[WikiEN-l] Special:Recent Vandalisms

Thu Mar 11 11:43:43 UTC 2004

Many have stated their concern about the inability of scanning the 
Recent Changes page for vandalism, and dealing with it. On the other 
hand, there was concern about cutting the freedom on wikipedia in the 
wake of terror^H^H^H^H^H^Hvandalism.

I believe that we can improve security without restricting users by 
focusing our attention through technical means, namely a "Recent 
Vandalisms" page. (We can argue about that title, though).

This page would list
* edits from users that have been marked as "problematic" (was: vandals)
* edits on problematic (was: "edit war") pages
* edits that appear to be "suspect" utilizing some kind of filter (e.g., 
removal of larger text protions, certain keywords, etc.)

On Recent Changes, IPs and users can be marked as "problematic", but:
* anons can't mark anyone
* users can only mark IPs and user accounts that exist for less than a 
week / have less than 20 edits (a potential "sock puppet" filter)
* sysops can mark anyone

A page can be marked as "problematic" by logged-in users.

This would help those who want to stop vandals to get a report on the 
latest "problematic" issues at a glance. The restrictions above are to 
prevent ill-minded users from flooding the page in order to render it 
useless.

Magnus