On Feb 4, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Tim Starling wrote: East718's actions seem to me a well-intentioned if somewhat hasty response to an accidental main page deletion that happened because of a misunderstood joke in #wikipedia-en-admins. (One user inadvertently led another user to believe that deleting the main page was now impossible, and suggested he try it to see. User #1 thought User #2 knew he was joking, User #2 did not know that #1 was joking, and non- hilarity ensued.) It was a dumb and overreacting solution, but it was well-intentioned and largely harmless (as I don't think the page history of the main page is all that interesting.) And it does help protect against the really bad admin vandalism where important pages are history merged (as opposed to an important page and a trivial user subpage) - a security hole that has been existent for years and remains an easy way for somebody to do substantially irritating damage to the project. Still probably unwise, but not insta-desysop material. -Phil

WP:IAR is - at least in my opinion - an emergency action. If there's time to collaborate and get other opinions, then IAR needs to be invoked carefully. Deleting the main page (to see if it can be done!) was a horribly hasty action to take. Shouldna' happened. Discipline of some type is in order. I'm not sure if I could advocate a "forever" de-sysop for it, but I'm sure thinking long and hard about it. Who in their right mind thinks "hey! I wonder if I can delete the main page?" and then TRIES it without asking around a bit? Even with the very best of intentions, this is the type of ill-reasoned action that scares the hell out of me. Philippe -------------------------------------------------- From: "Tim Starling" <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 11:31 PM To: <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]

Navou, I've noticed a pattern emerging in your posts. I've taken the liberty of disambiguating all of the pronouns and such. On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: I obviously don't have a black belt in civility either, but I do know "garbage" is a needlessly inflammatory way to describe somebody's idea. On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: If you respected him, you would find a better word than "garbage" to describe his idea, and you wouldn't continue to criticize him at every step. On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: I see more jabs interspersed with lip-service. On 2/4/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: Did you express any of these concerns when the other method was used? —C.W.

I hit the send button too soon. Thank you CW. Let me see if I can't help you debate the stuff, instead of debating the people here. I'll try to work through the logical fallacies, but I ask in the future we keep them to a minimum. To your points: 1) I don't think there was a civility issue here. I criticized the idea as garbage, and I wholeheartedly believe it is. 2) The intent behind the follow up message was to inform Tim and the readership that I was separating Tim's idea from Tim. Tim is a good faith contributor to the project in many ways. Having a garbage idea is ok. It is allowed. It does not make anyone less faithful to the project. 3) I want to encourage posting to folks talk pages rather than asking for desysoppings. I want to encourage dispute resolution. This was not jabbish or lipservice. 4) I did not express a concern regarding the injection of null edits into the main page, I do express concern with changing the code of MediaWiki. This list however may not be the proper venue. Your characterization of my behavior in no way delegitimizes my argument. Try not to poison the well here. Regards, Nathan (Navou) -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Charlotte Webb Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 3:29 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages] Navou, I've noticed a pattern emerging in your posts. I've taken the liberty of disambiguating all of the pronouns and such. On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: I obviously don't have a black belt in civility either, but I do know "garbage" is a needlessly inflammatory way to describe somebody's idea. On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: If you respected him, you would find a better word than "garbage" to describe his idea, and you wouldn't continue to criticize him at every step. On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: seeing On 2/3/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: [east718] I see more jabs interspersed with lip-service. On 2/4/08, NavouWiki <navouwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: Did you express any of these concerns when the other method was used? -C.W. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On Feb 5, 2008 11:02 AM, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote: The real problem is that page histories can be irretrievably merged by an admin (both as an act of vandalism and as a good faith mistake). This problem is much more frequent and severe than main page deletion - the main page is merely one place where it can show up.

It makes sense to that end that this stuff should probably not be done. As an aside; Perhaps a post to AN/I so that folks know the standard here. Additionally, has Tim notified east via his talk page? I'm not seeing a block message on Beta's talk either? Dispute resolution would seem to require at least a post on wiki. Nathan -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Carl Beckhorn Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 11:03 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages] On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 03:50:16PM +1100, Tim Starling wrote: I agree that adding the revisions seems to have been done hastily and without enough consultation. For reasons that are probably based on now-historical properties of the wiki, many admins have a deep fear about the main page being deleted. I don't think this one action is enough on its own to warrant removing the sysop bit under the established practices of enwiki. There are admins who have done much more foolish things and not been desysoped. For example, I think the admins whose password was 'password' were allowed to keep their sysop bit once the password was changed. In any case, it would be up to arbcom to decide whether to remove the bit or pursue any other sanctions. Tim, I think your statement here is clear - don't add extra revisions to a page just to prevent it from being deleted. I'm sure this will get announced more widely over the next few days, and hopefully the issue won't come up again for a while. - Carl _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On Feb 4, 2008 10:39 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, you can edit [[MediaWiki:Mainpage]] to say something other than "Main Page" and then you can delete or move [[Main Page]] since it won't be the main page anymore. Angela

On 04/02/2008, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: All MediaWiki pages are, I believe, admin-only. This adds a layer of security-through-hassle, though ;-) (I can understand Tim's annoyance, incidentally, Coming up with an elaborate and cunning hack to take advantage of another elaborate and cunning hack to avoid a very unusual problem is one thing; implementing it on a whim *by causing that very problem* is another...) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 2/5/08, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Erm. So, any admin can delete the main page just by editing a page in the MediaWiki namespace first? So Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion. Steve

On 2/5/08, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: Carcharoth wanted me to post this: "Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion" - I'd say, yes (Angela's workaround was quite clever!), and that this workaround plays down the concern that this is moving against the tradition that admins should be able to use their tools on all pages. I'll ask Risker as well, about posting that link, as I see he has posted there. Carcharoth (talk) 14:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Summ… Steve

On Feb 4, 2008 10:40 AM, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: But it's not very good security against them. It means that their obvious first action (go to Wikipedia, look around for fun things to abuse, see "delete" button, click) is stymied, sure, but that just makes them more obnoxious to track down. It will take a lot longer to notice and they could do considerably more annoying damage than causing the Main Page to vanish for a couple of minutes. Sysops who start deleting a small number of random not-so-large pages (since they can't delete pages with too many revisions) aren't necessarily going to be desysopped immediately. I think a better idea would be to have the plugin not just block the attempt, but also desysop them with a helpful message and log entry. If it was a mistake -- well, no harm done, they can just explain to a bureaucrat or steward and get their sysop rights back within half an hour, probably. If it was malicious -- there goes any ability to cause much damage. This feature seems like it would be best to reserve for wikis that ask for it, either way (but especially if it does desysopping!). The prohibition against moving will be especially likely to confuse wikis that actually want to change their main page for some reason. And this should also be made a proper extension. Currently, in particular, it doesn't seem like it's internationalized, or conceivably could be.