It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article.
Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the horrible {{deletedarticle}} template. Users get a reasonably helpful message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as allowing us to be kind to them). I can't think of a downside offhand.
Guy (JzG)
On 1/31/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article.
Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the horrible {{deletedarticle}} template. Users get a reasonably helpful message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as allowing us to be kind to them). I can't think of a downside offhand.
Guy (JzG)
Really? Nice!
The protected deleted pages still appearing on Google *are* sometimes a problem.
-Kat
On 31/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article. Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the horrible {{deletedarticle}} template. Users get a reasonably helpful message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as allowing us to be kind to them). I can't think of a downside offhand.
*pint* to Werdna!
(He's currently running for admin on RFA. There are those voting against *because* he's a developer; I would have thought that would have led to new features being particularly suited to administration of the site. But presumably I am wrong.)
- d.
I never liked the {{deletedpage}} template. It makes links blue when the article in question doesn't actually exists and seeing bluelinks to non-existent articles is damn annoying. It might have been unintentional, but I say we use it to our advantage and cascade protection for salted articles.
Mgm
On 1/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article. Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the horrible {{deletedarticle}} template. Users get a reasonably helpful message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as allowing us to be kind to them). I can't think of a downside offhand.
*pint* to Werdna!
(He's currently running for admin on RFA. There are those voting against *because* he's a developer; I would have thought that would have led to new features being particularly suited to administration of the site. But presumably I am wrong.)
- d.
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On 1/31/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article.
I saw a mention of this -- very interesting, not sure why it hadn't occurred to me. I'm of the opinion that it may still sometimes be better to use {{deletedpage}} (unless we have some way of very quickly explaining to people how and why this cascading protection is being used to salt a given article).
Has anyone set up a central page for this, yet? Since the actual transclusion list would have to be admin-protected, it might be a good idea to have a "policy page," which then transcludes the (admin-protected) list of deleted pages. Sort of the reverse of our usual "protected template with unprotected documentation subpage" structure.
-Luna
On 1/31/07, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
Has anyone set up a central page for this, yet? Since the actual transclusion list would have to be admin-protected, it might be a good idea to have a "policy page," which then transcludes the (admin-protected) list of deleted pages. Sort of the reverse of our usual "protected template with unprotected documentation subpage" structure.
Pardon me, answering my own question:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protected_titles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protected_deleted_pages
The first appears to be directed at this new cascading protection method; the second seems more concerned with the use of {{deletedpage}}. Perhaps merging the two would be a wise idea?
-Luna
On 31/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article.
If that was deliberate, I would have called it a surpassingly beautiful hack. But it's serendipitous. That's somehow even *better*.
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 31/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article.
If that was deliberate, I would have called it a surpassingly beautiful hack. But it's serendipitous. That's somehow even *better*.
So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this? I'm waiting for the first day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
-Jeff
On 1/31/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this? I'm waiting for the first day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
Also an important question, and the exact reason I think this should be as centralized as possible. If anything, one page listing the protected deleted pages would be easier to keep an eye on than a multitude of pages which may or may not have pages, and which people may even forget to protect, and all sorts of other issues.
If it's all kept on one page, it seems to me it'll only be that much easier to keep track of.
-Luna
On 31/01/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
If that was deliberate, I would have called it a surpassingly beautiful hack. But it's serendipitous. That's somehow even *better*.
So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this? I'm waiting for the first day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
Well, pre-emptively protecting [[deliberate example redlink]] may be doable now ;-)
In all seriousness, though, the oversight is that it can easily be seen what pages are protected in this way - the central "transclusion" page for these is public, and can be watched easily enough.
(I suppose people can sneakily cascade-protect trivial obscure subpages with fake transcludes... but, then, they could do deleted-protected on pages which had never been created under the old system, too. So no new way of being a dick...)
[[The weather in London]] has been created and deleted for the final time.
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 31/01/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
If that was deliberate, I would have called it a surpassingly beautiful hack. But it's serendipitous. That's somehow even *better*.
So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this? I'm waiting for the first day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
Well, pre-emptively protecting [[deliberate example redlink]] may be doable now ;-)
In all seriousness, though, the oversight is that it can easily be seen what pages are protected in this way - the central "transclusion" page for these is public, and can be watched easily enough.
(I suppose people can sneakily cascade-protect trivial obscure subpages with fake transcludes... but, then, they could do deleted-protected on pages which had never been created under the old system, too. So no new way of being a dick...)
On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:45:34 +0000, "Andrew Gray" shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Well, pre-emptively protecting [[deliberate example redlink]] may be doable now ;-)
[[Red link]], you mean? Yup, done :-)
Guy (JzG)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this? I'm waiting for the first day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
-Jeff
Already done; I did it. A user began
for $ZODIAC_SIGN ("Pisces".."Capricorn") { create [[$ZODIAC_SIGN (notable persons)]]' }
They began being properly deleted before he completed the full set of twelve. He began recreating them. I protected as empty the few that he hadn't gotten to yet.
- -- Sean Barrett | A thunder of jets in an open sky, sean@epoptic.com | A streak of gray and a cheerful "Hi!" | A loop, a whirl, a vertical climb, | And once again you know it's time....
On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:41:30 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this? I'm waiting for the first day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
Precisely the same as for the old system. There's even a link to deletion review on the list page.
Guy (JzG)