Template talk:Rangeblock

Feedback

Looks OK to me. A couple of suggestions if I'm going to be picky.

• Is having a link to the mailing list a good idea? It's useful when used properly, I suppose, but it's inevitably going to lead to yet more emails. Can you guys cope?
• Since the user hasn't necessarily done anything wrong, perhaps something like the "info" icon, or the icon currently on {{anonblock}} would be better than the warning triangle?
• Perhaps there should be a link to the blocking policy somewhere? Vandalism is already linked, but I assume there's at least a chance this will be used in other circumstances. I can't quite see where best to link it from the current wording, though.

– Gurch 13:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Hm. All some good points. I think I'd prefer that the link stay, since it seems to be their last good line of communication, but I can see the argument. Should probably link to blocking policy. Icon switch may be good. I think a really major concern, for me, is making it clear that a range of IP addresses has been blocked, and that the user seeing the message may not (probably not, in fact) have had anything to do with the block. An unfortunate number of people don't understand that and get offended. Luna Santin 16:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Perhaps, "Due to persistent vandalism or other disruption from one or more users..."? – Gurch 01:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Should anonblock and rangeblock be merged? At the moment there's no difference to the end user between them. So I think it would be more useful to modify and reserve rangeblock for situations where even registered users are temporarily locked out. --  Netsnipe  ►  18:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a thought. I'd assumed the difference would be whether account creation was enabled or not -- unless we'd prefer that be a moot point? Luna Santin 20:26, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

On further reflection, I've noticed that I tend to use {{anonblock}} in practice, and I haven't seen too many people using {{rangeblock}}. The masses prefer anonblock, it seems. ;) Well done. Luna Santin 04:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit request

Change this line

|1='''Editing from this [[IPv4 subnetting reference|range]] has been disabled ([[WP:BLOCK|blocked]])''' by an administrator in response to abuse.

to

|1='''Editing from this [[Classless Inter-Domain Routing#CIDR notation|range]] has been disabled ([[WP:BLOCK|blocked]])''' by an administrator in response to abuse.

We need not restrict ourselves to IPv4 anymore.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:52, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done – Paine  10:59, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Screenshot explaining the edit I just made

In case my edit summary didn't explain it well enough, here is a screenshot of what I saw when I opened an edit window on my phone (while looking into an unrelated bug) and found out that apparently my cell's IP range has been blocked. Since the template was being viewed from mainspace, it was triggering the error in {{xt}} warning against using the template there. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 14:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Imgur slows my PC to a crawl. Is there any reason that WP:WPSHOT is unsuitable? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:20, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Sure, sorry, I was just being lazy. :P Here ya go. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 14:43, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Let's ask the person who added it. HJ Mitchell, why were {{xt}} and {{!xt}} being used here when their semantics are inappropriate? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Why are you asking me about some random editI made three years ago? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:08, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand why these were used, because PinkAmpersand (talk · contribs) has a problem with them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:47, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

So, when I made the above fix a wiki-lifetime ago, I neglected to fix the corresponding {{!xt}} issue, simply because it was obscured behind a sysop-show span and at the time I hadn't forced such spans to be visible. Now, in a review of similar errors in other templates, I realize what I overlooked (confirmed by User:Firefly when I test-blocked him on testwiki:). However, since 2017 I've managed to let my TPE lapse, so could somebody please change {{small|{{!xt|'''Administrators:'''}}}} to {{small|<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'DejaVu Serif', serif; color: #8B0000;>'''Administrators:'''</span>}} per the same reasoning cited above? -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 21:32, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Apparently I'm a template editor now. That's neat.  Doing... -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 21:44, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 14 February 2018

Please fix the "Multiline table in list" lint error in this template. Anomalocaris (talk) 10:07, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris:  Question: I can find only one table, and it is not in a list. Please give an example of a page where you see this error. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:17, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris: please demonstrate the edit you would like made here: Template:Rangeblock/sandbox. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:34, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Redrose64, Xaosflux: Sorry for wasting your time. The "Multiline table in list" lint error was external to this template. —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:52, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Edit suggestion

I propose that the first sentence be revised from
"Editing by unregistered users from this IP address range has been blocked."
to
"Editing by unregistered users from this range of [number] IP addresses has been blocked."
for example
"Editing by unregistered users from this range of 649,037,107,316,853,453,566 trillion IP addresses has been blocked."
in order to more explicitly remind editors of the collateral damage that would be caused.

Obviously the number of IP addresses affected should be calculated in each separate instance.

