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@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
Garbage.
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal is garbage.
Repectfully, Nathan
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 10:50 PM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
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@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
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Feb 4, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Tim Starling wrote:
NavouWiki wrote:
Garbage.
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal is garbage.
Desysop East718 for out-of-process deletion of the main page and destruction of the page history.
East718's actions seem to me a well-intentioned if somewhat hasty response to an accidental main page deletion that happened because of a misunderstood joke in #wikipedia-en-admins. (One user inadvertently led another user to believe that deleting the main page was now impossible, and suggested he try it to see. User #1 thought User #2 knew he was joking, User #2 did not know that #1 was joking, and non- hilarity ensued.)
It was a dumb and overreacting solution, but it was well-intentioned and largely harmless (as I don't think the page history of the main page is all that interesting.) And it does help protect against the really bad admin vandalism where important pages are history merged (as opposed to an important page and a trivial user subpage) - a security hole that has been existent for years and remains an easy way for somebody to do substantially irritating damage to the project. Still probably unwise, but not insta-desysop material.
-Phil
I understand. Perhaps a discussion with him on his talk would be better than a desysopping. In no way do I question your intelligence when I say this: Dispute resolution works wonders. I don't think he is apt do this type of thing if he sees you comment on his talk page about it. Especially a developer. Sir, you use a cannonball to kill a mosquito.
Regards,
Nathan
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 11:31 PM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
NavouWiki wrote:
Garbage.
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal is garbage.
Desysop East718 for out-of-process deletion of the main page and destruction of the page history.
-- Tim Starling
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WP:IAR is - at least in my opinion - an emergency action. If there's time to collaborate and get other opinions, then IAR needs to be invoked carefully. Deleting the main page (to see if it can be done!) was a horribly hasty action to take. Shouldna' happened. Discipline of some type is in order.
I'm not sure if I could advocate a "forever" de-sysop for it, but I'm sure thinking long and hard about it.
Who in their right mind thinks "hey! I wonder if I can delete the main page?" and then TRIES it without asking around a bit?
Even with the very best of intentions, this is the type of ill-reasoned action that scares the hell out of me.
Philippe
-------------------------------------------------- From: "Tim Starling" tstarling@wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 11:31 PM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
NavouWiki wrote:
Garbage.
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal is garbage.
Desysop East718 for out-of-process deletion of the main page and destruction of the page history.
-- Tim Starling
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Perhaps I was a little too descriptive. I apologize. Delete garbage. In its place, I think it is a "really poor idea". I should have used a better word than Garbage. I apologize.
Nathan
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 11:31 PM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
NavouWiki wrote:
Garbage.
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal is garbage.
Desysop East718 for out-of-process deletion of the main page and destruction of the page history.
-- Tim Starling
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Navou, I've noticed a pattern emerging in your posts. I've taken the liberty of disambiguating all of the pronouns and such.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal [by Tim Starling] is garbage.
Repectfully, Nathan
I obviously don't have a black belt in civility either, but I do know "garbage" is a needlessly inflammatory way to describe somebody's idea.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
To clarify my last post [about Tim Starling]...
In no way am I bringing Tim into disrepute, that is not my intention. My thoughts and concern is on the proposal [to desysop east718] itself, not the author [Tim Starling], whom I respect.
Nathan
If you respected him, you would find a better word than "garbage" to describe his idea, and you wouldn't continue to criticize him at every step.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
As an aside; Perhaps a post [by Tim Starling] to AN/I so that folks know the standard here. Additionally, has Tim notified [east718] via his talk page? I'm not seeing a block message on Beta's talk either? Dispute resolution would seem to require at least a post on wiki.
Nathan
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I understand. Perhaps a discussion with him on his talk would be better than a desysopping. In no way do I question [Tim Starling's] intelligence when I say this: Dispute resolution works wonders. I don't think [east718] is apt do this type of thing if he sees [Tim Starling] comment on his talk page about it. Especially a developer. [Tim Starling], you use a cannonball to kill a mosquito.
Nathan
I see more jabs interspersed with lip-service.
On 2/4/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder if there was a consensus, or discussion about [Tim Starling]'s added hook [to prevent deletion of the main page]. Seems sysops should be able to delete, move, protect *any* page. I thought this was a mediawiki tradition.
Nathan
Did you express any of these concerns when the other method was used?
