Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy

Change the order of the reasons for block

This emphasises WMF, and editors/users have no rights or property

"A user may be blocked when necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Wikimedia Foundation, its users, or the public.

"A user may be blocked to prevent disruption to WIkipedia, for incivility, for the safety of a user, or as directed by the Wikimedia Foundation to protect the foundation's rights, property, and safety:"

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:16, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Suspected indef block evasion

Hi guys, I am not sure how to proceed on a case of suspected indef block evasion, which is currently being done through a new account created, say, a one or two years after block was imposed on earlier violations? (I have zero experience in sock research and investigation in preparing evidence, so I am a bit in a tight spot here) Any advice would be truly appreciated. ౪ Santa ౪^99° 13:05, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@Santasa99: If you're not sure and it doesn't need immediate attention, maybe mention your suspicions to the blocking admin. Otherwise you'd have to present your evidence at WP:SPI. If there's ongoing serious disruption (obvious vandalism, spam, etc) that need an immediate block, take it to WP:AIV (or WP:ANI if it's more complicated). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:22, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi, HJ, thanks for quick reply. Well, problems are there, I can't say exactly how immediate, but certain activity which does not comply with our basic and usual policies and guidelines appear, persistently (concerning things like mass changes, consensus, sources, neutrality, and signs of WP:NOTHERE), but there are no these extremely serious disruptions like spamming and other vandalism issues. This idea to report it to blocking admin is a good idea, which would not occur to me so thanks, that is a good first step. My major concern is how to bridge this time-gap between editing activities which spans more than a year. I guess I will have to dig in and compile some evidence based on editing patterns and style .Thanks, if anything else helpful comes to your mind in the meantime, please let me know. ౪ Santa ౪^99° 13:52, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Unverified UTRS tickets.

I have posed a question at Wikipedia talk:Unblock Ticket Request System#Unverified tickets. Please feel free to opine -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:24, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

"WP:BANHAMMER" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect WP:BANHAMMER has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 August 26 § WP:BANHAMMER until a consensus is reached. Should have linked this here earlier but it didn’t occur to me. A smart kitten (talk) 21:03, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Blocking IPs per request of school administration?

It came up at WP:SPI (see discussion thread) that we have some indef blocked IPs, which led me to discover that we have a handful of such blocks which are annotated as being per the request of a school's administration (see this query for a list). I don't see anything in WP:BP which speaks to this, so I'd like to start a discussion about it. I apologize in advance that some of the material discussed here will not be accessible to everybody, but I don't think the details of any particular case are gemaine to the larger policy discussion.

I'll be up-front about this: I don't think outside entities should have any input into what blocks get placed. I haven't read any of the associated VRT tickets (still trying to get access), but I can easily see some school principal writing to us saying, "We don't want our students editing wikipedia. Please block this from your end". In fact, I see a similar request being made in one particular item that I do have access to on the functionaries mailing list. To my mind, requests like that should be turned down flat. I'd like to hear what other people think. RoySmith (talk) 15:22, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

If some network administrator doesn't want someone doing something they should block it on their end. Besides, there are hundreds of "Wikipedias". — xaosflux ^Talk 15:45, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree that an organization wishing to keep its computers from Wikipedia needs to take action on their end. 331dot (talk) 18:41, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree that this is something for the organization to enforce rather than Wikipedia. I would say that these requests should be turned down flat per WP:AGF and because if there are vandalism coming from these IPs they'll be anonblocked anyways. ThatIPEditor ^{Talk · Contribs} 13:28, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Blocking write-access is not always straightforward. You'd probably have to block the whole site(s), for everyone including staff with accounts, which probably no one wants. In my experience a lot of previous blocks (of this type) have been caused by talk pages mentioning the school and a bunch of warnings for vandalism. Teachers didn't necessarily want to block access, they wanted people to stop complaining to their school about the vandalism. Actually we also want to stop complaining, so these days we'll just anonblock them long-time anyway. If a teacher suggests it's a good idea, we should certainly consider it. If there's no editing from the IP then we probably won't. Our blocking practices have changed a lot since when most of these blocks were introduced, with 10-year schoolblocks not uncommon. It's probably the same fix to the same problem. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:18, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

When the school administration, having demonstrated that it is actively monitoring vandalism from its network and removes all of it within minutes if not seconds, requests that it NOT be blocked for years on end so that students can familiarise themselves with the Wikipedia experience and learn to edit the site constructively please accede to the request. This is not happening at the moment Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive302#5.150.96.0/19. 213.123.216.179 (talk) 08:23, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Doug Weller talk 19:34, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

School blocks are something we do even without requests from the schools, and I think any external entity should be able to suggest a block. Then an admin should evaluate the block per policy. That is, not "block because requested", but "block because persistent vandalism" (or repeated doxxing of children, which should also trigger blocks). MarioGom (talk) 07:22, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I now have access to info-en, so I picked ticket:2010030310001736 more or less at random to dig into. The thread starts with somebody who introduces themselves as the IT administrator for a school saying, "There is no reason our students should be attempting to edit Wikipedia pages, so we would like to block this ability to our students permanently". The block log for the IP in question does show a handful of short-ish blocks for vandalism over the preceding two years, which the IT director refers to. The indef block in question was placed over 10 years ago.

So, I'll go back to my original premise. I'm quite concerned that blocks like this are complicit in a school's desire to control the activities of their students. If they want to prevent their students from accessing wikipedia, that's their business. We shouldn't be involved. If they only want to prevent their students from editing, they can block POST requests, or delete cookies, or some other evil thing today's stateful inspection firewalls are capable of. I don't want them to do those things, but if they do, at least it's on them.

If some admin thinks the level of vandalism from this IP is too high, they can certainly block an IP, but we shouldn't be doing (especially not indef) it on request of the school. RoySmith (talk) 15:41, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe instead of considering it a "request" (even if that's how the requestor is terming it) we consider it, "just wanted to let you know we have been unable to resolve this on our end, feel free to soft block the IP, we completely understand and won't be at all offended"? Valereee (talk) 13:43, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

If Wikipedia were accessed via unincrypted HTTP, client-side partial disabling of access to English Wikipedia would be technically possible. However, once all clients must use HTTPS, the only option available is to disable Wikipedia's IP address, which effectively prevents all access to English Wikipedia plus all sister sites. If less than this is required, then client-side is not a solution. Animal lover |666| 19:19, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

You may be correct, but it's still not our place to be enforcing a school's internet access policies for them. RoySmith (talk) 19:26, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I also think that the fact that an organization is a school is not relevant- we wouldn't do this for any type of organization or business. 331dot (talk) 09:14, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

@Vermont might be interested in this discussion; I know they've looked into other sorts of blanket blocks (open proxies and the like). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:45, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

This discussion confuses me. Are people suggesting that we should block edits from school IPs that engage in vandalism ... unless the school asks us to do so, in which case we should avoid doing so? That sounds like being deliberately obnoxious for no good reason. 217.180.228.138 (talk) 15:31, 2 October 2023 (UTC)