User talk:152.1.56.85

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School IP address Attention:

This IP address, 152.1.56.85, is registered to North Carolina State University and may be shared by multiple users of an educational institution. If the institution uses proxy servers, this IP address may in fact represent many users at many physical computers.

For this reason a message intended for one person may be received by another. Similarly an innocent user may be blocked for another user's vandalism. If you are editing from this address and are frustrated by irrelevant messages, you can avoid them by creating an account for yourself. In some cases you may temporarily be unable to create an account due to efforts to fight vandalism; if so, please read our advice on this situation.

Caution should be used when blocking this IP or reverting its contributions without checking - if a block is needed, administrators should consider a soft block with the template {{schoolblock|optional comment}} as the block reason.

Note: In the event of persistent vandalism from this IP address, anonymous editing may be disabled for up to 1 year at a time. Abuse reports may also be forwarded to your school administration for investigation.
School staff who want to monitor vandalism from this IP address can subscribe to a web feed of this page in either RSS or Atom format.


[edit] February 2007

Hi, the recent edit you made to Hostility has been reverted, as it appears to be unconstructive. Use the sandbox for testing; if you believe the edit was constructive, ensure that you provide an informative edit summary. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thanks – Qxz 18:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: 152.1.x.x IP Addresses

When sending messages to users who are on these (or other shared IP addresses) be aware that these IP addresses are used by the UNC system. In fact, the 152.1.x.x ip address you recently sent a message to appeared on a lab machine. Obviously the person who vandalized the "Hostility" article was no longer using it. While I'm not offended by receiving an effectively meaningless message, it's probably a waste of your time to try to message this set of IP addresses.

ResNET (the NCSU and UNC ISP's) do take improper and malicious use of school owned networks somewhat seriously. If you notice vandalism please contact resnet@ncsu.edu or help@ncsu.edu with the IP address and time of the post. If it is a dorm computer, they'll know who it was immediately. If it was a lab machine, the login information will tell them who it is. Likely at best they will simply send the user a warning email. This, however, would probably be enough to scare some of the students.

More serious forms of vandalism, such as threats, would likely result in either the student losing access or even a student-conduct hearing. Hope this info helps you. It applies to pretty much any IP used by universities.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.1.56.85 (talk) 21:38, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

The message is not recent. I sent it ten months ago, when your IP address was assigned to someone else – Gurch 21:45, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Hahaha, seriously? It JUST showed up on the machine now. Anyways, I would suggest the rout of contacting resnet/university IT when it does happen. Much more satisfying results. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.1.56.85 (talk) 21:46, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Look at the date stamp. Presumably the "new messages" bar showed up because it was never read by the original recipient, but it has been there nevertheless. Anyway, I don't have time to consult a list of IP ranges and start sending emails every time I want to warn an anonymous user for vandalism; there is simply too much of it. I imagine ResNET would also get pretty annoyed if they started getting emails from me every ten minutes – Gurch 21:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes I saw the date stamp after you mentioned it. I'm not complaining or anything, but it does seem like Wikipedia is able to identify "shared IP adresses" on its own. I persumed that it may inform YOU when you were attempting to use one. Of course I wouldn't expect you to look up every IP address you see, but for ones that are clearly shared- why not just message the ISP instead of the terminal. Messaging a shared IP address is a waste of your time.
Yes, resnet would be annoyed if they received numerous complaints about user abuse. Annoying a state-owned-enterprise is usually the best way to get something changed though. Anyways, I'm not attacking your diligence, just thought I was making a helpful suggestion. This isn't something intended to be hostile or anything.
There's a bot that uses some kind of lookup service and tags discussion pages for shared IP addresses – but only after you've warned them. Wikipedia itself doesn't know which are shared and which aren't; it tells you that you are not logged in to encourage you to create an account, but it does that regardless of what your IP address actually is.
Also, messaging a shared IP address isn't necessarily a waste of time. The message is usually posted only a few seconds after the edit to which it pertains. If whoever made the edit is interested in reading the message, they will be notified of it then. If they choose not to read it, then it will appear to whoever uses the address next, yes, which is not ideal -- but that is an inevitable consequence of using IP addresses to identify users, which we are forced to do when they choose not to provide any other information. If it bothers you, simply create an account, and log in before editing; you will then no longer recieve messages not intended for you – Gurch 22:00, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't realize the messaging was so nearly instantaneous. Had I been refreshing other pages besides this talk pages I may have actually noticed that. Ah well, I guess I'd say save the ResNET calls for truly malicious stuff. Still, they really don't mind turning off someone's connectivity. I think they kind of enjoy getting to mess with students.