Wikivoyage:IP Masking Engagement

IP Masking on Wikivoyage Introductory RFC – 26 April 2021
Hello Wikivoyagers,

You are invited to participate in a conversation about IP Masking tools.

According to Wikipedia: an “Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.” Its two main functions are to identify the host company/institution operating the IP and to determine the location of the device being used. On any of the Wikimedia sites, an editor is identified by their usernames which they acquired after registering. They can also be identified by their IP address, should they choose not to register, or edit without logging in.

Editing a Wikimedia wiki without creating or logging into a user account, exposes an editor’s IP. This is because Wikipedia’s software MediaWiki stores and publishes the IP addresses publicly on some of its pages. This could endanger users and even invite government persecution.

There is more information about what information IP addresses can reveal and how they can be used on this page.

However, IP addresses are also the identifiers upon which patrollers, admins, and functionaries who protect the wikis from vandalism and harassment act to identify and block vandals, sockpuppets, editors with conflicts of interest, and other bad actors.

In line with global trends about user data collection and use, the Wikimedia Foundation is learning how best to protect the privacy of the editors using IPs. It is also investigating how the protection of user privacy would also impact mitigation of abuse on the wikis.

This is where the IP Masking project comes in, with a range of tools that will help enhance privacy and also help minimize abuse. We want to create new tools that prevent exposure of IP addresses to users who do not need to see them and thereby restrict the number of people who can see other users' IP addresses.

The Anti-Harassment Tools team at Wikimedia Foundation is leading the effort on building tools to ensure our wikis continue to function as well as they are now, in the absence of IP addresses. There are two projects that are underway.

IP Info feature
A lot of on-wiki anti-vandalism workflows heavily rely on information revealed by IP addresses. This information can inform the way an editor may interact with an unregistered user. At the moment retrieving and understanding this information is not an easy task. Our purpose for this project is to make it easier for our admins, anti-vandal fighters and power users to be able to access information about IP addresses more quickly and easily. You can learn more about this project on the project page and give us your valuable feedback on the feedback page.

Sockpuppet Detection Tool
This project is in its early stages. As you know by now, IP addresses play a key role in the sockpuppet investigation and checkuser workflows on our wikis. Patrollers flag users when they see something suspicious. They then determine and report sockpuppet behavior by finding patterns in how certain users behave. Checkusers step in and verify sockpuppets by manually comparing IP addresses and user agents using the checkuser tool to confirm if a given set of users are socks of each other. This process is time-consuming and requires checkusers to manually verify sock accounts by looking at private information. Most wikis do not have local checkusers and hence this process becomes even more difficult. To mitigate this, we are proposing to build a tool that will allow us to automatically detect when two users are exhibiting similarities in behavior (for example editing similar pages or editing during similar hours). This information will be available to users with certain privileges and will allow them to make judgment calls on sockpuppet behaviors more quickly and efficiently.

So far, community consultations about the IP Masking project have occurred on Meta and some other language wikis. The Anti Harassment Tools team is currently doing a consultation with more wikis to get your feedback on the '''We would like to understand how this project will impact you. What other tools will you need to be able to effectively govern the projects in absence of IPs?'''
 * IP Masking project
 * IP Info tool
 * Sockpuppet detection tool

Best regards, Anti-Harassment Tools team STei (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

IP Masking on Wikivoyage New Update – 14 June 2021‎
Hello, Wikivoyage community. The Anti-Harassment Tools team has an update on IP Masking. (For the previous engagement message, please see the collapsed section above).

It has been a few months since our last update on this project. We have taken this time to talk to a lot of people — across the editing community and within the Foundation. We have put careful consideration towards weighing all the concerns raised in our discussions with experienced community members about the impact this will have on anti-vandalism efforts across our projects. We have also heard from a significant number of people who support this proposal as a step towards improving the privacy of unregistered editors and reducing the legal threat that exposing IPs to the world poses to our projects.

When we talked about this project in the past, we did not have a clear idea of the shape this project will take. Our intention was to understand how IP addresses are helpful to our communities. We have since received a lot of feedback on this front from a number of conversations in different languages and in different communities. We are very grateful to all the community members who took the time to educate us about how moderation works on their wikis or in their specific cross-wiki environment.

