On 12/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
You're wrong. Subtle vandalism isn't prevented by a time delay.
Yeah, I didn't read closely enough. Although, come to think of it, the issue is basically the same:
Page A indirectly transcludes page X. User U can't modify page A, but can modify X. Modifying X instantly modifies the appearance of A: big problem.
If there was a time delay between when the change was made to X and when the change appeared on A, there would be time to react. One way to do that might be to "freeze" all the templates that appear in A, perhaps by cloning them (with subst) to protected copies of themselves. Or perhaps by hacking the page caching code? Maybe give some trusted user the ability to control when the rendered view of the page is updated?
It seems pointless to me to attempt to somehow predict or track down vandals who are obviously pretty cluey and determined. Much better to focus our efforts on reducing the effectiveness of vandalism in general.
Oh, one last thought: if the major is problem is certain bad images, would there be any way of tagging those images so that they simply could not be displayed on the main page (or other designated page)? Regardless of how many layers of transclusion? This might have to be right at the web server level...?
Steve