Hi all,
As most people who are veterans of this list will know very well by now, I am strongly against the "locking" of inactive Wikipedias.
However, due to a recent increase in vandalism on inactive Wikipedias, I have decided to suggest a few more minor technical sanctions:
1) Not allowing people to add links to external URLs to pages without first logging in. If they tried to, it would be removed when they clicked "submit", and they would get a warning message. 2) Not allowing people to add #REDIRECT ... to pages without first logging in. If they tried to, they'd get a "preview" window and a warning message. 3) Not allowing people to replace, say, 30kb of text with two words, without first logging in. If they tried to, they'd get a warning message and woudln't be able to submit it. 4) Not allowing ANYBODY to have one or more external URLs as the sole contents of a page, except perhaps stewards or admins 5) Not allowing anybody to add words like "motherf*cker", "c*nt", "as*hole", "sh*t", that-medicine-that-starts-with-v, that-medicine-that-starts-with-c (including replacing the "a" with an @ sign), "pha ... ceu ... cals", or strings such as "is gay", "is so gay", etc. While allowing such things may be needed on larger Wikipedias, on _inactive_ Wikipedias it would prevent probably 50% of vandalism.
Of course, these sanctions would only be applied to inactive Wikipedias, which are a definite list.
People like myself, Chamdarae, and others, notice when inactive Wikipedias become active, and we would be able to ask once every month or two for the newly active WPs to be removed from that list.
Please note that this would NOT have any effect on ACTIVE Wikipedias, including ones as small as Yiddish or Udmurt, or as large as English and German, or anywhere in between. (thus, any WP with perhaps at least 2-3 edits a week, over 500 articles, would not have such things).
I am curious to see the reactions of others on this.
It solves many of the problems caused by inactive WPs:
1) Vandalism, spamming. 2) The first proposed solution to problem #1 is to lock all inactive Wikis against edits. This would prohibit any development unless somebody requested them to be opened, which most people would be too unknowledgable or shy to do. 3) The second proposed solution to problem #1 is to _monitor_ inactive Wikis. This solution is currently implemented, but some of the basic vandalisms and spammings would be so easily preventable by such a technical solution, and would save loads of work for myself, Chamdarae, Angela, Wouter, Mxn, and whoever else checks inactive Wikipedias.
Thoughts?
-- "Take away their language and you are taking away their souls." -- Stalin