UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/Autoconfirmed Group 2

Administration Services — Protection. This page has been protected against editing. See the archive of recent actions or the Protections log.

The "problem"

Due to bad faith use by vandals, the ability to move pages is restricted to sysops. This effectively removes the ability for page moves to be used as a means to harm the wiki. At the same time, it also delegates yet more routine maintenance tasks to Sysops and takes powers away from the community.

The suggestion

The suggestion is to make use of the wiki's inbuilt "Autoconfirmed" group for the purpose of filtering those users who have tools with greater potential to harm the wiki. Autoconfirmed status is assigned to anyone who makes a certain number of edits and has been registered for a certain time period. Wikipedia assigns it after 4 days and 10 edits; on this wiki it has been indicated that a time period of 2 months and 200 edits would be more appropriate.

Autoconfirmed users would have the ability to move pages. It is also possible to protect a page so that only autoconfirmed accounts can edit them, this would afford frequently vandalised pages some level of protection while still allowing good-faith edits from established users.

Protections

Move protections

High profile pages can still be protected from movement by anyone except for sysops. This will allow a two tiered protection, normal pages can be protected from single use vandal alts, while still allowing autoconfirmed users access, and at the same time high profile pages, and pages important to the wiki's administrative integrity can be protected from movement by all but sysops.

Semi-protection

Would be requested via the current A/P page, the same rules apply and any protections made by Sysops without a request must be listed on the page for future posterity.

Technical Implementation

This policy would be implemented by making the following changes to the configuration file:

Adding: $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['move'] = true;

changing: $wgAutoConfirmAge = 0; to $wgAutoConfirmAge = 3600*24*56

and: $wgAutoConfirmCount = 0; to $wgAutoConfirmCount = 200;

Abuse

Misuse of move privileges is considered vandalism and would be handled through the current vandal escalation system.

In a nutshell

This policy would grant established users the ability to carry out maintenance tasks without giving vandals additional tools. It would also allow semi-protection of high-risk articles without limiting edits only to Sysops.

Voting Section

Voting Rules

Votes must be numbered, signed, and timestamped. They can take one of two forms: # comments ~~~~ or # ~~~~ Votes that do not conform to the above will be struck by a sysop.

The only valid voting sections are For and Against. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.

• Voting closes at 22:39 on the 18th of January 2009.

For

1. For - P0w3r 2 t3h p30pl3!! And less work on A/MR ftw! =) -- Cheese 22:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
2. For - Revert wars could be prevented in the same manner as normal revert wars, page protection. I've yet to see an argument to convince me this isn't a good idea.--Karek^maps?! 22:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
3. For - Mmh.. vandals can do more than 200 edits with very little effort, so the 'low' threshold isn't a problem in my opinion. Abuse = A/VB. Semi-protection. Looks like a useful and good policy :) --Janus ^talk 23:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
4. For - As Karek. High-profile pages could be protected easily, and the semiprotection will be very useful on pages that are targets for vandalism. Linkthewindow  Talk  23:43, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
5. For – As a longtime Wikipedia user, I recognise the sense in this. Regarding some of the concerns: move wars would presumably be treated the same as any revert war, and redirects are generally a good thing, and should only be deleted when unused. I know they might offend your OCD, but as anyone who knows me well will attest, I'm all in favour of lazy evaluation. ;) ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 01:38, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
6. For - --Toejam 03:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
7. More tools for the common people, less red tape for the administration staff. We could trust our users this tool in the past, no harm trusting this tool to them again --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{talk mod} 18:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
8. Trial period wouldn't be bad though.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 21:10, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
9. For - I'm a sysop on other wikis and I know from experience that Moving should be an option that is useable by anyone. Liberty 12:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Against

1. Against - Threshold is too low. And as current A/MR drama reveals, without significant safeguards or protocol this will cause massive revert wars, this policy does not make this provision. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 22:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

   Did you read the policy? Your concerns were addressed on the talk page.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 13:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

2. Against - Move isn't very useful without Delete because the resulting redirects would still have to be deleted by a sysop. The amount of work would stay pretty much the same for everyone involved. As far as I can see, most of the "frequently vandalised" pages need to be editable by newbies, making the protection rather useless. I can't really even think of pages that could be called "frequently vandalised". --Midianian^|T|DS|C:RCS| 23:21, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
3. Against A few sysops don't even understand all the work that should be done before moving a page and that an active group should be consulted before their pages are touched. I hardly think the average user will. --– Nubis ^NWO 01:33, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
4. Against - As with the last attempt to gain popularity through "empowering the people" version of this, it's pointless. Sysops are hardly taxed by any of the various administrational pages. Too little gain for too much risk. --HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS 01:41, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
5. Against - but not exactly.... I want to support this, but I am concerned... Thus, I have an idea. Let's enact this for a trial period, say 3-6 months, and see how it works. If it's cool, then we make it permenant. --WanYao 04:38, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   How would you recommend we go about implementing a trial period, then?--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:57, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   Very simple. The policy is passed but with an "expiry date". After that, the sysop team pipes in by leading a discussion about whether it caused problems, etc. If the general consensus is that there weren't a lot of problems then it's put up for voting as a permament policy. --WanYao 16:49, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   I can't say it's a bad idea, but I don't thinks it is necessary. I might try that if this draft fails.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 13:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

6. Against? - As Wan, I'm for it, given a trial period. Another idea is an update to MediaWiki, that should allow for a more control. However, I don't know if that will happen within the coming year, Or whether or not there would be issues with server load. _■^■ 05:03, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   There are no known issues with sever load resulting from this system. Wikipedia already does it.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:57, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   As do all wikia projects. -- Cheese 11:30, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   I was referring to an update to MediaWiki on this server, no extensions beyond updates to the existing ones. _■^■ 18:06, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   MediaWiki updates have little or no effect on sever load (If anything, they decrease it).--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 13:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

7. Against - I don't see a problem involving many users needing to move many pages. The sysops aren't really burdened over the amount of work on A/MR, either. Midianian makes a good point as well. --ZsL 06:38, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
8. Against AS Nubis. Conndraka^{mod TAZM CFT} 15:55, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
9. Against - As Midianian.-- Adward  17:03, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
10. Against - As Nubis. Asheets 18:46, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
11. Against - It's not like the workload of move requests is overwhelming ATM. --Pestolence^(talk) 21:51, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

    To be fair moves actually has a never ending workload and although A/MR doesn't have tons of requests there are literally thousands that we put off and most users don't look for(us included); Category:Disambiguation is one such example of this.--Judge Karke, self-proclaimed Decider of Everything and Ruler of All 18:30, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

12. Against - as above.----Sexualharrison 16:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
13. Against - As the circlejerk association proved, anyone can practically move a page anyway. The semi protection thing could be useful but i think would lead to more fights than it'd solve. --xoxo 12:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

    I'm not sure exactly what method your referring to, but I'll assume it's copying-and-pasting the page. That workaround makes a mess of the page histories. Anyway, I also don't see why we should force people to use a workaround when a better solution is abailable. Could be please elaborate on why you think semi-protection would cause fights?--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 20:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

    Yeah i just mean slabbing the text over and making the old page a redirect. Not perfect but it avoids red tape, it's what i'd do if i wanted to move a page anyway (i guess that makes your point in a way :P). Re: semi protection i think because most people would still be able to edit it heaps of pages would end up being semi protected 'just cos', nothing major, but i don't really see it doing any good whatsoever, so even a tiny problem wouldn't be worth it for me. That's a really poor explanation, but yeah, just my 2c.--xoxo 13:22, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

    lol 2C.--xoxo 13:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)