Rory Stolzenberg wrote:
Right, but it doesn't protect against vandals who registered, didn't edit
for 4 days and the vandalized. If they're vandalizing templates, they're
not just people who come to Wikipedia and say "wow, i can delete this
entire page lol!" - they're vandals who've been doing it for a while and
are familiar with Wikipedia, so they probably know how to get around
semi-protection.
I know you people have heard it all before from me (though not necessarily
in this forum), but that's a compelling argument for greater obscurity with
regards to the "auto-confirmed" status of registered user accounts, instead
of this time-based system that's bloody fuck easy to circumvent.
Four days is a joke. ANY fixed duration of time is a joke once somebody
figures it out.
Don't know if anybody remembers the "piss christ" vandal (in fact,
[[WP:DENY|policy will soon tell us]] that we aren't supposed to), but this
guy would typically launch an attack on each daily featured article shortly
after 00:00 (UTC). Not sure what happened to him, maybe he got a job at a
museum or something, but after a couple history pages full of vandal edits,
rollbacks, and no other activiity, somebody finally decides to be the bad
guy and semi-protect the page.
Fair enough, right, everybody knows Splash (bless his heart) will be along
shortly to make sure we're not ruining anybody's fun. I mean, people have
lawns to mow and cars to wax, we can't ethically make them wait around 15-30
minutes for the golden padlock to go away. Of course not, that would be
cruel and unusual, so it gets unprotected, and then it's business as usual,
ad nauseum.
But seriously folks, what do you do in a situation like this? Well, first
you create a damn good diversion of some sort, then, once you're confident
that the eyes of scrutiny are facing away from the protection log, you lock
the page again, because the situation there is reaching a pathological
state, the level which mother slashdot herself could never be blamed for.
And all the sudden your stomach turns and you're overcome by the same
shit-out-of-luck feeling you had back in April (you know, that time when
your brake pedal felt like a wet sponge) and you realize you're dealing
you're dealing with one hardcore motherscratcher here, he's got some four
dozen additional accounts to post from, fully matured ones, probably
leftovers from [[Cool (song)]]'s heyday.
So then you upgrade to full protection and wonder why nobody did that from
the get-go. You walk away from this experience, I don't know, maybe ten
percent more cynical than you were the day before. Well, half of your
buddies pat you on the back, but the others just tell you your too lazy to
revert shit, to say nothing of the cheap shots: "You never assume good
faith!"
Now, that's not necessarily bad thing, mind you, especially if you happen to
work in retail. But, then, your nametag doesn't say "Helen Keller" either,
presumably.
--f.o.n.
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