—C.W.
Thank you CW.
Nathan
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Charlotte Webb Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 3:29 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
Navou, I've noticed a pattern emerging in your posts. I've taken the liberty of disambiguating all of the pronouns and such.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal [by Tim Starling] is garbage.
Repectfully, Nathan
I obviously don't have a black belt in civility either, but I do know "garbage" is a needlessly inflammatory way to describe somebody's idea.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
To clarify my last post [about Tim Starling]...
In no way am I bringing Tim into disrepute, that is not my intention. My thoughts and concern is on the proposal [to desysop east718] itself, not the author [Tim Starling], whom I respect.
Nathan
If you respected him, you would find a better word than "garbage" to describe his idea, and you wouldn't continue to criticize him at every step.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
As an aside; Perhaps a post [by Tim Starling] to AN/I so that folks know the standard here. Additionally, has Tim notified [east718] via his talk page? I'm not
seeing
a block message on Beta's talk either? Dispute resolution would seem to require at least a post on wiki.
Nathan
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I understand. Perhaps a discussion with him on his talk would be better than a desysopping. In no way do I question [Tim Starling's] intelligence when I say this: Dispute resolution works wonders. I don't think
[east718]
is apt do this type of thing if he sees [Tim Starling] comment on his talk page about it. Especially a developer. [Tim Starling], you use a cannonball to kill a mosquito.
Nathan
I see more jabs interspersed with lip-service.
On 2/4/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder if there was a consensus, or discussion about [Tim Starling]'s added hook [to prevent deletion of the main page]. Seems sysops should be able to delete, move, protect *any* page. I thought this was a mediawiki tradition.
Nathan
Did you express any of these concerns when the other method was used?
-C.W.
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I hit the send button too soon.
Thank you CW. Let me see if I can't help you debate the stuff, instead of debating the people here. I'll try to work through the logical fallacies, but I ask in the future we keep them to a minimum.
To your points:
1) I don't think there was a civility issue here. I criticized the idea as garbage, and I wholeheartedly believe it is.
2) The intent behind the follow up message was to inform Tim and the readership that I was separating Tim's idea from Tim. Tim is a good faith contributor to the project in many ways. Having a garbage idea is ok. It is allowed. It does not make anyone less faithful to the project.
3) I want to encourage posting to folks talk pages rather than asking for desysoppings. I want to encourage dispute resolution. This was not jabbish or lipservice.
4) I did not express a concern regarding the injection of null edits into the main page, I do express concern with changing the code of MediaWiki. This list however may not be the proper venue.
Your characterization of my behavior in no way delegitimizes my argument. Try not to poison the well here.
Regards, Nathan (Navou)
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Charlotte Webb Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 3:29 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
Navou, I've noticed a pattern emerging in your posts. I've taken the liberty of disambiguating all of the pronouns and such.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically precluding the deletion of the main page? The proposal [by Tim Starling] is garbage.
Repectfully, Nathan
I obviously don't have a black belt in civility either, but I do know "garbage" is a needlessly inflammatory way to describe somebody's idea.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
To clarify my last post [about Tim Starling]...
In no way am I bringing Tim into disrepute, that is not my intention. My thoughts and concern is on the proposal [to desysop east718] itself, not the author [Tim Starling], whom I respect.
Nathan
If you respected him, you would find a better word than "garbage" to describe his idea, and you wouldn't continue to criticize him at every step.
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
As an aside; Perhaps a post [by Tim Starling] to AN/I so that folks know the standard here. Additionally, has Tim notified [east718] via his talk page? I'm not
seeing
a block message on Beta's talk either? Dispute resolution would seem to require at least a post on wiki.
Nathan
On 2/3/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I understand. Perhaps a discussion with him on his talk would be better than a desysopping. In no way do I question [Tim Starling's] intelligence when I say this: Dispute resolution works wonders. I don't think
[east718]
is apt do this type of thing if he sees [Tim Starling] comment on his talk page about it. Especially a developer. [Tim Starling], you use a cannonball to kill a mosquito.
Nathan
I see more jabs interspersed with lip-service.
On 2/4/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder if there was a consensus, or discussion about [Tim Starling]'s added hook [to prevent deletion of the main page]. Seems sysops should be able to delete, move, protect *any* page. I thought this was a mediawiki tradition.
