to hop in a range that is at least /64 in size unless the network is specifically configured not to. Mobile internet has replaced hardwired connection as the global standard and the short lease-time along with broad and often busy ranges that entails is not ideal. It is possible to work around the communication deficiencies that result, but only if you know what you are doing and are willing to put in some effort.

My own situation has been complicated for a while now. The app I’m using causes my IP to hop uncontrollably all over eastern europe and repetition of addresses or even ranges is unusual. I’m not a fan of this, but it’s fast, it’s free, and while there are perhaps a bit less than 100 other apps to choose from it would involve non-trivial effort to go through and find one that’s offers a static IP. Further the last two apps I used that had fast static IPs both turned out to be webhosts. I’m not saying this one is great, some of the addresses are being used as proxies either before or after reassignment see e.g. 213.193.27.121, but they are a distinct minority perhaps 1/5. I’m not particularly technically knowledgeable so I can’t say whether endusers sometimes turn these into proxies or if that’s being done higher up on the enterprise side of things or even how I'd detect one if the bots don't notice it, regardless in contrast to the inability to hold on to an IP all I need to do to get a new IP instantly is hit the cycle button, so I’m not too concerned about it.

However, I remain unconvinced that the issues you mention are severe even in my extreme situation. To be sure, a lot of people will be sharing these IPs, it is a free(mium) app after all. But, It’s highly unlikely that an english monoglot would be able to find or use this app, and it may not even be available in the countries that most of our users originate from. I don’t track all my old IPs like I should so I can’t speak with too much certainty, but I’ve only once seen an old IP go on to make an edit on enwiki after I used it with this app (constructive as it so happens), and have not yet been assigned an IP address that was previously used to edit enwiki.

Anyway, at some point in the future when I’m bored, I’ll check through alternatives to find something better, these apps tend to come and go every few months or even weeks in some cases, so eventually I’ll have no choice. In the meantime, I have deliberately been trying to participate in a way where follow-ups are unlikely to be needed and been mostly successful. Let’s face it the largest volume of my edits these days are random article stuff and semi-automated typo fixes anyway. Yes it probably would be convenient to go back and have a discussion over whether a histmerge is desirable for Alewya, but redirecting will still preserve attribution so I guess it doesn't matter much.

I guess I have made an exception of sorts to avoiding follow-ups here (and admittedly in a couple other places). I don’t think the risk is high, in principle anyone an eastern europe could try to impersonate me, in practice this page is so obscure the odds of that happening are minimal. I hope you found this helpful. Regards, 188.242.8.202 (talk) 03:16, 21 December 2021 (UTC)