 Hello, everyone. Welcome. So we have this topic that is the effects of IP address range blocking on contribution to the free knowledge. So we are so excited that you are here. It will be a quick presentation. I have some two other co-speakers joining online who are Tochi and Bobby Shabangu from South Africa. Then after the presentation we'll be having some open discussion with you all and with us there are other stewards. We have some stewards. Can you raise your hands? Yes, we have Johnny and Martin there. Then we have Niharika. Right. She's working with the foundation on IP masking stuffs. So we are happy to have you here as well. Alright, so IP address blocking have been an obstacle for most of the Wikimedia foundation, Wikimedia movement contributors and at some point some assumptions are there like, okay, is this a regional targeted thing? Are we doing some mistakes to deserve this and so on. So I'll be welcoming Tochi to start telling us what is even IP blocking then I'll come later. Then I'll welcome Bobby. Then it will be an open discussion to all of you. So welcome Tochi. Thank you, Anthony. Hi everyone and thank you for joining our session. Alright, so we all know that IP issue is kind of a challenge to us. IP range block is a challenge to us and a lot of us are familiar with it either as an editor or maybe as an organizer you must have experienced IP block somewhere or sometime at a point in maybe in your editing process. In December 2022, user Radima WMF actually wrote a diff blog. He wrote three diff posts about IP address range blocking and he titled it What's Happening with Proxy Blocks. So for the sake of this presentation, we're going to be focusing on global block and then the range block. The global block is the one that tells you you've been blocked from editing all weekies, which as an editor you must have experienced and then the local block is the one that maybe as an organizer one of your new participant is trying to sign up and then they tell them that they've been blocked. So those are the ones we're going to be focusing on. And when I talked about Ray's article, he defined Proxy and they said, I'm sorry, they said for the purpose of media blocks, a Proxy is generally anything that allows a user to connect to media projects through an IP address other than that assigned to them by their internet service provider. And then when you go on media wiki, you also see the definition of range blocks to be technical restrictions applied through a group of IP addresses that prevents them from editing, creating new accounts, sending emails through the wiki interface, et cetera. And this is also coined from meta wiki. So we're trying to make you understand where we are coming from and what the focus is all about. And then there's a reason why these IPs are used. So the first one is to prevent cross wiki vandalism, which is why you get a global block and then it's also used to prevent cross wiki spam. And also another reason for the IP address block is that it protects against for anyone who doesn't know, so it protects fake accounts that are created by some persons and they use it to do a whole lot of things. And then it's also used to prevent destruction on multiple media projects. But then in as much as it has so many good parts to it, it also has some potential effects on contributions and the potential effects of IP addresses can actually range from both positive and negative side, which we're also experiencing. So I'm going to be calling back Anthony for him to continue from there. Hi Anthony. Okay, hi Tochi, thank you so much. All right, so I'll be talking a little bit about positive effects because some people they think IP blocking is only to punish people, but they have their purpose. Some positive effects is that it helps to avoid what is pretty cross wiki vandalism. Some people if not everyone is having good intention towards contributing to the free knowledge through wiki platforms. So it helps to prevent the widespread cross wiki vandalism. Number two, it avoids cross wiki spamming. As I said, we have some stewards here. We'll talk a little bit more about this on our interactive discussions. Number three, it prevents blatant disruption on multiple projects. So, but also IP blocking is having some negative effects. We have our colleague Bobby Shabangu from South Africa. He's the witness and he is an event organizer. He expressed this while organizing some of the events. So I'll be welcoming him to talk a little bit more about the negative effects. Welcome Bobby. Sure, thank you so much Anthony. I'm going to be focusing on the negative effects of the IP blocking. As my colleagues have already pointed out that as much as there are positive effects of IP blocking, but there are also negative effects of IP blocking, it seems colleagues that a lot of people do not really understand the positive effects of IP blocking, but they focus more on the negative effects of IP blocking. And one of the things that we've seen really over the years, my personal experience as a Wikimedian and also have seen other, especially African Wikipedians, experience because of IP blocking has been discouragement and people did not want to continue editing because it's a lot of work to go through. You find out that legitimate users of Wikipedia who have good intentions wants to continue in Wikipedia, but because of the fact that they've been blocked either temporarily or their accounts have been blocked indefinitely, they don't want to really continue. And I need to say that when a person gets blocked, a reason is given, but because of the fact that now they are required to go to do the administration basically to read the reasons which are long, by the way, it then discourages them from editing and it reduces the enthusiasm of new editors. New editors, for an example, they come on the