Nathan
Did you express any of these concerns when the other method was used?
-C.W.
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 2/4/08, NavouWiki navouwiki@gmail.com wrote:
- The intent behind the follow up message was to inform Tim and the
readership that I was separating Tim's idea from Tim. Tim is a good faith contributor to the project in many ways. Having a garbage idea is ok. It is allowed. It does not make anyone less faithful to the project.
- I want to encourage posting to folks talk pages rather than asking for
desysoppings. I want to encourage dispute resolution. This was not jabbish or lipservice.
By "jabs", I was referring to your cannonball/mosquito allegory and your complaint about the lack of warnings/notices/whatever by Tim on the other users' talk pages, which by no coincidence immediately followed the "garbage" comment.
By "lip-service", I was referring to the way you emphasize that you aren't questioning his intelligence, or his good faith, or whatever.
The mutual incongruity of your comments probably confuses the average reader.
- I did not express a concern regarding the injection of null edits into
the main page, I do express concern with changing the code of MediaWiki. This list however may not be the proper venue.
We've established a common motive for both actions, which is to make the main page undeletable by normal means. Whether or not this result is appropriate or necessary is a separate debate, but we've just witnessed both the elegant way and the absurd way of achieving it.
Now we have a patch or a hook or an extension or whatever which prohibits deletion of the main page, and according to Tim it is currently enabled on all Wikimedia sites. Equally importantly, it discourages further attempts to produce the same result by revision-crapflooding or some other yet unthought-of technique.
So maybe we should be discussing whether or not we want to keep this feature.
If I understand your comments correctly, you are opposed to it because there was no consensus for Tim to make this change, and because sysops should be able to take any action on any page, including the "Main" one, presumably because there might be a legitimate reason to do so.
I'm not really worried about the first point as Tim was only preserving the status quo (albeit through a superior method) but you might be surprised to know that I agree with you on the second one. (!!!)
But I will add that neither the problem being addressed (the main page being deleted every time an admin gets hacked or goes batshit) and the problem created by the solution ("legitimate" deletions or moves of the main page requiring assistance from the devs) is frequent or severe enough for me to strongly care one way or the other.
To conclude this discussion, if you want to open a Mostly Harmless straw poll on this issue, knock yourself out, but please do stop complaining about Tim, regardless of the venue.
—C.W.
On Feb 5, 2008 11:02 AM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
But I will add that neither the problem being addressed (the main page being deleted every time an admin gets hacked or goes batshit) and the problem created by the solution ("legitimate" deletions or moves of the main page requiring assistance from the devs) is frequent or severe enough for me to strongly care one way or the other.
The real problem is that page histories can be irretrievably merged by an admin (both as an act of vandalism and as a good faith mistake). This problem is much more frequent and severe than main page deletion - the main page is merely one place where it can show up.
<snip>
To conclude this discussion, if you want to open a Mostly Harmless straw poll on this issue, knock yourself out, but please do stop complaining about Tim, regardless of the venue.
-C.W.
I will continue to comment on any proposal brought to this list at my pleasure.
Regards, Nathan
On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 03:50:16PM +1100, Tim Starling wrote:
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.
I agree that adding the revisions seems to have been done hastily and without enough consultation. For reasons that are probably based on now-historical properties of the wiki, many admins have a deep fear about the main page being deleted.
I don't think this one action is enough on its own to warrant removing the sysop bit under the established practices of enwiki. There are admins who have done much more foolish things and not been desysoped. For example, I think the admins whose password was 'password' were allowed to keep their sysop bit once the password was changed. In any case, it would be up to arbcom to decide whether to remove the bit or pursue any other sanctions.
Tim, I think your statement here is clear - don't add extra revisions to a page just to prevent it from being deleted. I'm sure this will get announced more widely over the next few days, and hopefully the issue won't come up again for a while.
- Carl
Why was it so necessary to hack a protection against deletion of the Main Page? If the Main Page gets deleted, all that happens (thanks to cascade protection, transclusion of the Main Page on other pages and some javascript) is that people with Javascript enabled see a "temporary technical issues" image in the place of the Main Page, and the edit button is removed. Typically the Main Page gets restored within a minute or two, and the perputrator blocked/desysopped. No harm done, beyond a small number of people hitting the Main Page get told to search for the articles they want directly.
