On 05/07/13 22:09, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
The recent community initiative with the highest impact I can think of is surely what Platonides and other members of the global (technical) community did on pt.wiki. Platonides noticed a configuration error on pt.wiki: CAPTCHA was required for all edits since 2008. The error was fixed in April. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/41745
Saying that Platonides discovered a configuration error on pt.wp and fixed it is a bit like saying Captain Cook discovered New Zealand and fixed its lack of pigs.
Of course, the pt.wp community was well aware of the situation. The response of the pt.wp community to the original "emergency" -- asking for CAPTCHAs to be enabled for everyone -- was very specific to that community. I have to wonder whether the requesters were hoping for implicit permanence.
It's a reminder that we need a robust procedure for making temporary changes. In the past we have relied on the requester saying to us afterwards "ok, it's all done now, you can revert it." That doesn't work if "temporary" is said with a wink.
-- Tim Starling