Tim Starling wrote:
Another much-requested feature is enhancement of the rollback function, especially to allow for page deletion. The bot created many pages, apparently by following red links. In my opinion, the ideal feature would be to allow the user to supply a list of IP addresses and usernames, and then to revert every edit from those users with a single click.
This sounds like a wonderful idea, but I see a big problem with it. If we had such a feature some sysops would be tempted to use it as punishment against some bad users. There's a certain amount of 'vigilantism' that I've grumpily tolerated because it's very minor and the people usually "deserve it" in some sense. But this would open a huge new can of worms.
For now we've been dealing with this using filters and editor manpower. Filters are bad, they're against the wiki security model. I'd much rather put more power into the hands of users to deal with these situations, than to continue a filter-based arms race.
Yes, I understand what you're saying.
This is a new development, one that has been long anticipated, of course.
Here's one idea -- a switch to toggle a captcha. When a wiki is under a spambot attack, the captcha would be turned on. Some captchas aren't hard to defeat, but I doubt if the spammer is going to bother.
Unfortunately, I fear this will lead us down the path towards captchas on all wikis on all edits, which would be unpleasant.
--Jimbo