—DIV (1.144.111.80 (talk) 12:49, 1 July 2019 (UTC))

I understand why you suggest this, but unfortunately the number of IP addresses blocked is not even remotely near to being a measure of how much collateral damage is likely, for a number of reasons, including the following:

1. Many ISPs' routers completely ignore the second half of IPv6 addresses, so that they allocate a whole block of addresses of the form 1234:5678:1234:ABCD:----:----:----:---- to one person. (In the usual notation for IPv6 ranges that is 1234:5678:1234:ABCD::/64.) So we sometimes get editors who don't understand how the system works expressing horror that some administrator has been so grossly unreasonable as to block more than 18446744070000000000 IP addresses. Yes, but those are all one person's IP addresses. In that situation collateral damage is nil, and quoting the number of IP addresses blocked as an indication of likely collateral damage would be totally misleading.
2. Suppose that a block of 65,536 of IP addresses is blocked (which if I remember correctly is the largest block of IPv4 addresses that can be blocked), but in fact only four addresses in that range have ever been used to edit Wikipedia. The fact that there are another 65,532 addresses that theoretically could have edited Wikipedia but haven't is irrelevant to how much collateral damage is likely, and again quoting the figure for the total number of addresses blocked would be totally misleading.
3. Suppose instead an administrator blocks a large range of IP addresses, where there have in the past been constructive edits, but within the last six months every one of the edits has been vandalism, then the likelihood of collateral damage from a three day block is absolutely negligible. Once again, citing the number of IP addresses blocked would be totally misleading as an indication of the likely amount of collateral damage.

Quoting the number of IP addresses blocked, as you suggest, would have the severe disadvantage of totally misleading large numbers of editors who don't understand how these things work, and would offer absolutely no advantages at all, as it is not a meaningful measure of anything useful. The only way to assess how much collateral damage is really likely is to check the editing history of the IP range and see how many constructive edits there have been recently.

One more point. Although you don't say so, it is clear from the editing history of the IP range from which you are editing that your motivation for posting messages like this to every talk page relating to blocking that you can find is your irritation at having been affected recently by a range block. I totally sympathise with you over that, because I have had the same experience myself: one day I found I couldn't edit because of an IP block that was in place because of no fault of mine. Of course I found it annoying, as you have done. However, rather than spending time going round posting messages everywhere that seemed relevant about how unreasonable it was, I accepted that it is sometimes unfortunately necessary to impose blocks that affect innocent bystanders, and created an account. That was 13 years ago, and I have never been prevented from editing by a block again.

Finally, please read WP:FORUMSHOP, and avoid spreading your posting on one topic over numerous talk pages. Even if every one of those talk pages is relevant to your points, it is unhelpful, for several reasons, including the fact that other editors will not see your remarks in their full context, the fact that editors who wish to see all of your points will have to do a lot of moving around to do so, which cause inconvenience for them, and the fact that in practice most editors won't do that, so much of what you say will be missed. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi, JamesBWatson. Thanks for your considered input. I appreciate the attention you've put into your reply.

On the first point about the statistics, I accept your technical point, but I still believe the general concept is correct. Even if the raw number of blocked IP addresses isn't helpful, there should be some more pertinent statistics that can be generated, as I have proposed before.
The main reason I didn't propose that here is that I think that, practically speaking, the inclusion of more sophisticated statistics would require a 'tool' of some sort that (AFAIK) doesn't yet exist, and I was loathe to suggest something that would foreseeably be quickly put into the 'too hard' basket.
You say that, "The only way to assess how much collateral damage is really likely is to check the editing history of the IP range and see how many constructive edits there have been recently." I can imagine that (without a handy tool) that might be be true. But it also sounds onerous (without some tool). Human nature being what it is, and the guidelines for Editors not being totally explicit about this step, how confident are you that it is being done thoroughly in each instance? Is your threshold for this the same as the threshold of other Editors? Shouldn't the guidelines provide some explicit *ahem* guidance on this matter?

As to the question of 'forum-shopping', I've had a look at the guidance you referred to, and I am not convinced that I've really contravened it. Let me tell you why I feel that way. (1) Some of my Talk page contributions have been extremely particular to the specific article I commented on, such as Misdirected or dead link. So while not all Editors might have seen that correspondence, I don't think it's necessary or important for them to see it. (2) Some of my suggestions received no answer/feedback/response whatsoever, such as An analogue of Checkuser to assess IP Editors' collective contributions within given IP address ranges. While the WP:FORUMSHOP guidance warns against "asking the other parent", I understand that as referring to a case where one parent has said "no" before the other parent is asked. It doesn't apply, in my opinion, where no answer/opinion/response was received. (3) Further to the preceding point, it occurred to me that perhaps, if I hadn't received a response, I hadn't chosen the most appropriate Talk page on which to raise the issue. You'll notice that I didn't just copy-and-paste slabs of text verbatim across multiple forums, and nor did I disguise the fact that I'd posted before — on the contrary, I often linked to my previous entries, such as with Require more specific statistics and justification for anonblock and rangeblock. Furthermore, I certainly did not post to " every talk page relating to blocking". I can't remember all of the pages I've visited, but just as one example I have not posted anything on Template_talk:Anonblock, even though Template:Anonblock is very much related to blocking of IP addresses and I was looking at that Template at the same time as I was looking at the Rangeblock template.

