From Gregory Maxwell in the "[Wikitech-l] User block changes" thread: If someone can't cooperate they are lost to us and we should just block, if they can then there is no need for fancy technical measures.
I agree. OT (hence the subject name change), but related to this general principle of just getting out of the way of people that are fundamentally sensible:
Something that seems a bit strange to me is rollback. The current situation I believe is that "Admins have a handy 'rollback' feature which allows them to instant-revert changes from a user's contributions page".
Sounds great, useful, and sensible. Everything apart from the "admins only bit". Why stop at admins? Me personally, I'm not a wikipedia admin (and currently the idea of yet another system that I'm an admin of in some way holds zero appeal), but the ability to quickly undo vandalism is useful, and could be given to far more users and be a big net win for vandalism control. The whole "history -> click on last edit minus one -> click edit -> type out 'revert' -> click save" cycle gets very tedious and repetitive after a while.
<rant> Why do we do this? Yes, there probably has to be some point at which we start trusting people enough to do easy rollbacks, but "admin" is too high a standard. If someone has a login, and has (say) >= 1000 edits, and has used the system for (say) >= 3 months, there's a pretty good chance they can spot an anon committing vandalism on pages on their watchlist. So why don't we make undoing this easier? Why don't we help such people more, empower them more, and make what they can already do just that bit easier and quicker? And I don't just mean me, or just this specific user and that specific user, I mean all users who cross a certain measurable threshold of trustworthiness and commitment, should automatically be given rollback ability. Maybe start the entry criteria high so that only a few people qualify initially, and then gradually lower them whilst the gain from lowering exceeds the pain from misuse - that would be fine, as long as it's a systematic attempt to empower a whole category of trusted users, as opposed to a user-by-user non-systematic approach. </rant>
All the best, Nick.
This has been brought up several times, you may want to review [[Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges]] on en: for more information on the past findings.
xaosflux ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Jenkins" nickpj@gmail.com To: wikitech-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:16 AM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users
From Gregory Maxwell in the "[Wikitech-l] User block changes" thread: If someone can't cooperate they are lost to us and we should just block, if they can then there is no need for fancy technical measures.
I agree. OT (hence the subject name change), but related to this general principle of just getting out of the way of people that are fundamentally sensible:
Something that seems a bit strange to me is rollback. The current situation I believe is that "Admins have a handy 'rollback' feature which allows them to instant-revert changes from a user's contributions page".
Sounds great, useful, and sensible. Everything apart from the "admins only bit". Why stop at admins? Me personally, I'm not a wikipedia admin (and currently the idea of yet another system that I'm an admin of in some way holds zero appeal), but the ability to quickly undo vandalism is useful, and could be given to far more users and be a big net win for vandalism control. The whole "history -> click on last edit minus one -> click edit -> type out 'revert' -> click save" cycle gets very tedious and repetitive after a while.
<rant> Why do we do this? Yes, there probably has to be some point at which we start trusting people enough to do easy rollbacks, but "admin" is too high a standard. If someone has a login, and has (say) >= 1000 edits, and has used the system for (say) >= 3 months, there's a pretty good chance they can spot an anon committing vandalism on pages on their watchlist. So why don't we make undoing this easier? Why don't we help such people more, empower them more, and make what they can already do just that bit easier and quicker? And I don't just mean me, or just this specific user and that specific user, I mean all users who cross a certain measurable threshold of trustworthiness and commitment, should automatically be given rollback ability. Maybe start the entry criteria high so that only a few people qualify initially, and then gradually lower them whilst the gain from lowering exceeds the pain from misuse - that would be fine, as long as it's a systematic attempt to empower a whole category of trusted users, as opposed to a user-by-user non-systematic approach. </rant>
All the best, Nick. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
The worry of course is that it makes vandalism very, very easy. If the threshold were low then it would be open for abuse by vandals.
Are you not proposing a whole new level of user just below admin? Seeing that certain features would be unavailable to "trusted users" (such as article deletion), the criteria for becoming one would be less rigorous.
Any thoughts?
On 12/07/06, xaosflux xaosflux@gmail.com wrote:
This has been brought up several times, you may want to review [[Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges]] on en: for more information on the past findings.
xaosflux ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Jenkins" nickpj@gmail.com To: wikitech-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:16 AM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users
From Gregory Maxwell in the "[Wikitech-l] User block changes" thread: If someone can't cooperate they are lost to us and we should just block, if they can then there is no need for fancy technical measures.
I agree. OT (hence the subject name change), but related to this general principle of just getting out of the way of people that are fundamentally sensible:
Something that seems a bit strange to me is rollback. The current situation I believe is that "Admins have a handy 'rollback' feature which allows them to instant-revert changes from a user's contributions page".