Proposal for sharing IP addresses with those who need access
We now have a more concrete proposal for this project that we hope will allow for most of the anti-vandalism work to happen undeterred while also restricting access to IP addresses from people who don’t need to see them. ''I want to emphasize the word “proposal” because it is in no way, shape or form a final verdict on what will happen. Our intention is to seek your feedback about this idea – What do you think will work? What do you think won’t work? What other ideas can make this better?''

We developed these ideas during several discussions with experienced community members, and we’ve refined them in collaboration with our Legal department. Here’s the outline:


 * Checkusers, stewards and admins should be able to see complete IP addresses by opting-in to a preference where they agree not to share it with others who don't have access to this information.
 * Editors who partake in anti-vandalism activities, as vetted by the community, can be granted a right to see IP addresses to continue their work. This could be handled in a similar manner as adminship on our projects. The community approval is important to ensure that only editors who truly need this access can get it. The editors will need to have an account that is at least a year old and have at least 500 edits.


 * All users with accounts over a year old and at least 500 edits will be able to access partially unmasked IPs without permission. This means an IP address will appear with its tail octet(s) – the last part(s) – hidden. This will be accessible via a preference where they agree not to share it with others who don't have access to this information.


 * All other users will not be able to access IP addresses for unregistered users.

IP address access will be logged so that due scrutiny can be performed if and when needed. This is similar to the log we maintain for checkuser access to private data. This is how we hope to balance the need for privacy with the communities’ need to access information to fight spam, vandalism, and harassment. We want to give the information to those who need it, but we need a process, we need it to be opt-in so that only those with an actual need will see it and we need the accesses to be logged.

We would like to hear your thoughts about this proposed approach. Please give us your feedback on the talk page.


 * What do you think will work?
 * What do you think won’t work?
 * What other ideas can make this better?

Update on tool development
As you might already know, we are working on building some new tools, partly to soften the impact of IP Masking, but also just to build better anti-vandalism tools for everyone. It is not a secret that the state of moderation tools on our projects doesn’t give the communities the tools they deserve. There is a lot of scope for improvement. We want to build tools that make it easier for anti-vandalism fighters to work effectively. We also want to reduce the barrier to entry into these roles for non-technical contributors.

We have talked about ideas for these tools before and I will provide a brief update on these below. Note that progress on these tools has been slow in the last few months as our team is working on overhauling SecurePoll to meet the needs of the upcoming WMF Board elections.

IP Info feature


We are building a tool that will display important information about an IP address that is commonly sought in investigations. Typically, patrollers, admins, and checkusers rely on external websites to provide this information. We hope to make this process easier for them by integrating information from reliable IP-vendors within our websites.

We recently built a prototype and conducted a round of user testing to validate our approach. We found that a majority of the editors in the interview set found the tool helpful and indicated they would like to use it in the future. There is an update on the project page that I would like to draw your attention to. Key questions that we would like to have your feedback on the project talk page:


 * When investigating an IP what kinds of information do you look for? Which page are you likely on when looking for this information?
 * What kinds of IP information do you find most useful?
 * What kinds of IP information, when shared, do you think could put our anonymous editors at risk?

Editor matching feature
This project has also been referred to as "Nearby editors" and "Sockpuppet detection" in earlier conversations. We are trying to find a suitable name for it that is understandable even to people who don't understand the word sockpuppetry.

We are in the early stages of this project.

Wikimedia Foundation Research has a project that could assist in detecting when two editors exhibit similar editing behaviors. This will help connect different unregistered editors when they edit under different auto-generated account usernames. We heard a lot of support for this project when we started talking about it a year ago. We also heard about the risks of developing such a feature. We are planning to build a prototype in the near term and share it with the community. There is a malnourished project page for this project. We hope to have an update for it soon. Your thoughts on this project are very welcome on the project talk page.

Data on Portugese Wikipedia disabling IP edits
Portugese Wikipedia banned unregistered editors from making edits to the project last year. Over the last few months, our team has been collecting data about the repercussions of this move on the general health of the project. We have also talked to several community members about their experience. We are working on the final bits to compile all the data that presents an accurate picture of the state of the project. We hope to have an update on this in the near future.

Best regards, Anti-Harassment Tools team STei (WMF) 14:29, 14 June 2021 (UTC)