Help talk:Range blocks

Doesn't belong in PD Help
I would argue that it doesn't belong in Project:PD help because..

"The idea [ofProject:PD help] is to provide a set of pages which can be copied into a fresh wiki installation, or included in the mediawiki distribution. This will include basic user information and other Meta information, in a reasonably concise form. The basic concept is to create a compressed user guide"

Until somebody contributes a basic howto for blocking users and (single) IP addresses, this page looks very out of place. But I'm unclear/undecided as to whether this help project should include any help for 'sysop' users, let alone this level of detail. If we had a "Help:Blocking" page for sysops. Perhaps that could then have an external link to this detailed "Range blocks" information, if we had it here in the Manual namespace.

-- Harry Wood 16:48, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


 * No, the manual is for wiki configuration and administration. The help pages are for "generic site help for MediaWiki site users, including all site roles such as Anonymous, WikiSysop, Admin, Bureaucrat, User". Range blocking is a wiki-admin task, not a server-admin task. If you notice we're missing help pages, start them. :) — Pathoschild 05:47:28, 05 November 2007 (UTC)

Special:Blockip
I have changed the references to "Special:Blockip" to read simply "Special:Block", the first is an alias for the second and one could easily think one is not on the right page. You block from the block page, period. My edit summary got a little dorked when I hit enter mid entry; thus the explanation here.--Doug 09:36, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

count error of Total addresses of some IP range?
--Planetoid 09:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Total addresses of 69.208.0.0/12 is 1,048,576 which equal to 2^20
 * Is total addresses of 69.208.0.0/11 should be equal to 2^21 (2,097,152) not 2,197,152 on the page?
 * fixed. Bawolff 09:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

IPv6?
The page does not describe IPv6 range blocks - ever so necessary on instances of MediaWiki needing IPv6, like the ARIN IPv6 wiki.Jasper Deng 23:28, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I can write a description of IPv6 CIDR-range blocks fu (talk) 18:24, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That was long ago; there's no a description.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

"Non-technical explanation"
I have to say that the "non-technical explanation" is extremely poorly-worded. For example:


 * Of each block of 4 numbers, only two can be assigned to a computer. The first and last numbers of any block are reserved for network communication. These are level 30 blocks and can be expressed like this:


 * 148.20.57.0/30, or
 * 148.20.57.4/30, or
 * 148.20.57.8/30, etc.

Level? Levels of what? Why 30? Why does "level 30" only apply to the first and last numbers in a block? And so on. Yes, I know that it's explained later in the bit about CIDR numbers; but this "non-technical" phrasing poses more questions than it answers, and badly needs rewriting. Thanks. —  Scott  •  talk  23:23, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

This section has a separate issue of using the word "block" to both mean "a ban/restriction" (e.g. "and you want to block the range assigned") and "a group" (e.g. "are broken up into blocks of numbers"). — masamunemaniac (talk) 11:37, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Helpless
This page is so helpless!