Sounds great, useful, and sensible. Everything apart from the "admins only bit". Why stop at admins? Me personally, I'm not a wikipedia admin (and currently the idea of yet another system that I'm an admin of in some way holds zero appeal), but the ability to quickly undo vandalism is useful, and could be given to far more users and be a big net win for vandalism control. The whole "history -> click on last edit minus one -> click edit -> type out 'revert' -> click save" cycle gets very tedious and repetitive after a while.
<rant> Why do we do this? Yes, there probably has to be some point at which we start trusting people enough to do easy rollbacks, but "admin" is too high a standard. If someone has a login, and has (say) >= 1000 edits, and has used the system for (say) >= 3 months, there's a pretty good chance they can spot an anon committing vandalism on pages on their watchlist. So why don't we make undoing this easier? Why don't we help such people more, empower them more, and make what they can already do just that bit easier and quicker? And I don't just mean me, or just this specific user and that specific user, I mean all users who cross a certain measurable threshold of trustworthiness and commitment, should automatically be given rollback ability. Maybe start the entry criteria high so that only a few people qualify initially, and then gradually lower them whilst the gain from lowering exceeds the pain from misuse - that would be fine, as long as it's a systematic attempt to empower a whole category of trusted users, as opposed to a user-by-user non-systematic approach. </rant>
All the best, Nick. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 7/11/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
The worry of course is that it makes vandalism very, very easy. If the threshold were low then it would be open for abuse by vandals.
Are you not proposing a whole new level of user just below admin? Seeing that certain features would be unavailable to "trusted users" (such as article deletion), the criteria for becoming one would be less rigorous.
Any thoughts?
Thoughts: not to be a jerk, but this is more of a Wikien-l issue, given that there's no technical issue with creating a new usergroup other than that the userrights situation isn't very modular right now (so a new extension would have to be created to allow bureaucrats or whoever to grant rollback ability). Wikitech-l is discussion for technical stuff, not local wiki policy. And this *has* been discussed extensively on enwiki; if you would like to resurrect discussion of instituting the group there, it would be a good idea to follow xaosflux's link and work from there, since policy is generally made on-wiki.
On 12/07/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
Thoughts: not to be a jerk, but this is more of a Wikien-l issue, given that there's no technical issue with creating a new usergroup other than that the userrights situation isn't very modular right now (so a new extension would have to be created to allow bureaucrats or whoever to grant rollback ability).
Little work needs to be done; we have an extension suitable for this.
Rob Church
Nick Jenkins wrote:
Why do we do this? Yes, there probably has to be some point at which we start trusting people enough to do easy rollbacks, but "admin" is too high a standard. If someone has a login, and has (say) >= 1000 edits, and has used the system for (say) >= 3 months, there's a pretty good chance they can spot an anon committing vandalism on pages on their watchlist. So why don't we make undoing this easier? Why don't we help such people more, empower them more, and make what they can already do just that bit easier and quicker?
I'm going to let you in on a little secret:
There's a user JavaScript tool that was developed some time ago which provides about the same one-touch rollback capability for any user. Rollbacks of course are nothing special, it's just a little convenience to automate the process, which in a SoftSecurity fashion gives the interested Good Guys a tiny leg up against random vandals.
We have the technical capability to add a rollback-only group. But all that creates is another bottleneck: assigning and managing that permission.
The user JavaScript doohickey is something that people can and do manage themselves with a little cut-and-paste.
Is it ideal? No. But by allowing the community to self-manage, it's more Wiki than a top-down-administered permission group and probably gets used more than such a group would.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
There's a user JavaScript tool that was developed some time ago which provides about the same one-touch rollback capability for any user. Rollbacks of course are nothing special, it's just a little convenience to automate the process, which in a SoftSecurity fashion gives the interested Good Guys a tiny leg up against random vandals.
The JavaScript tool is also slow, breaks frequently on minor interface changes and has, in the past, had several bugs that would more or less subtly mess up the page being rolled back. It's a really bad substitute for the real thing.
We have the technical capability to add a rollback-only group. But all that creates is another bottleneck: assigning and managing that permission.
I'd support giving rollback privileges to all autoconfirmed users.
There are a lot of ways in which any user can already cause much more damage much more quickly and easily than with rollback. Of course, the rollback feature probably would facilitate revert warring, but we already have a social solution to that: 3RR.
On 7/12/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
There are a lot of ways in which any user can already cause much more damage much more quickly and easily than with rollback. Of course, the rollback feature probably would facilitate revert warring, but we already have a social solution to that: 3RR.
Revert wars at warp speed!
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
I'd support giving rollback privileges to all autoconfirmed users.
