I wrote:
user page throttle.minute throttle.hour throttle.day expiration jwales DNA 2 10 25 (timestamp) wik * * * 3
And Jimbo responded:
There may be some ambiguity here in the meaning of '*'. To me, the Wik line says "for each article, Wik may make up to 3 edits per day", as opposed to "3 edits per day on all articles combined".
It might be useful to have a way of signalling both. How about "*" to mean "for each article," and "#" to mean "on all articles combined"? It seems to me being able to limit contributions to "all articles combined" offers a useful tool in throttling vandals. An easy way to vandalize is to go through and systematically delete the text of entire articles. I had someone do this a couple of times on the Disinfopedia. In the space of less than half an hour, the vandal systematically replaced the text of around 100 pages with nonsense phrases and profanity. A restriction that says someone can only make three changes to each article wouldn't stop that kind of abuse at all, because the vandal's M.O. consists of only making a single change to each article.
I would also suggest generalizing the ability to block IP numbers, so that for example you could easily place a block on 142.177.*.*. This could be useful in dealing with a situation I encountered awhile back in which a vandal used an anonymizer that kept changing his IP number after about every 10 edits or so. If someone were to start that sort of attack, you could thwart most of it with the following line:
*.*.*.* * * 3 *
This would say that each unique IP number is allowed to make no more than three edits per hour -- a restriction that would be a minor nuisance to most serious contributors who use anonymous IP numbers, but it would inconvenience and slow down someone on a vandalism spree.
--Sheldon Rampton
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