wiki, they are happy, they want to just edit, they do not really know about maybe five pillars of Wikipedia or they don't know about some of the policies that are around different parts of the Wikimedia community or different language communities. So for them they just come in, they edit, but you find out that there's not that welcoming of new editors. When the new editor tries to edit, they are being blocked and when they are trying to get the reason why exactly they are being blocked, nothing is explained to them, instead they are just being blocked and they are bombarded with information. So you find out that it discourages new editors from being blocked because of that reason and it just restricts access to editing for a lot of people. Most of the reasons that I've seen and it's something that I've already highlighted on actually, it's the administration that you have to go through in order for you to be unblocked. You find out that you have to read through a lot of text and I believe you me and I believe that in the room everyone sitting in the room there knows that you can actually find anything that you are looking for on Wikimedia, but you have to go through a maze of information and really you find out that people, they just discourage. First, they are being blocked. Second, no proper explanation is given why you are being blocked. You are just given information. Third, there seems to be not caring of people. It seems to be lack of caring of people looking into the history of the person. Are they an experienced Wikimedia user or they are a new user? There's not that taking care of people to look at their status and their experience. You find out that people don't get encourage on doing editing on the site. At this stage, I'm going to give back to Anthony to talk about how to solve the IP blocking issue. Thanks for what you do. Thank you so much, Bobby, for discussing with us the effects of the IP range blocking. So there are some couple of ways you can go around with solving any problem that you face around the IP blocks issues. So as I said, we have some stewards on the room. They tell us like there is a global IP block exemption. You can actually ask from them. So you can create multiple accounts for your events. Number two, there is, I think, a program called Wizard. They can tell us a little bit more about that. Then what stewards can do and it's one of the solutions to help you. You can reach out to them, they can help you. Then also be happy to hear how can stewards help on this and who else could help. So this is now the open discussion where we all together with the stewards have to intermingo discuss about this. So maybe to kick off the discussion who have ever experienced the IP blocking issues. Hands up. Oh, I'm so happy that many hands are up. I'm not happy that it's a good thing, but I'm happy that it's something that exists and it needs discussion. Maybe now I'll be welcoming some questions from participants or event organizers or participants who have ever experienced this. That question should be going to the stewards so they can help us. Why would that happen? Any question? You all said you experienced. What was your case? Maybe you can ask like maybe I just saw my account was broke. I didn't know. Oh, you have been, your IP is broke. I didn't know why. This is the time we have to ask for the stewards to help us. Please welcome. Oh, I need some mics. Thank you, Sandra. And also before you contribute, thank you all who are joining online. Please welcome. You are free to ask anything. Maybe on the chat and our comms team will be happy to read for us. Welcome, please. Okay, thank you. My name is Obi Ezilu. I'm from Nigeria. My case is... I was about organizing an event. I've already done the introduction just like you did. And I did a little training with my students and I asked them, I taught them how to create account. As I was about teaching them with my own space, I got a notice your account has been blocked. It was so embarrassing. I didn't know what to do. And what I did was to sit down and calm myself not to be angry and not to show my embarrassment to my students. And after some minutes, I logged out, I shut down the computer and I tried to tell them that everybody should hold on, that there's a problem, but they should keep calm, it will be solved. I tried calling some people that I know. But I noticed that after like three minutes, I on my laptop when the person I was trying to reach answered the call and I logged in. I noticed I didn't see the sign, the pop-up again. So I was kind of confused in the first place because I know I saw it and all of a sudden I'm not seeing it again. So something must have happened. I don't know what happened, but I know I really can't explain what happened. And since that time I've been very, very careful. So what could have been the problem? As a question. Thank you so much for that question. I see a hand from, oh, multiple field. Maybe two floor lanes, then we take two questions, then I welcome the... It is just a quick follow-up question for Obie. Can you say if the first attempt you did was on a computer using Wi-Fi in the room and if the second attempt was on your cell phone using 3G or 4G? It was only computer. I don't know how to use the mobile phone. I prefer my laptop. So it's Wi-Fi. Okay, thank you for the clarification. So I'll be welcoming the stewards. Anyone ready? Then I'll be coming back to you, Felix and Nidumi Sani. Hi, I'm Dudu from Malaysia User Group. I've been doing meetups in my country around 30, 40 plus meetups and then most of the time, most of our time were wasted because of the IP blocks. In the first two hours of the meetups and we only have like one hour left given for us, ranges from everything you name it. We use the school IP address. It gets blocked, not me, but especially the new