Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals

Welcome to the Proposals reading room. On this page, Wikibookians are free to talk about suggestions for improving Wikibooks.

question: IP contributors IP address

Hi all, I am new here at Wikibooks (well sort of, its a long story). I clicked the Reading room forum and was surprised to find so many choices, none of which suit my purpose for posting my question, so I hope you will forgive me if I posted to the wrong forum.

Anyway, here is my question: I was looking at the contribution history of a page (Israeli History, I think?) and noticed it was created by an IP. I then clicked the contributions of this IP and thought I would try out the Geolocate button at the bottom of that page. To my surprise I was directed to ip2location. com which hung on my request. Just wondering if this is the correct website for a geolocate? Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 16:54, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

BTW is everybody here also seeing the following text after my post:

• "Conversion Failed due to timeout or non zero exit code" - Maybe I made a mistake?"

Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 17:01, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Ottawahitech! The geolocate link works just fine for me. Additionally, I am seeing that text, but it's just from a footnote someone added above. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 21:04, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kittycataclysm thanks for replying. Additionally I am wondering why the Geolocate link on this project (ENWB) leads to ip2location. com and not to whatismyipaddress. com, which is normally the link that wikimedia projects such as the English wikipedia link to Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 14:48, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Good question! I'm unfortunately not sure. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 02:09, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kittycataclysm / anyone one else: From what I gather interface-admins control this type of thing, I think? Who are the interface-admins on WB? btw is there a list of functionaries on WB?

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 14:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

You can check out Wikibooks:Administrators, which should have a list of all the functionaries. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 15:25, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kittycataclysm, I love the link you provided above which includes not only the current list all Administrators/ Interface administrators/ Bureaucrats (None at this time)/ CheckUsers/ Non-regular administrators, but also a timeline of clickable functionaries right from day 1 of wikibooks. It is a great way to study the historical development of ENWB.

Is there also a list of all successful/unsuceesful Requests for Adminship somewhere? Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 17:12, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech Unfortunately, that I'm not sure about. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 18:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech:, there are many websites that can do this geolocation for you (an internet search should tell you some). In addition, the IP information tool, available to the majority of users, will tell you the country. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 18:07, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard: Thanks for replying. I see from the link supplied by @Kittycataclysm above that you are an interface admin here on the English Wikibooks, so would like to ask you directly why you chose ip2location instead of the traditional whatismyipaddress. What sort of criteria do you use in deciding what WHOIS service to use? I am asking because, for privacy reasons, I always hesitate before clicking certain external links.

Additionally when I click the IP information tool on META which you link to above I get the following text:

• This page doesn't currently exist; you can search this title in other pages or edit this page. If you recently created this page, try purging the server cache or searching the deletion log. [btw I cannot follow some of these directions such as editing this page on META since I am infinitely blocked there]

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 16:05, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech:, the ip2location tool was there long ago - I had no part in choosing it and I think it was there before I even had joined Wikibooks. Regarding your other question, can you try meta:IP_Editing:_Privacy_Enhancement_and_Abuse_Mitigation/IP_Info_feature? Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 16:12, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard: Thank you!

I have looked at the META page you linked to briefly, and it appears that since 2020 the staff of the Wikimedia foundation has been working on this large project with the goal of making "it easier for admins, vandal fighters and power users to access information about IP addresses." Even though the name of the project implies more privacy protection for contributors, I see nothing in the introduction talking about this aspect of the project. This is not surprising to me since I find most META documentation lacking in clarity, and contradictory. YMMV

Seems to me that the wikimedia movement has created a whole industry dedicated to fighting vandalism, to the detriment of improving content building. Of course I do not belong to the three groups above, so may not appreciate the importance of these initiatives. I would like to hear what others have to say about this. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 20:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

For those interested in this topic, I happened to bump into a wikipedia article that explains what Geolocate means:

• w:Internet geolocation.

Ottawahitech (discuss • contribs) 16:44, 27 March 2024 (UTC)