2019:Thriving in Safety/A more flexible approach to blocking
 | This is an Accepted submission for the Safety space at Wikimania 2019. |
Please have a look at the topics that people want to see in this space before making a submission and describe how your submission connects with those topics.
Description
[edit | edit source]The anti-harassment tools team has been making improvements to the blocking tools. This year we have introduced partial blocks, which allow the blocking of a user or IP from individual pages or namespaces. The tool is already in use on a number of Wikipedias, and will be rolled out to more in the coming months.
We will introduce the partial blocking tool and briefly mention some of the technical challenges that this project involved, as well as some of the more general improvements to blocking that we have been making along the way.
We will then open up the discussion to the room. We would like to talk about the social implications of making technical changes to our blocking tools and the role of blocking as one of our front-line tools to preserve safety in the community.
Relationship to the theme
[edit | edit source]This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:
- Technical solutions to mitigating risks
- Social solutions to mitigating risks
Session outcomes
[edit | edit source]At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:
- Changes to the blocking tools have been communicated
- Discussion has been opened about the social impact of partial blocks
- Discussion has been opened about the place of blocking within our community-preserving measures
Session leader(s)
[edit | edit source]Thalia Chan, WMF Anti-Harassment Tools
Session type
[edit | edit source]Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:
- Workshop discussion
Requirements
[edit | edit source]The session will work best with these conditions:
- Room (Please be aware that the main room available will be a 30 person board room. We can try and arrange for other rooms, but cannot guarantee success):
- Audience:
- Recording: