[WikiEN-l] Re: Proposal: make user pages uneditable

Fri Nov 5 13:32:05 UTC 2004

Jens Ropers wrote:
> I would favour giving every user a preferences ''option'' where they can 
> choose whether or not to protect their own user page.
> 
> This in part for the reasons Tim gave (below). Also, views about whether 
> or not others should be allowed to edit someone's own user page tend to 
> differ, so introducing such an option respects and reflects such 
> differing views. I don't think non-abusive users who feel that their 
> user page is "for them to control" should be ''forced'' to keep it open 
> for community editing. 

That's arguable...

> Finally, as was observed previously, user page 
> vandalism is a bigger problem with some users (and less with others), so 
> leaving that one up to the individual user just makes sense.

I agree with that one though.

> * Users should NEVER be allowed to protect their Talk page.

This brings up an interesting point. If we protect user pages, we can 
expect vandals to vandalise talk pages instead. That's a lesser evil, to 
be sure. However I can see a possible partial technical solution. Users 
could enable a moderation queue for their user page. When an anonymous 
user makes a change, the software uses a cookie match to display the 
unmoderated page to them after they hit save, but to everyone else, the 
last approved version is displayed.

Logged-in users get the advantage of a message telling them that their 
edit is being held for moderation.

Just a techno-fantasy, I'm not actually planning on coding this.

> 
> a still ailing
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com
> 
> On 5 Nov 2004, at 17:24, Tim Starling wrote:

<snip>

ARRGGHH TOP-POST KILL KILL

-- Tim Starling