I used to be completely paranoid about vandals using
page moves to
shuffle article titles, by repeatedly swapping titles via a temporary
page. That is, until I realised this attack was already protected
against, using the feature you describe above.
A feature, hmm...
This has already happened several times, we've
seen this scenario played
out to the fullest extent. We've implemented a few features to deal with
it, such as "undo" links in RC and checks for "newbies" attempting
to
move pages. Allowing users to move over arbitrary redirects would open
us up to truly irreversible attacks, rather than just attacks reversible
only by admins.
What you mean by irreversible you mean that the page jumps over
arbitrary redirects and you can't just click "undo" to reverse them all?
Hmm... that would be a problem.
(aside) Excepting the fact that redirects (usually) are pretty
straightforward when it comes correlations (but still, it's not as
convenient as UNDO.
I'm not sure anymore. Page moves are such an arcane matter and most
Wikipedians wouldn't know what to do about page move weirdness. Then
again, after really looking at the system, I'm starting to think that
the way page moves is implemented is genius: a mix between giving the
users control and keeping the situation under control.
And Brion, err, sorry, I sorta tried out my theory on the Volapuk
article and forgot to clean up my mess. :oops: I added a little extra
documentation on this feature on the Metawiki page on Page Moves.
--
Edward Z. Yang Personal: edwardzyang(a)thewritingpot.com
SN:Ambush Commander Website:
http://www.thewritingpot.com/
GPGKey:0x869C48DA
http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA