[WikiEN-l] Re: Page move vandal - there is a feature that can help with it ...

Tue Mar 8 07:14:05 UTC 2005

Interesting idea, however shouldn't we also use a metric to determine 
whether a newbie rapidly gets up to speed on Wikipedia and becomes a 
very good contributor with thousands of edits?

Can we take this into account?

Otherwise - good plan. It's a paint to fixup page moves. And I've 
already pissed off enough developers (hi Brion!) by restoring a moved 
sandbox to try to shift it back during one of Wikipedia's numerous 
downtimes.

TBSDY

David Gerard wrote:
> 
> Just had the following conversation with Tim Starling on
> #mediawiki. Log quoted with permission.
> 
> Basically: there is a feature. Present version is unsubtle
> in its restriction (last 10% of created accounts, which is
> possibly a bit harsh to get consensus. A timed version
> would be nice, but someone interested in it will have to
> write the code.
> 
> Of course, if that restriction isn't considered too onerous
> for the moment, it can just be switched on, and it will stop
> Willy On Wheels! in his tracks.
> 
> 
> <DavidGerard>    a question on page move vandalism: is there a good 
> technical reason why e.g. checking a user has been around for a time 
> before doing a move is infeasible? or is it just that no-one's coded it 
> yet?
> <DavidGerard>    (I assume there's a bug on the subject)
> <TimStarling>    DavidGerard: yes, we wrote code for that when Wik was 
> running his vandalbot
> <TimStarling>    it's currently switched off
> <DavidGerard>    ok - does it need a vote or something to ratify 
> switching it on?
> <DavidGerard>    TimStarling: and is the code in question production 
> quality, of course? I plan to mention it on wikien-l, where it's been 
> asked about, and then start a discussion and vote page, if it's usable
> <TimStarling>    the checkuser code? it's ready for use
> <TimStarling>    if there's anything wrong with it, we'll fix it when 
> problems come up
> <DavidGerard>    the page move checker. what time limit does it set, or 
> is that configurable?
> <DavidGerard>    (I'm asking all this because I don't want to present 
> you with consensus for something not quite possible ;-)
> <DavidGerard>    (ideally for somethng that's no more work than 
> switching it on)
> <TimStarling>    the current code just denies access to the move page 
> function for anyone who satisfies the isNewbie() condition
> <TimStarling>    which generally meant one of the last 10% of user 
> accounts created
> <DavidGerard>    what's that set to?
> <DavidGerard>    ah
> <DavidGerard>    no particular time limit then
> <TimStarling>    of course Wik then created 5000 user accounts on meta, 
> good for him
> <TimStarling>    so we made an account creation throttle as well
> <TimStarling>    no particular time limit
> <DavidGerard>    how much work to put in a settable time limit? off the 
> top of your head
> <DavidGerard>    (i'm thinking what is likely to be comprehensible and 
> play well)
> <TimStarling>    the sign-up date is not recorded
> <TimStarling>    it's not in the schema, we were just using the user ID
> <DavidGerard>    oh, so how is the 90 days calculated for votes?
> <TimStarling>    by finding the first contribution, but that's an 
> expensive query
> <DavidGerard>    ew. yes.
> <DavidGerard>    i shall mention it on wikien-l that it's possible at 
> least ;-)
> <TimStarling>    possible to do it by sign-on date? Yes, it's possible 
> if someone wants to write the code
> <TimStarling>    it just means a schema change
> <DavidGerard>    that's what i thought ;-)
> <DavidGerard>    mind if I c'n'p this conversation to a wikien-l mail?
> <TimStarling>    no I don't mind
> <DavidGerard>    cool :-)
> 
> 
> - d.