Throttling (was: Re: Please can someone put 50p in the meter) - Wikimedia-l

14 Oct 2012

Can I second this one, we've run into it occasionally in WMAU outreach
sessions as well, and it's always fun explaining why it's said "no" to
someone without a foundation in computers or internet culture.  A brief
explanation of why it's happened and what to do in order to not lose your
edit, made in simple language, would be lovely.

We do find that the best way to get around the account creation throttle is
to get people to create their accounts beforehand.  In a given class,
there's usually one or two who don't get the message or are unable to do
it, but they can usually be dealt with by the instructor without triggering
anything.

Cheers,
Craig

Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:33:54 +0100
...
  From: Andrew Gray &lt;shimgray(a)gmail.com&gt;
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;rg>,
         Philippe Beaudette &lt;pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org&gt;
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please can someone put 50p in the meter
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 I evade account creation by always making them log in first...

 Periodically, with a roomful of users, we'll get told that an edit has been
 "throttled"; no further details, I think. It seems to happen with one or at
 most two editors at a time out of a dozen, but it can happen to different
 people later on. This happened several times in a couple of weeks in the
 summer (I only started workshops in June), and then occasionally since -
 including yesterday. I originally assumed it was related to external-link
 additions by new users, but I've seen it for no-link sandbox edits as well.

 My guess is that this entails something to do with checking for multiple
 edits from the same IP at once, but I don't know if this is actually the
 reason, or if it can be disabled/whitelisted.

 (It's the one I give, though! Corrections gratefully appreciated)

 - Andrew.
 On 13 Oct 2012 17:25, "Philippe Beaudette" &lt;philippe(a)wikimedia.org&gt;
wrote:

  On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 9:07 AM,
WereSpielChequers
 &lt;werespielchequers(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
 > As it is this combined with the "throttling feature" made for
 > quite a bit of disruption to a session where we had ten people having  an

introduction to editing. 
 By "throttling feature", do you mean the account creation
 restrictions?  If so, you know there are ways around that, right?
 Email me offlist, so as not to clutter the list, and I'll give you a
 pointer.

 If you mean something different, disregard :)

 pb
 ___________________
 Philippe Beaudette
 Director, Community Advocacy
 Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

 415-839-6885, x 6643

 philippe(a)wikimedia.org

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