As to my motivation, I freely acknowledge some irritation. Besides that, I perceive that on these fora or Talk pages the opinions of Editors with registered accounts are overrepresented, and unregistered ("IP-address") Editors are underrepresented. "If not me, then who?"

I am prepared for the eventuality that not everybody will agree with me. What bothers me is a lack of discussion. If there have already been in-depth discussions of these matters that I have simply not yet seen, then feel free to direct me to them.

—DIV (1.129.110.191 (talk) 01:06, 10 July 2019 (UTC))

I should acknowledge that at the moment the situation in practice is not too dire. My main concern is about a possible shifting of the philosophy away from the "anyone can edit" ethos to the mentality of a gated community. Surprise surprise, I've also had go at documenting that to a small extent.

You mentioned that you registered an account 13 years ago. That was around the time that I started editing WP. Ask yourself the following question. Suppose that from the inception of WP around 30% of the articles were (semi)protected, and 30% of the time that you connected to the internet your IP address was blocked from editing — so that around half of the time you'd be unable to edit the article you were interested in. Would you have bothered to persist? Would you have bothered to register? For me the answer would surely be "no": for instance, the main reason you don't find me on StackExchange is the need to have a registered account.

—DIV (1.129.110.191 (talk) 01:34, 10 July 2019 (UTC))

I apologise for linking to "forum shopping" without further comment. I didn't mean to suggest that you were falling foul of that policy, it was just intended to point you in the direction of information indicating that posting to multiple venues is not necessarily a good idea, but with hindsight that link was no the best way to do so.

I think I understand what you say about the potential situation, rather than the current situation in practice. However, it is not always helpful to base actions on hypothetical situations which may one day exist but which currently don't: in the real world what is the best way of dealing with a particular situation is often a compromise, which would be far from ideal in somewhat different situations. IP blocks are never ideal, and whatever we do will have disadvantages. The idea of requiring publication of statistics as a "a non-negotiable requirement for blocking of IP ranges" may sound like a good one, but it would be unworkable, for several reasons, perhaps the biggest one being that if every administrator had to collect, collate, and present statistical justification for each action he or she took then the dramatic increase in time taken to deal with each case would result in a dramatic increase in the number of pressing cases that would never get dealt with, and there are far too many of those already. Also, on a less practical point, but more of a matter of principle, introducing "non-negotiable requirements" for things that volunteers do would go very much against the spirit of Wikipedia. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:07, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 11 March 2020

Hello, I would like to propose to change the link from the word range to point to Subnetwork. I believe that explains what an IP range is better, and is also actually where IP range points to. Thanks for your consideration. Martin Urbanec (talk) 18:08, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done DannyS712 (talk) 18:10, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Wording changes

I put some proposed changes in Template:Rangeblock/sandbox. It is clearer to start with the positive (if you have an account). The negative (if you don't) then follows naturally. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 01:32, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I put a comparison of the current and proposed (sandbox) templates at User:Johnuniq/sandbox (permalink). Johnuniq (talk) 08:52, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

While we're at it, we might want to swap "you may request that volunteers create your username for you" to "you may request that volunteers create your account for you" (bold purely illustrative), as that is what is ultimately being created - an account. Other changes look good to me for what it's worth. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 09:00, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I wondered about that. Do you think "account" might be too jargony for someone looking at a rangeblock notice? They would understand "username". Johnuniq (talk) 09:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps, although the following sentence makes the meaning pretty clear I think. I don't have a strong opinion on this really (just being a pedant!) so if you feel it's best left as-is I'll defer to your experience. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 09:37, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I'm hoping for more as I don't want to be bold with a used but seldom-noticed template. Johnuniq (talk) 09:40, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: If you'd like a bit more feedback, which I know is sometimes hard to get on template talk pages until someone starts shouting at you, then (any of) these changes look OK to me. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:54, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all, I copied the sandbox to the main template so we'll find out if there are any problems. Johnuniq (talk) 02:29, 2 March 2021 (UTC)