Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Requesting a temporary lift of the IP account creation cap

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• Requesting a temporary lift of the IP account creation
• ...

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• At outreach events, multiple users may be creating accounts using the same IP address. Currently, on Wikimedia projects the number of accounts that can be created in a 24-hour period from a single IP is limited to six, so a request to lift this cap may be required.

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At outreach events, multiple users may be creating accounts using the same IP address. Currently, on Wikimedia projects the number of accounts that can be created in a 24-hour period from a single IP is limited to six, so a request to lift this cap may be required.

When requesting a lift of the IP cap, it is important you obtain the public-facing IP address of the location the event is going to be held in. If the address given to you begins with 10. or 192.168., or is within the range 172.16.0.0 and 172.31.255.255 then this is the location's internal address, and is not usable for the request. Websites such as https://www.whatismyip.com/ are helpful in obtaining the correct IP address.

While there are alternatives which make it easy to create accounts beyond the limit, there are sometimes situations where it would be preferable to open an IP to allow registering in a standard way and to avoid incurring in edit rate limits, especially for events with hundreds of attendees. What follows is the procedure to request a temporary lift of the account creation cap on a specific IP for an outreach event. Please consider if it's really necessary to take this more bureaucratic way.

1. File a task in Wikimedia's bug tracker for the site request. Add "Wikimedia-Site-requests" as a project. Include the following information:

• • • The event time frame (start and end) of your event, and the time zone you expressed the hours (local or UTC)
    • The IPs to allow (you may have to contact the venue organization to learn this information)
    • The expected number of people to attend the event
    • The list of wikis (don't forget sister projects like Commons) you wish to allow account creation on (think to side wikis like Commons)
    • A link to the Wiki page discussing the event or, if there is no such page, a link to your user page on your primary wiki

2. It is highly recommended to do this several days in advance, even if you don't know the IP yet. If filed on short notice, find a sysadmin to assist by going to the IRC channel #wikimedia-tech

Samuel Tarling, Tech Ambassador