Speaking as someone who has made such blocks but only later found out the
off-wiki context, sometimes they're absolutely necessary to prevent
disruption. The people facilitating the event these events (I've done that
too, back in the days when Wikimedia UK actually did stuff) need to be
careful, especially if the event involves multiple people editing a small
group of articles from one IP address because the people who respond to
those edits on-wiki don't know there's an editathon happening if nobody
tells them.
We also see a lot of abuse coming from places like public WiFi hotspots.
University WiFi often gets blocked because of trivial problem edits but
public WiFi hotspots are sometimes used for more sophisticated abuse - for
example, we have problem editors who drive between coffee shops/fast-food
outlets/other places that offer free WiFi solely to evade blocks and make
disruptive (sometimes extremely problematic) edits to Wikipedia.
Harry
On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 8:33 PM Éder Porto <eder.porto(a)wmnobrasil.org>
wrote:
Hello to all,
This point specifically deals with IP blocking actions carried out in
outreach activities, in which newcomers are sumarily blocked, especially in
universities or public spaces (probably because of others that might have
vandalized Wikipedia using that IP address or other reason), affecting the
flow of the events. We will discuss secure forms of implementation of this
type of measures with the Wikimedia Foundation and the teams involved.
Cheers,
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