[Wikipedia-l] Re: multi-headed VANDALS + PANIC button

[Daniel Mayer]

On Monday 29 July 2002 12:01 pm, you wrote:
> I actually do already have a "lock the database" button available
> to developers; maybe I should make that available to sysops as well
> (as long as "unlock" is as well, of course)?
>
> I also need to start thinking about some back-end stuff like the cron
> job for making more frequent backups.

Cool. This would of course have to be approved by our benevolent dictator, 
er, benefactor Jimbo. Is this feature bug-free enough to trust mere sysops 
with? 

Hopefully such a panic button will /never/ have to be used.  But having a 
"protect all pages" button will give me, and I suspect others, some peace of 
mind. 

However, there will have to be severe limitations on any use of this function 
though. If a sysop and the community can reasonably keep up with such an 
attack this feature should /not/ be used. But 10 vandalized articles or more 
a minute over multiple minutes would begin to be very taxing, esp. if a bunch 
of different IPs are being used by the vandal.

--mav