Preface: This is directed at the wiki portion of the www site. Couldn't easily find a list for the wiki specifically. If someone else knows a better place for this and can forward it, please do the necessary.
Hi there, long time debian user here. First installed it off a CD that came with a magazine in the early 2000s; Boot Magazine. Eventually went on to become Maximum PC . I think the first release I installed was potato. Anyway, point is, I swear I am not a spammer, I'm not a bot, I'm a legit user and advocate of debian.
My current IP, 104.200.151.82 is completely and utterly blocked from using the debian wiki. It returns error code 403 and says "<p>You are not allowed to access this!</p>". This is undoubtedly because I'm using a VPN. Most, nearly all of the time I try and access the debian wiki these days, I cannot, so I assume it's not just a ban of single IPs, but large swaths of IPs associated with a specific company or companies.
I want to voice my opinion here, that this is IP bans are *never* the solution. Absolutely never. And banning entire ranges is so over-the-top ridiculous I could never expect such a lack of critical awareness from a project like debian. Ban based on actions, not locations. Make bans temporary. Have them expire after a time, since IP addresses can be assumed to be constantly shifting.
I understand my VPN uses shitty hosting providers to operate their nodes, and those nodes' IP ranges do often get used for malicious stuff, but banning the entire IP range is the wrong approach. It's much easier, but you're blocking out potentially large numbers of legitimate users who could end up contributing a lot to the community. As privacy awareness becomes more and more of a mainstream issue, I assume you're going to see more and more people using VPNs, so this is going to become a bigger and bigger problem.
I'd love to contribute to your wiki in a constructive way, say if I ever found a spelling mistake, but being a VPN user, I can not only not create an account or edit any page, but I can't even VIEW any page. The entire site gives a 403 forbidden error.
If this is by design, it's pigheaded and ignorant.