UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/Autoconfirmed Group Trial
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 previousincarnations 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 3 months and 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.
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 3 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:
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. |
