UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/Autoconfirmed Group Trial

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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.

This policy has had two previous incarnations only the later of which made it to voting. From comments from the community, it might be a beneficial idea to trial this change for a period of time and then after that period has ended ask for community opinion on whether this should become a permanent feature of the wiki.

The proposed trial period will be 2 months followed by a two week community discussion and a two week vote. If this policy is accepted it will run from the date it is activated by Kevan rather than the date the voting closes.

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.

If a "move war" occurs over a specific page, the page can be protected from moving similar to regular page protection in the case of edit wars.

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.

Scheduled Protections

Upon passing, the following pages can be move-protected immediately by any sysop without having to go through A/PT

Community Evaluation

After 2 months have passed, a discussion will be opened and the community as a whole will be able to voice their opinions of this feature. This can include problems, suggestions for improvement, criticisms and other opinions that the user may have. After two weeks of discussion to allow all community members to give their views, a new vote will be opened to decide whether to keep the Auto-confirmed group or to remove it. The vote will last two weeks and all users will be encouraged to vote on it.

Depending on the views gathered from the discussion, at least 3 options will be available in this vote:

  1. To keep the auto-confirmed group and the move and semi-protection abilities as permanent features on the wiki.
  2. To keep the auto-confirmed group and semi-protection ability as permanent features on the wiki but remove the move ability.
  3. To completely remove the auto-confirmed group and the move and semi-protection abilities from the wiki.

The option that has gathered the most support will be the one that shall be carried out.

The Official Response

Kevan has been contacted about this and asked if he would be willing to implement this trial if it passes voting. His response follows:

Kevan said:
No problem. --Kevan 15:59, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Summary

  • Adds an Auto-confirmed group to the Urban Dead wiki.
  • Any user that has been on the wiki for longer than 2 months and has contributed more than 200 edits will automatically be placed into this user group.
  • This group will allow auto-confirmed users to move pages that are set to allow movement by that particular group.
  • High risk pages, such as the Main Page and the Administration pages can be protected from movement, can be protected from movement similar to the current ability to protect from editing.
  • Semi-protection will be enabled. This allows high risk pages to be protected so that established users can still edit them, while preventing vandalism from just registered accounts.
  • Abuse of move privileges will be treated as an act of vandalism and will result in vandal escalations according to the current escalation system.
  • There will be a 2 month trial of this feature from the date it is implemented by Kevan, after this time a community discussion will be held and a vote will be carried out to decide if this should be made permanent.

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.

For

  1. From the last version of this policy it was apparent that several people would prefer if this was trialled before it was made a permanent feature. Personally, I feel we should be able to restore the move ability to the community as it was in the past. If people misuse it, we take action. They keep messing about, the higher up the vandal scale they get. Easy as. -- Cheese 12:57, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  2. Once more, and for the last time. --—The preceding signed comment was added by Hagnat (talk • contribs) at 13:27, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  3. It's a good idea, and I voted for the last one. People who vandalize can be escalated, semi-protection can/would be useful on high-profile pages, and being able to move pages would safe effort for regular uses (although we should keep A/MR-both for the obvious and so people who may move a page can request comments.) -- Linkthewindow  Talk  13:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  4. Wikipedia has it and it works bloody well. No-one use it for vandalism.. --Janus talk 13:39, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  5. Meh, worth trying. --Midianian|T|DS|C:RCS| 13:49, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  6. Several people suggested a trial period so here it is. This system works fine on Wikipedia and I personally believe that we should be able to trust regular users with the move privilege.--The General T Sys U! P! F! 14:36, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  7. It gets booted if it doesn't work, and there could still be some gain with option 2. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 18:51, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  8. On the principle that the trial period will give us more experience and information, and that in turn will help improve the choice at the end. --Toejam 00:28, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Against

  1. Just let it die already. --Cyberbob 13:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  2. In the name of most unholy Shoggoth, NO! Conndrakamod TAZM CFT 18:49, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  3. There's quite a bit of trouble that can be caused with this.--Suicidal Angel - Help needed? 19:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  4. Don't say I didn't warn ya'll when this blows in your faces.--SirArgo Talk 19:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  5. Not only is this a bad idea the fact that a twice failed policy gets a "trial period" vote should make this Vandalism as Policy Spamming. --– Nubis NWO 22:03, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
  6. I would have to vote against. For one thing, the Wikipedia version has failed on a massive scale to prevent vandalism (check the histories of the entries for Uwe Boll and Evolution to see this), but this just adds a needless complication.--MorriganH 23:33, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
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