- Not allowing people to add links to external URLs to pages without
first logging in.
So, they log in, which doesn't solve anything. 21c3.ccc.de and is-root.de were hit with more of this wikitikitavi spam today, and it all came from logged in users. All this does is prevent people seeing the spammer's IP, making it harder to block them on other languages or other projects, and making it harder to find all the spam from one user when they change usernames more easily than they change IPs.
- 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.
Although redirects within a wiki are a little harder for non-admins to revert than normal vandalism, I don't think this problem is common enough to warrant more confusion to unregistered users. The lack of ability to move pages already causes problems. Wikimedia already disables cross-wiki and special page redirects, so I don't think we need more restrictions in this area.
- 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.
Wouldn't this make it harder to maintain these small wikis? They have no admins, so deleting a page means blanking it or putting {{delete}} on it for the benefit of some future admin. How can anyone clear up junk and copyvios if they can't easily (ie - without logging in) blank a page? Expecting people to log in on small wikis is more of a demand than expecting them to do so on a large one, since there is less benefit. If all you ever want to do is blank one page there, why make an account? And if you have an account, you probably don't use it often enough to stay logged in.
- Not allowing ANYBODY to have one or more external URLs as the sole
contents of a page, except perhaps stewards or admins
That would be so easy to get round that it would be pointless, and perhaps even damaging. If I see a page full of URLs, it's very quick to recognise it as spam. If we force the spammers to be clever and start mixing content with the spam, it's going to be harder to spot, especially if that content is in a language you don't know.
- 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.
I think there is a setting for this in MediaWiki already, but it's only editable by developers. You need to be very careful about what goes in it though. Blocking "that-medicine-that-starts-with-c" will prevent anyone writing about socialism (which was rather a problem for socialism.wikicities.com) :)
If the wikis are really inactive, wouldn't a system where every edit must be approved, or at least time-delayed, make more sense? Another option is to "retire" a wiki. It becomes non-editable, but has a button that allows anyone to relaunch it very quickly (perhaps with a captcha to prevent spam bots), with no knowledge needed, and no bureaucracy about new language edition policies. This could send a warning to the people monitoring inactive wikis.
It solves many of the problems caused by inactive WPs:
- Vandalism, spamming.
Which of those do you find is the more common problem on inactive/small wikis?
- The second proposed solution to problem #1 is to _monitor_ inactive Wikis
The reliance on unrelated third party tools to monitor these makes it much harder. In my experience, feed readers can't be relied on. The ones I've tried do not catch all edits, and and will not scale to more than about 300 wikis. This is something that MediaWiki, or a tool made specifically for wiki monitoring, needs to do for itself.
Angela.