students, they got blocked. They cannot create because the school IP address got blocked. I asked them to use their mobile phone, use their own 3G chattering. Some works, but in some instant cases, even two or three cases, even that one got blocked as well. So I really have no idea, I mean, how to do this wiki media outreach when we spend so much time preparing for this meetup and then on the day itself when teachers, students, everyone is here then we cannot do anything in which we don't even know where is the SOS button to ask for help with immediate answer right on the spot. And also last week in my apartment's Wi-Fi, I tried to log in, I log into my username, log in already, but then when I want to edit an account, an article in English wiki pedia, I receive this IP address has been blocked from editing wiki pedia because the IP address that you are currently using has been blocked because it is believed to be used by peer-to-peer proxy service. I tried to ask for unblocking because there is a template below, but that one got rejected. So only after three, four days then it was unblocked automatically naturally just like that. So I mean, where to ask for help for all of this thing? I mean, there are so many problems. All right, thank you. So now the mic will be going to the stewards to answer the three questions that have been asked, then we'll again come back. Welcome, Martin. Hello, Martin from Berlin, Germany, being a steward for 15 plus years. And of course, know the situation. I have talked with a couple of users about this and from the experience shared so far, I think we have to be more clear what are the exact cases who can help and when that's the stewards. So I was hearing a couple of problems with creating accounts. This is throttled limited by the media wiki software itself to six per IP address per day. This is not related to any kind of administrator steward. That's a decision by media wiki developers whatsoever to limit the number of accounts created by an IP address. Four reasons of spamming creating mass accounts, mass abuse, et cetera. And so there's a good reason to have that and I'm pretty sure that this will not be changed easily. So what to do about that? Of course, foundation is aware of events where accounts need to be created and for that reason event organizers are asked to have the accounts created by the pupils beforehand before they come to that place because just as Andrew was asking, if you do this in a different mobile net or a different Wi-Fi or the different IP address you can create your own account but not for the other ones. One solution. Other solution, not the easiest one is asking before that event to get the IP address of the venue where you do this white listed for a specific time. You have to submit a fabricator ticket at least two weeks in advance and those who are already out of that say, I won't do that myself either so I don't consider this to be a solution. I just say what solutions are offered not if they are good ones. And third one is administrators and everyone who needs to be lifted from such limitations and there is no rate limit user right which prevents or removes the six per day limit. Every administrator on any Wikimedia project has that right automatically. So if you're an administrator on your local language Wikipedia you can create accounts for all your pupils or all the trainees at the event. Of course that's still not so nice. The experience would be better if the people would create the accounts themselves which is why I would recommend the first way to ask them to create these before the event which requires additional communications how to do that, I know. But yeah, well that's the ad hoc solution for the problems there. So if you have administrator rights somewhere do that. Hind, admin rights on test wiki for example is pretty easily given out or test 2 wiki or whatsoever. So prepare yourself if you're a trainer. What else? Thank you Mati. We're still at the first of the three problems. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry. So yes, so and yes that's the one I wanted to say that accounts can be, we have global accounts yes thanks to 2008 and 2015 when we had the single user login finalization so that if you create an account on a local wiki or a local language wiki it can also be used on comments on English Wikipedia etc. So even if you're just an administrator on a smaller project the accounts that you create will be available on all the wikis. So that's the part of limitations on account creation which has nothing to do with stewards. So if you experience a block that you were talking about this seems to be a local block on English Wikipedia it's provided with the local message on your user talk page and the procedures how to do that. If the procedures are good or not on English Wikipedia that's not on security duty. And there are reasons why peer to peer proxies are blocked. They were mentioned in this talk so it's okay there is the policy that says it's not good to have that because of possible abuse and this is handled differently on local wikimedia projects as well as stewards. Stewards also block IP addresses on a global level and in our block messages there is a contact form how to reach out to us as mentioned we are working on a wizard which hopefully also easy finds complaints about global blocks. So we are aware of the situation we try to do that to improve that including the complainment process. But sadly obviously most of the problems arise from the limitations of registrations and local blocks. Stewards only have a say in global blocks. Thank you Martin. One little addition from colleague. Welcome Johnny. Hello my name is John I'm also a steward and I just wanted to add a little bit to that as well for methods to perhaps avoid. You have your event and some people can't create accounts