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.