If I remember correctly, in some cases, the school's network admin has specifically requested that the IP be long-term blocked from anonymous editing. I haven't done any abuse reporting here, but I've done so in some other cases. Schools tend to be pretty responsive and helpful, in my experience. On 5/1/07, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

I do not see why we should be at all reluctant to use anon only blocks for a school address. it will not interfere with legitimate editing, and it will discourage the worst of the vandalism, though of course not all. I'd think it should be an early measure, and shouldn't require contact the school at all. Of course, I am talking through my hat, not having first hand experience with this. DGG On 5/2/07, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

The same student vandalized again today. Exact same editing pattern, same time of day, etc. The school network admin has replied to me and will try to find the student. It seems to be the one student responsible for this, over the past 1-2 months and the 1,999 other students there are not a problem. If one or the few students responsible can be stopped, I think it would largely take care of the problem. I also suggested XFF, which I'm willing to work with them on, and willing to be diligent and keep track of the IP. -Aude On 5/2/07, Deathphoenix <originaldeathphoenix(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Aude

Not sure how many computers, but there are ~2000 students which is typical for high schools in the local area. Montgomery County is one of the more affluent jurisdictions in the U.S., so I expect they have well-equiped computer labs. This particular school is not more than 10 years old. Who knows, but maybe some students have their own laptops and use wi-fi at the school. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hubert_Blake_High_School As an aside, I'm having trouble figuring out why I'm not seeing similar vandalism patterns for city schools in Washington, D.C. I wonder if students don't have the same access to computers or what's going on that accounts for this difference. -Aude On 5/2/07, Deathphoenix <originaldeathphoenix(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Deathphoenix wrote: [snip] On the subject of XFF ("X-Forwarded-For") headers, I'd like to note a few important technical details that one should keep in mind: 1. Having a proxy provide XFF headers isn't enough; the address of the proxy also needs to be added to the list of trusted proxies that Wikimedia servers will accept such headers from. That's because such headers would otherwise be trivially easy to fake. To get an address added to the list, you can post a request on [[meta:Talk:XFF project]] or contact a developer with shell access (such as Tim Starling, who's been doing most of the work on the XFF project) directly. 2. One of the requirements for getting a proxy added to the trusted list is that the individual computers behind it have public IP addresses of their own. If the school network is using [[private IP addresses]] internally, XFF headers won't help. 3. Once the address of a proxy has been added to the trusted XFF list, no edits should be seen from that address ever again, and blocking the address of the proxy should have no effect. That's because, as far as MediaWiki is concerned, the edits made via that proxy will no longer be seen as coming from the proxy, but from the IP address of the computer behind the proxy. I'll repeat that, since it's important: Once a proxy is on the trusted XFF list, *any blocks on it will have no effect*. 4. If the computers behind the proxy are public workstations in, say, a school computer lab, XFF headers may not help prevent vandalism much. By making edits from different workstations be seen as coming from different IPs, they may reduce collateral damage from blocking one workstation; but if the vandals can just switch to another computer, this may end up doing more harm than good. At best, they may make tracking down the vandals easier, if the school requires users to log in to workstations and keeps logs of who used which workstation when; this may often be true at college level schools, but much less so at high schools or even elementary schools. That last point is also important; to catch vandals, it's not enough that students log in, it's also necessary to keep a log of who used which workstation when _and_ to make said log available to whoever is tasked with handling network abuse issues. Of course, there are significant privacy issues here that need to be considered too. So, to summarize, XFF headers are only useful for catching school vandals if the school has: 1. their proxy/ies listed in the trusted XFF list, 2. public IP addresses for each workstation, 3. workstations requiring students to log in to use them, 4. a log of who was using which workstation when, and 5. a person with access to said log who can handle complaints. Of course, it should go without saying that the contact information for the person or department responsible for handling net abuse issues must also be easy to find, if it's to do anyone any good. (This is all based on my understanding of the XFF implementation in MediaWiki as it was when I last looked at it. If you find any incorrect or outdated information above, please correct me. To increase the odds of this happening, I've crossposted this to wikitech-l in addition to wikien-l.) -- Ilmari Karonen