There's Javascript that allows non-admins to do rollback in wide use on en:wp - it's just another form of edit, after all. There's no need to add a privilege level to MediaWiki.

But the javascript is a pure resource eater and it is slow like nothing else.

That Javascript often fails and generates more load on servers than does the internal rollback (IIRC it makes four page requests instead of the one required by internal rollback). There are good reasons for providing broader access to the rollback button; please do not poopoo such requests so lightly, especially when adding a rollback level to MediaWiki is really very easy, and adding an interface to set it is a rather simple modification to the existing "makebot" functionality that already exists.

What's the reason for not everyone having rollback? What would happen if everyone who'd had an account for a few days could use it?

On 16/11/06, Marco Schuster <CDL-Klever(a)gmx.net> wrote: They can and do do that now.

Marco Schuster wrote: Firstly: they can only revert-war or mass-vandalise until they're blocked. So make sure you block them quickly enough ;-) Secondly: You've already mentioned Captcha. Why is it not an option to implement a Captcha for every rollback that is requested less than (say) a minute after the previous rollback?

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 18:15:21 -0500, Simetrical wrote: > On 11/16/06, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: >> Marco Schuster wrote: >>> David Gerard schrieb: >>> >>>> What's the reason for not everyone having rollback? What would happen >>>> if everyone who'd had an account for a few days could use it? >>> because vandals will register with a "normal" nick, wait the few days >>> and then they can easily do revert wars, mass vandalizing (afaik the >>> rollback doesnt have a captcha so you could easily use a bot), etc, etc. >> Firstly: they can only revert-war or mass-vandalise until they're >> blocked. So make sure you block them quickly enough ;-) >> >> Secondly: You've already mentioned Captcha. Why is it not an option to >> implement a Captcha for every rollback that is requested less than (say) >> a minute after the previous rollback?

A minute seems a bit long; Normal vandal fighting with JS tools is faster than that.

Q: Why don't we give more great functionality to our users? A: Because there are evil people out there. I don't like this reasoning.

Would it be better if I phrased this is "this is bad reasoning, please don't do this"?

Yes, there are vandals. Yes, we have ways of dealing with them. No, we should not avoid implementing something on the faulty assumption that its use by vandals will outweigh its benefits?

Has rollback-for-everyone even been trialled?

On 11/20/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang(a)thewritingpot.com> wrote: We could trial it. Give it to anyone with over 3000 accounts (and not on that list). Then lower the threshold to 2000, 1000, 500...at some point, the vandals with sleeper accounts will become a sufficiently big problem to discourage lowering it further.

Heh! Edits, dammit.

For my own curiosity, why *is* it so DB-intensive to count the number of edits for a user? Is there no view/table that marries users up to their edits?