On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 12:42 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9415 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8068
Blocking is a good tool to stop abuse but it only works once we've found it. Someone could sneakily create __noindex__ pages, especially via transcluding no-indexing templates.
People do sneaky mainspace vandalism too.
Indeed. In mainspace. And hide it from being found by noindexing it. ::shrugs::. It's not primarily my argument. Go read the bugzilla entries I linked to.
Having to read some enormous page every page-load wouldn't be good. It would be better to do the right thing on average per-namespace then use something in the pages to control exceptions.
That is how I meant it -- a page of exceptions. In the case of categories, it could point at just a template we put on non-encyclopedic categories, if "noindex-by-transclusion" can work.
An explicit list of exemptions could reasonably grow to very large and it would need to be scanned for membership every time a page is parsed. I would be somewhat surprised if there were not >1000 meta-categories already. Go look at how __NOTOC__ works, that would be the most logical way of doing this in mediawiki. Thoughts?