[WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

Tue Dec 19 03:57:48 UTC 2006

On 12/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/19/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been having
> > with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images
> into
> > transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting
> this
> > to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
> > extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution to
> it.
> > The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload
> them,
> > and protecting every single template on TFA (including
> > transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
> > suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
> > re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?
>
> Every type of vandalism goes away if we can implement a short delay
> before the page goes "live". Allow rollbacks/undos to be carried out
> on non-live versions of the page, and edits should also always be
> performed on the newest version.
>
> The problem is not vandalism in itself. The problem is that our
> timeframe for reacting to vandalism is zero. Any act of vandalism is
> instantly visible to the entire world. Even a short delay of 2 minutes
> would drastically reduce the incentive for vandals and their impact
> even if successful.
>
> Steve

That is not an in-wiki fix for the problem.  While I agree that it would be
useful, major modifications to MediaWiki are outside the immediate tactical
scope... Unless you know PHP a lot more fluently than I do and have commit
access to the source ;-)

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com