With this ill-thought-through move, the Main Page could not be deleted any more, even for legitimate purposes, and its history was flooded with a hoarde of edits by BetaCommandBot, making perusing its history and constructing diffs very difficult.
~Mark Ryan
It makes sense to that end that this stuff should probably not be done.
As an aside; Perhaps a post to AN/I so that folks know the standard here. Additionally, has Tim notified east via his talk page? I'm not seeing a block message on Beta's talk either? Dispute resolution would seem to require at least a post on wiki.
Nathan
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Carl Beckhorn Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 11:03 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 03:50:16PM +1100, Tim Starling wrote:
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.
I agree that adding the revisions seems to have been done hastily and without enough consultation. For reasons that are probably based on now-historical properties of the wiki, many admins have a deep fear about the main page being deleted.
I don't think this one action is enough on its own to warrant removing the sysop bit under the established practices of enwiki. There are admins who have done much more foolish things and not been desysoped. For example, I think the admins whose password was 'password' were allowed to keep their sysop bit once the password was changed. In any case, it would be up to arbcom to decide whether to remove the bit or pursue any other sanctions.
Tim, I think your statement here is clear - don't add extra revisions to a page just to prevent it from being deleted. I'm sure this will get announced more widely over the next few days, and hopefully the issue won't come up again for a while.
- Carl
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
To clarify my last post...
In no way am I bringing Tim into disrepute, that is not my intention. My thoughts and concern is on the proposal itself, not the author, whom I respect.
Nathan
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 10:50 PM To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]
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@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
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 03/02/2008, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
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@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
Perhaps some additional history may be useful to the readers of this list. It's likely that this IAR action was taken as a direct result of something that happened earlier today. Other adminstrators were on IRC discussing whether or not the main page was able to be deleted. And one of them tried it - and found out that it *could* be deleted. (Full thread on ANI, but I understand this is a permanent link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notice...)
Rather than take anyone to task for experimenting on a live page, it seems that other admins took it upon themselves to ensure this couldn't happen again, without fully understanding the implications or discussing the situation with a developer.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Apologies...wrong link...http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Inci...
On 04/02/2008, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/02/2008, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
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@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
Perhaps some additional history may be useful to the readers of this list. It's likely that this IAR action was taken as a direct result of something that happened earlier today. Other adminstrators were on IRC discussing whether or not the main page was able to be deleted. And one of them tried it - and found out that it *could* be deleted. (Full thread on ANI, but I understand this is a permanent link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notice...)
Rather than take anyone to task for experimenting on a live page, it seems that other admins took it upon themselves to ensure this couldn't happen again, without fully understanding the implications or discussing the situation with a developer.
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I added a simple hook to our settings file that prevents deletion of the main page on any Wikimedia wiki. Thankfully, it does not require flooding the database with 3.8 million edits (5000 edits times 763 wikis).
The hook prevents display of the deletion confirmation page. If the confirmation page is displayed, then you can delete the page. Do not believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
-- Tim Starling
On 04/02/2008, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
I added a simple hook to our settings file that prevents deletion of the main page on any Wikimedia wiki. Thankfully, it does not require flooding the database with 3.8 million edits (5000 edits times 763 wikis).
Is there any way to override that? Contact a sysadmin, I guess. There are cases where deleting the main page may be required (not very common cases, but it could happen).
On Feb 4, 2008 10:39 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
I added a simple hook to our settings file that prevents deletion of the main page on any Wikimedia wiki. Thankfully, it does not require flooding the database with 3.8 million edits (5000 edits times 763 wikis).
Is there any way to override that? Contact a sysadmin, I guess. There are cases where deleting the main page may be required (not very common cases, but it could happen).
Yes, you can edit [[MediaWiki:Mainpage]] to say something other than "Main Page" and then you can delete or move [[Main Page]] since it won't be the main page anymore.
Angela
On 2/4/08, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, you can edit [[MediaWiki:Mainpage]] to say something other than "Main Page" and then you can delete or move [[Main Page]] since it won't be the main page anymore.
Out of idle curiosity, who has rights to do this? Which category of Main Page deletions will still be prevented, given this workaround?
Steve
On 04/02/2008, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/4/08, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, you can edit [[MediaWiki:Mainpage]] to say something other than "Main Page" and then you can delete or move [[Main Page]] since it won't be the main page anymore.