because either you reach a limit or there's a block whatever it may be. So what you can do perhaps is again as beforehand you can have the administrators and they can create the accounts ahead of time. Whether you have a form or sign up sheet you can collect the emails and then when you create the account exactly interface called special create account and so I can create account for a new user and then it sends in the password by email kind of thing. So if you hit that six rate limit on the English Wikipedia for example there's a right called account creator where you can bypass that rate limit of six per 24 hours as well as any administrator and any project can do that as well. So my advice would be to try to do as many as you can before and if people run into issues where they have a blocked IP at home for some reason then you can perhaps on the event day address or create with a different IP at the actual event rather than the home. I don't think anything else. I remember I think a colleague mentioned that you did an event. Was it at a school and there was a block? So with schools even when I was in high school all it takes is one person to go and write something silly and then they're going to block the entire school. And generally this happens at the local level English Wikipedia and it's pretty standard but as a part of that usually they can tell it's a school that has the IP and they do what's called an anonymous only block. So what that means is that only people that are not logged in cannot edit. If you have an account and you are logged in you should not be impacted by that block. So generally best practices when it's like kind of a shared IP there's like a university or other educational institution it is an anonymous only block so if you have an account beforehand or created elsewhere like at a home Wi-Fi or something like that or even sell your Wi-Fi or internet then you can avoid that. So it's one of those messages that tells you the conditions of the block whether it's anonymous only or not and that applies to both local and global blocks. You know if let's say for example us as stewards we see like a range block we have to do a range block where a lot of abuse or something like that but there are legitimate editors on that range. What we would do in that instance is we do it anonymous only right so that the people that are already editing on that range can continue editing but then the problem is is that it's a balance because the abuse is so bad we have to put a block in but then we can't have new accounts made they have to request it you know kind of whether it's through an admin or another trusted user on the project or you know reach out to stewards so we can you know help them have an account and not edit. Because of the limitations of the software. Correct. So we have asked for there are some limitations in the media wiki software currently we have some tickets that we have requested since I mean 2015 2010 2008 for improvements so that we can kind of whitelist so like let's say we brought a huge range right and there's this portion of IPs that should not be blocked we can't choose to exempt this portion it has to be the whole thing it's so it's all or nothing in some instances which causes us problems because sometimes we can identify like oh this particular sub range isn't an issue so there are limitations in the software that do impact our ability to have this be optimal and we are working with those limitations so we can kind of have everything in balance and in check but obviously no block will be perfect because everybody can be impacted because there are legitimate users that try to edit every day and they get caught because of preventative blocks put in place to prevent abuse that has been occurring on these IP addresses or ranges and I'm happy to answer even further questions just got to explain or clarify any details as well because it is a complex topic there's local global and then there's limitations of the software as well and we all have to work together to make sure that we can optimize that participation because we want people to edit that's what we're all here for right we don't want anybody to be caught in a block but at the same time the processes can be improved and we are working to improve them with the wizard to help you identify what the reason is behind the block and we are also working with the foundation as well to make sure that the tools are in place so that this is better addressed moving forward and this is a continuing dialogue that we have thank you thank you so much John thank you alright so here is what is for us we have some online people I hope Winnie do we have any comment from online participants before I okay so no alright thank you so I'll be welcoming you more questions I saw a hand from Felix Dumisan then there will come there so now the time is almost coming to an end so I'll collect all the questions and maybe stewards will help to answer some of them I know this could have been like three hour discussion or two hours but we have just 30 minutes and now 12 minutes are remaining so welcome Felix then Dumisan then my brother there then we'll come here I think he answered my question my question was going to be on the range why the block every IP in the range even when they know setting IPs good enough to be like retained and he did mention there's a limitation in the software I think he pretty much answered that but I think the question the next question I have is for the whole room and I think we've been complaining about this speaking about this a lot but I don't think enough is being done about it so the question for me is what do we do as a collective about this problem because it's hurting what we do as we comedians thank you question number one what do we do from Felix then next Dumisan what do you say I just