Ragib Hasan wrote:
Since many users are not familiar with editing, the
workshop
involves showing them how to create an account, [...]
However, it came to our notice that from a single IP address, no
more than 6 new accounts could be created.
As a technical solution (and this is why I'm moving this
discussion to wikitech-l) to aid this social process, I think it
could be useful if one user could "sponsor" or "adopt" (i.e.
become the "parent" of) a newcomer. Then the teacher in such a
scenario could be the "sponsor" of 20 new accounts, and the limit
of 6 new accounts per IP address would only need to apply to
non-sponsored (or "orphan") new accounts. As the newcomer gets
older and more mature, the sponsorship link could be dropped.
People trying to contact the newcomer, would be directed to the
parent/sponsor. Or messages to the newcomer would be copied to
the parent/sponsor.
The ability to sponsor new accounts should perhaps be limited to
admins or some other trusted class of users. There could also be
a limit in numbers, so that one teacher could sponsor 50 newcomers
but not 500.
I think this feature could be useful both in WMF projects and when
MediaWiki is used for other (educational) type situations.
Has this been tried?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se