Not an administrator, but an onlooker during that period. Before Wikipedia had any explicit policy re. Tor exit nodes, their IPs would typically be blocked any

Not an administrator, but an onlooker during that period. Before Wikipedia had any explicit policy re. Tor exit nodes, their IPs would typically be blocked anyway -- either under longstanding policy regarding open proxies, or as a result of spam/vandalism edits originating from the IP. Automatically blocking all Tor exit nodes wasn't a huge change in practice; it just meant that the process was automatic (so new exit nodes would be blocked more quickly, and old exit node IPs would be unblocked automatically), and that the block messages for users on those IPs became more informative.