want to comment so you just can't go per question I'll comment later I have some advice for think so you can do first I think Felix he didn't say that they've solved the thing he said that there's a limitation on the software he said that they've asked for a tool in 2008 you said for being able to work on a sub range so us as stewards we have requested so there's a system fabricator where you can request software improvements or report bugs with the media wiki software and we have requested some improvements to make us handling but us like to the global blocking tools for example right so let's say there's an abuse on a large range for example and we want to exempt let's say either one IP or a range of IPs within that larger range currently that's technically impossible with the media wiki software they have not made the changes to allow us to do that so what we're faced with is we have to in a global block situation if it's a hard block that's what we call it when you anybody can't edit so it's not just locked out users we have to add let's say global IP block exemption so there is a request page on meta wiki but this is where you can request that but that also depends on if the IP is unblocked on meta or not because it could was very well also be blocked on meta if an IP is blocked on meta it's generally for a good reason we generally try not to block both globally and on meta unless there is persistent abuse that justifies a meta block but yes to clarify where was the request made or have been request made over the course of over 8 years that we've requested to improve some software so that we could that's where I was coming in this is really an issue for us especially in Africa because unfortunately when these IP were being assigned as you know we were the last to be assigned the IP addresses and we got assigned a very specific small portion of those IP addresses so the service providers have to hop us onto different IP addresses not because we chose that and we know the world is not going to move on to IP6 anytime soon so we are left with this situation which we didn't create which is making our editing lives a horrible thing so what can we do to help you get the tools that you need to get that because I think it would really solve something if it doesn't make sense to block the whole range when you can actually select a specific range well that's the general problem of popularity votes like community wish list it's like of course as I said I'm doing this for a couple of years and I tried various ways to get tools prioritization with foundation a couple of times in various documents and at various places etc etc it's really like they even have been tools teams like admin tools development and such but places like community wish list where the 35 stewards that are out there are the community who can evaluate if that's a good thing for us or not and no one else understands the impact more or less it's really a problem so I co-created the Wikimedia Studios user group so that we can more easily get grants to hire our own developers but as you can imagine it's not so easy to manage getting people on board etc especially with a small user group we are only small user group as well so it's like personally I don't think that community wish list is the right place for that I personally don't think that hiring our own developers really makes sense it is foundation task to provide a useful software foundation for anyone to add it and with the recent annual plan moderator tools etc there are some steps in that direction to also work on technical improvements that at first look seem to only affect a couple of users as but the impact our work has especially on blocks or administrators in general have has to be evaluated at a different place and I'm still here I'm not yet gone as a steward because I really dislike the situation we are in that we don't have the tools we need and I have a little hope now with the steps we have right now and the conversations with the foundation that some development will happen but we are talking to foundation and I think we are the only ones who actually can because we know the technology behind that and I don't know what would you say should we ask for support endorsements at some point for some stuff maybe that would help we will definitely take that back to our group and integrate that into our conversations and have the feeling right now foundation understands that there is a problem and that they should listen to stewards what they need to reduce the problems and I know some people want to talk about that as well thank you so much Martin so what I'm going to do is I saw some hands I'm going to go next hand so it's going to be steward round table eventually so I'm not asking a question but it might be useful to share at the local administrator level I'm Young Jin as you know and I'm administrator at Oversight in Korea and Wikipedia so what's the problem with that I'm just going to share what's the problem with the IP address range blocking because like in South Korea there is specific fundamentalism IPs it's going to be a little bit tricky but they are like doing this in IPv6 and there's IPv6 like 2001, 2D8 and there's lots of varieties so like if we block the range it is not possible to block the range and it is possible to evade themselves by disconnecting and connecting the cellular data so it has like the other side effect if you not block it it has like the preventive fundamentalism but the other mischirators are aware of that if you are blocking the wide range it's going to be having false positives a lot like my examples of the 2001, 2D8, blah blah blah that's like kind of the I don't think that's going to be effective to like the blocking like that but I just like to make logs to block specific IPs even I know they're evading that's my right wiki