Aim

How might we present relevant information to the block creator, about the potential collateral damage from the block they are in the process of making?

Background

In order to create a design/prototype, we would first like to understand what IP information is most important and relevant to functionaries when they make an IP or IP range block. We will start by having a walkthrough of Special:Block with a Steward.

Research questions

1. Can you walk us through a time when you needed to place an IP range block and you had to consider IP information?
2. What information do you consider to be most important and why?
   • Users associated with the IP/range about to be blocked
   • Devices associated with the IP/range
   • Edits associated with the IP/range
   • Pageviews associated with the IP/range
   • General location for the range
   • If that region is impacted by CGNAT (if we can find this information)
   • Prior blocks to this range (could indicate if this is a known problem)
   • If the IP or IP range is blocked on other wikis (including if it is globally blocked)
   • Proxy blocks information
   • Organization
   • Contributions (edits, deleted edits)
   • Impact on the wiki based on real world editing and/or readership metrics
   • IP range calculator tool from CheckUser

3. Do you think Admins would understand IP information and use it to inform block decision-making?

Key findings (notes)

• They had concerns about who should see the IP information on Special:Block (particularly the number of users on a range, even if it's bucketed).
• They rarely use Special:Block, preferring to use All in One due to the interface containing all the necessary tools.
• We should focus on showing things that may dissuade users from blocking (e.g. number of users) rather than all the information already shown on Special:Contributions in IP info (such as Organization and Contributions).
• Displaying if the IP or IP range is blocked on other wikis (including if it is globally blocked) would be highly valuable: “I open Bullseye whenever I want to check this, because there's no CentralAuth-equivalent to see if a range is blocked on other wikis.”
• They thought that most non-CU admins would be unfamiliar with IP information / not understand it. However they also pointed out that Stewards and Checkusers are the users who perform the most IP range blocks.

Next steps

In order to check assumptions (and the above findings) with a wide range of users, we'll create a simple survey to share with Stewards and Admins.