Out of idle curiosity, who has rights to do this? Which category of Main Page deletions will still be prevented, given this workaround?
All MediaWiki pages are, I believe, admin-only. This adds a layer of security-through-hassle, though ;-)
(I can understand Tim's annoyance, incidentally, Coming up with an elaborate and cunning hack to take advantage of another elaborate and cunning hack to avoid a very unusual problem is one thing; implementing it on a whim *by causing that very problem* is another...)
-----Original Message-----
(I can understand Tim's annoyance, incidentally, Coming up with an elaborate and cunning hack to take advantage of another elaborate and cunning hack to avoid a very unusual problem is one thing; implementing it on a whim *by causing that very problem* is another...)
Yes,
I wonder if there was a consensus, or discussion about this added hook. Seems sysops should be able to delete, move, protect *any* page. I thought this was a mediawiki tradition.
Nathan
On 2/5/08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
All MediaWiki pages are, I believe, admin-only. This adds a layer of security-through-hassle, though ;-)
Erm. So, any admin can delete the main page just by editing a page in the MediaWiki namespace first? So Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion.
Steve
On 04/02/2008, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/5/08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
All MediaWiki pages are, I believe, admin-only. This adds a layer of security-through-hassle, though ;-)
Erm. So, any admin can delete the main page just by editing a page in the MediaWiki namespace first? So Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion.
That's how it sounds to me. Might be better just to add an extra confirmation page.
On 2/5/08, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Erm. So, any admin can delete the main page just by editing a page in the MediaWiki namespace first? So Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion.
Carcharoth wanted me to post this:
"Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion" - I'd say, yes (Angela's workaround was quite clever!), and that this workaround plays down the concern that this is moving against the tradition that admins should be able to use their tools on all pages. I'll ask Risker as well, about posting that link, as I see he has posted there. Carcharoth (talk) 14:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Summary
Steve
On Feb 4, 2008, at 8:49 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
Erm. So, any admin can delete the main page just by editing a page in the MediaWiki namespace first? So Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion.
It's probably also security against hijacked administrator accounts, actually - it certainly seems like most of our account hijackers are not particularly knowledgeable about how MediaWiki works, or they'd do far more clever things than they do.
-Phil
On Feb 4, 2008 10:40 AM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 4, 2008, at 8:49 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
Erm. So, any admin can delete the main page just by editing a page in the MediaWiki namespace first? So Tim's hack basically serves only to prevent accidental or other non-malicious deletion.
It's probably also security against hijacked administrator accounts, actually - it certainly seems like most of our account hijackers are not particularly knowledgeable about how MediaWiki works, or they'd do far more clever things than they do.
But it's not very good security against them. It means that their obvious first action (go to Wikipedia, look around for fun things to abuse, see "delete" button, click) is stymied, sure, but that just makes them more obnoxious to track down. It will take a lot longer to notice and they could do considerably more annoying damage than causing the Main Page to vanish for a couple of minutes. Sysops who start deleting a small number of random not-so-large pages (since they can't delete pages with too many revisions) aren't necessarily going to be desysopped immediately.
I think a better idea would be to have the plugin not just block the attempt, but also desysop them with a helpful message and log entry. If it was a mistake -- well, no harm done, they can just explain to a bureaucrat or steward and get their sysop rights back within half an hour, probably. If it was malicious -- there goes any ability to cause much damage.
This feature seems like it would be best to reserve for wikis that ask for it, either way (but especially if it does desysopping!). The prohibition against moving will be especially likely to confuse wikis that actually want to change their main page for some reason.
And this should also be made a proper extension. Currently, in particular, it doesn't seem like it's internationalized, or conceivably could be.
On Feb 4, 2008 7:01 AM, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 4, 2008 10:39 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
I added a simple hook to our settings file that prevents deletion of the main page on any Wikimedia wiki. Thankfully, it does not require flooding the database with 3.8 million edits (5000 edits times 763 wikis).
Is there any way to override that? Contact a sysadmin, I guess. There are cases where deleting the main page may be required (not very common cases, but it could happen).
Yes, you can edit [[MediaWiki:Mainpage]] to say something other than "Main Page" and then you can delete or move [[Main Page]] since it won't be the main page anymore.
LOL. Moral of the story: tell others about your idea before you try to fix a problem all by yourself.