User:Alex.muller/School Blocks
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I'd love to turn this into a discussion about policy (and hopefully, perhaps, changing what happens at the moment) but have no idea where to start.
In my opinion, the way blocking of shared IP addresses to educational institutions is currently handled is absolutely ridiculous. The same policy that applies to regular blocks, of increasing the length every time it happens again, doesn't work.
I'm at a school in London at the moment; we're currently on a 3 month block for repeated vandalism, which is just stupid. A 3 month block isn't preventative, it's punitive. By the time the block expires, we'll be on our Summer holiday, meaning that when school starts again in September we'll have no block and a bunch of new 13 year old kids who have never experienced being blocked from Wikipedia before. They'll mess around, and we'll get a 6 month block.
Wikipedia needs much clearer guidelines on what happens here. We need policy on how to deal with schools, and the {{schoolblock}} template needs a link to a page on Wikipedia dedicated to explaining how schools on Wikipedia work. For instance, are we allowed group accounts for classes? It makes sense to keep track of everything a class has changed (looking through for vandalism quickly), but doesn't allow collaboration internally.
I don't know what needs to change. I know that teachers at school have at times been very confused by our policy around this area, so it needs to be dealt with. Hopefully I'll have more time over the Summer to create policy and get some kind of change happening. Thanks.
(Oh, and if you happen to stumble across this page, please leave me a note. I'm not advertising this anywhere right now.)
School Vandalism
[edit]In the event that school vandalism is reverted, an effort should be made to contact the school in question, especially if the vandalism is particularly offensive. This is because not only are schools and universities generally more proactive in tracking down specific vandals and educating them, but their contact information is easier to locate.