----- Original Message ----- From: "Sascha Noyes" <sascha-5OWuIOc6HaDk1uMJSBkQmQ(a)public.gmane.org> Newsgroups: gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 6:33 PM Subject: Re: Minor changes by anonymous user Indeed, and in addition, I like to switch off the Minor Changes to watch only for the Bigger Changes, by regular users and ALL CHANGES by anonymous users, among which unluckily are some vandals. If vandals can in some way click this nonexisting box, they can do their hobby unnoticed, at least by me, and other sysops who work in this way. So please, some advice, Elly

E23 wrote: If the bug is that the POST request just simply accepts the wgMinorEdit variable even for anonymous users, then it is pretty trivial to exploit. Just add the checkbox to your edit screens using something like Proxomitron. Timwi

On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 11:30:25AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote: There are serious historical reasons for that. As in older wikis, "minor" on Wikipedia used to mean "don't show in Recent Changes by default". Because of that, there was a lot of vandalism that went unnoticed. So this was introduced as a quick fix. It was not stupid.

I agree with Brion. It is really very stupid to hide the minor edits. --Optim --- Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> wrote: __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/

Brion- On which basis should you be trusted? When you're not logged in, nobody knows that it is you. I've seen quite a few vandals who liked to test Wikipedia's defenses by claiming to make spelling fixes while in reality vandalizing the article. Marking edits as minor has one primary purpose: Being able to filter them from RC. And that should only be possible if there is a basis for trust. In addition to the trust factor, there's also the advantage of a simpler user interface for first time users. Regards, Erik

On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 01:00:48PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote: The "minor changes" (in the meaning it has in traditional wikis) feature is dead. We don't support it any more. Now the "minor changes" is only an additional part of description, so the rationale there was when this prohibition was introduced is not valid any more. As far as I am concerned, you can go on and remove it, but there are others who may want to keep it for some different reason than the original one.

On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 11:04:33PM +0100, Rob Hooft wrote: Yeah, sure, as if you couldn't find a way to vandalize within such limits. Of course a Bayesian classificator of diffs would be really wonderful. Any takers ? I thought so.

Optim wrote: Go back to the original question of the original poster. "How can a anonymous user make Minor changes and how to stop that?" I think you look at the situation of the English Wikipedia regarding edits by anonymous users. The question of Elly is about the Dutch Wikipedia. The speed of RC there is much, much, slower there if you compare whit EN. Everybody still knows more or less everybody. There are very few anonymous users. Mostly from a different Wikipedia for a interwiki-link or somebody who has forgotten to login. The edits done by anonymous users must be checked because the have a high change to be a vandal. The edits done by resisted users have a much lower priority. Because there is no option "Show only anonymous edits" the option the hide small edits is the best way to keep the list of edits to verify short. Walter

Evan- More like 30-40% for anonymous users. Check RC on En: occasionally. The simple fact is that most vandals, crackpots and abusers are anons, and that "minor edit" is a tool that is easily abused. It seems fairly obvious then that it's a good idea to limit that tool to signed in users. Regards, Erik

----- Original Message ----- From: "Evan Prodromou" <evan-+DxIcwYt55H9qxiX1TGQuw(a)public.gmane.org> Thanks, Elly

On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 15:26, Elly Waterman wrote: If people don't like removing the "minor edit" box for anonymous users, how about this? 1) Put the "minor edit" box back 2) Have 3 states for "Recent Changes": show all edits, hide minor changes, hide minor changes from logged-in users This should satisfy everybody at (I assume) a fairly small cost in software effort. (I actually like not having the "minor edit" box as an anonymous user; it helps me remember to log in!) Carl Witty