[WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]

[Tim Starling]

 From wikitech-l. Apologies if this is a duplicate, Gmane doesn't like me.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Deletion of large pages
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:34:12 +1100
From: Tim Starling

Majorly wrote:
> On 04/02/2008, Tim Starling <tstarling-AeOJrEpdGNeGglJvpFV4uA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Matthew Britton wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Remember the revision limit on page deletions that was
>>> hacked in to prevent Wikimedia grinding to a halt every
>>> time someone tried to delete a large page?
>>>
>>> Well, give someone a feature and they will abuse it in ways
>>> you never thought possible. Bots are now being used to add
>>> thousands of revisions to pages to make them un-deleteable.
>>> See the history of the English Wikipedia's Main Page for an
>>> example.
>>>
>>> Just thought you should know.
>> I'm going to block anyone who does this.
> 
> It has been done already. See the Main Page history on enwiki.
> 

I know, and I blocked BetacommandBot for it. After working out the full
details of what happened here, I'd like to additionally propose that
East718 be desysopped for his involvement in it.

East718 and Betacommand got together, and decided between themselves,
apparently without review or approval by any other party, that they would
add 1200 junk revisions to the main page. Betacommand edited
[[User:East718/empty]] the requisite number of times, and then East718
deleted the main page, moved his subpage to [[Main Page]], and then
undeleted it to merge the histories.

I would like the community to consider desysopping East718 for abuse of
admin powers. I'm cc-ing this message to wikien-l for community review of
this proposal.

-- Tim Starling