situation but that's I think good to know to be for that and I just like to hear observed like about the meeting 40 seconds sorry yeah meetings and like I can give you advice it's like the coordinate to whatever committee or the administrators if you have any connections to it it is more main easier to get like in this small wikis because I think in English wikipedia has large and large process but like even going smaller wikis it might be easier as long as administrator is active it is easier to cooperate yeah that's what I was building when I was doing thank you the mic should go here then we have like less than 3 minutes so well I'll try to make my remarks short and I want to face the room when I talk because I've been in this on the other side perhaps even more closely than Martin and John have I'm Daniel Case, I'm an administrator in the English wikipedia and I'm looking at faces that are probably behind quite a few unblocked that may be behind a few unblocked declines where I've just basically had to say procedural decline you're not directly blocked you may not be responsible for this but it's probably hard it's hard enough to lift those open proxy blocks that you have to really know your tech and network stuff so I often refer people to the IPEC proxy page where you can submit a request through email to get IP block exemption on the English wikipedia we used to administrators used to be able to give it out but someone gave it out once like too many party favors and well we can't have nice things anymore yes all this administrators do have the right to give out IP block exemption but I've only given it out to people who've had it before prove that they're here for good reasons and I feel I can say it was a good call on my port or people I know who've edited for years that I can trust and I don't know there have been people complaining about how much time that list takes to answer the other suggestions I have is sometimes if you're on a VPN which I know some people may need to be on to edit from where they are turn the VPN off that sometimes solves the problem but you have to wait a day or two for the DNS to update other things too we have discussed on community wish list the idea of putting in instead of blocks being all soft or all hard we could as people have asked what if we only had them apply to everybody who's not an extended confirmed user or apply only to auto confirm or apply to non auto confirmed accounts that would have less effect that would have less of this problem also this is grim confirmation of what I've thought yes these disproportionately affect Africa and I'm thinking of Heather Ford's presentation so a lot of the same faces there and well we were talking there about the causes of these gaps here we have one and believe me this causes me some pain on my end too that I can't do more but I can just suggest supporting the next community wish list request for this kind of spectrum of block hardness and making use of the check users mailing list it is available if I am the one declining your unblocked request when your registered account is behind a proxy that's been blocked I will give you the link and I will tell you it's not your fault but that's all I can do anybody so maybe 10 seconds or something the time was short but I think it's kinda important hi I'm Gargo I'm a media developer I think there is a mindset problem here so in the end IP blocking is a way to prevent people from doing lots of contributions there are other ways of preventing bad people from doing lots of contributions those are more experimental the people who are involved in blocking have been very averse to experimentation so I think part of why we don't have better methods is the foundation hasn't been very interesting in supporting development efforts hopefully changing these days but the other part is that people doing blocking have been very risk averse and that has to change that really has to change because the browser Chrome is working on a feature called Privacy Sandbox it's not very widely known but still has probably heard about this because currently one effect of that is that user agents are harder to access even lesser known feature is that they want to hide IP addresses completely in something like a year so English Wikipedia has taken not our problem stands to IP blocks but it's becoming their problem soon so if you are involved in blocking then please get your communities involved in discussion and in what features can we find to replace IP blocks because we don't have a very long time to figure out something else that works Thanks Thank you so much I really wanted this discussion to continue but the time is over I'd like to use this chance maybe to welcome Bobby are you still online to say something and Toshi to say bye Welcome Yes, thank you so much colleagues for this discussion actually I said there's a lot to be said it's just limited time so please let's continue with this conversations the people that are administrators there please don't run away from us we want to take to have these conversations more to you Toshi Thank you Bobby Thank you everyone for joining the session we actually do wish that we had so much time because it's really a present topic so there's still words everyone involved please if we call on to you kindly come to our aid and let's work together in any way possible wherever we can assist as a community we're happy to help please do reach out to us as well because we're all in this together Thank you very much everyone Thank you so much Bobby and Toshi Yes so we still have sub time wiki mania is ending in 20th so maybe when we bump on the corridors we can continue talking so for this I'd like to thank much all of you who are here and the stewards for joining us and for clarifying some of the questions so yeah that's it thank you and see you around