I disagree. I think that the important aspect of manual reverting is the ability to enter summary of the edit, i.e. to explain why someone is reverting. On the other hand, administrators are trusted persons, so they don't have to explain (and justify themselves) that much, so an automatic edit summary is more logical for them than for autoconfirmed users.
Filip [dungodung]
Filip Maljkovic wrote:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
I'd support giving rollback privileges to all autoconfirmed users.
I disagree. I think that the important aspect of manual reverting is the ability to enter summary of the edit, i.e. to explain why someone is reverting. On the other hand, administrators are trusted persons, so they don't have to explain (and justify themselves) that much, so an automatic edit summary is more logical for them than for autoconfirmed users.
I'd disagree with the notion that administrators don't need to explain themselves as much as other editors. In my opinion, the automatic rollback should be reserved for situations where there is no possibility of misunderstanding, which generally means reverting either blatant vandalism or a very obvious mistake. If there's any chance that I might have misunderstood the intent of the edit, or that someone else could possibly misunderstand why I reverted it, I'll do the revert manually and provide an edit summary.
Of course, if there was a way to rollback with a custom edit summary...
On 12/07/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Of course, if there was a way to rollback with a custom edit summary...
There already is, and anyone can do it. You go to the history, pick the old version, hit edit, give a reason and hit Save. But you already knew that.
Rob Church
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
I'd disagree with the notion that administrators don't need to explain themselves as much as other editors. In my opinion, the automatic rollback should be reserved for situations where there is no possibility of misunderstanding, which generally means reverting either blatant vandalism or a very obvious mistake. If there's any chance that I might have misunderstood the intent of the edit, or that someone else could possibly misunderstand why I reverted it, I'll do the revert manually and provide an edit summary.
Hence my assumption that administrators are prudent enough to put edit summaries when needed instead of always using the rollback button. But that would be in a Perfect World.
Of course, if there was a way to rollback with a custom edit summary...
That has crossed my mind, but seems hard to implement.
Filip
On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 04:16:07PM +1000, Nick Jenkins wrote:
Something that seems a bit strange to me is rollback. The current situation I believe is that "Admins have a handy 'rollback' feature which allows them to instant-revert changes from a user's contributions page".
Sounds great, useful, and sensible. Everything apart from the "admins only bit". Why stop at admins? Me personally, I'm not a wikipedia admin (and currently the idea of yet another system that I'm an admin of in some way holds zero appeal), but the ability to quickly undo vandalism is useful, and could be given to far more users and be a big net win for vandalism control. The whole "history -> click on last edit minus one -> click edit -> type out 'revert' -> click save" cycle gets very tedious and repetitive after a while.
Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected (more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.
Perhaps that's Captain Obvious, reporting for duty, and that's why no one mentioned it, but...
Cheers, -- jra
On 12/07/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected (more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.
Um...yes, it can. Just like everything else.
Rob Church
On 7/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected (more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.
Er, rollback can be rolled back. Not only that, it can generally be rolled back by *anyone*, even an anonymous user. Therefore, privileges such as deletion (which can only be reverted by one of a few hundred admins) are significantly more sensitive.
On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 11:21:33PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
On 7/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected (more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.
Er, rollback can be rolled back. Not only that, it can generally be rolled back by *anyone*, even an anonymous user. Therefore, privileges such as deletion (which can only be reverted by one of a few hundred admins) are significantly more sensitive.
Physically, perhaps.
Though, when examining the logical aspect, I suppose it's actually *lower* impact to roll-forward an unwanted rollback; either direction, of course, runs the risk of eating edits in the interim.
This is what I get for combining alcohol, karaoke, and mailing lists.
Sorry.
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
Though, when examining the logical aspect, I suppose it's actually *lower* impact to roll-forward an unwanted rollback; either direction, of course, runs the risk of eating edits in the interim.
The builtin rollback feature is actually fail-safe in the sense that it will do nothing if there have been additional edits after the one that was to be rolled back.
Some of the JavaScript replacements may or may not share this safety feature, and "manual" rollback (by editing an old version) certainly doesn't.
This has been brought up several times, you may want to review [[Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges]] on en: for more information on the past findings.
Having read through that page I just have to say: Gosh, what an amazing amount of debate and polling, with most of the people in the discussion having zero capacity to fix it, and all leading to no real conclusion.
The worry of course is that it makes vandalism very, very easy. If the threshold were low then it would be open for abuse by vandals.
I agree, and that's why I'm thinking a high threshold.
User contributions follow a power law (example graph: http://wikiq.nber.org/figs/png/eswiki-20060620-hist_log_total-edits.png ). i.e. the total number of users who would have edits in the 1000's is a very small percentage of the total userbase.
Using the figures from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edit... (with hasn't been updated since March, but it'll do for a quick calculation), and the figure of "English Wikipedia had about 1,064,259 registered users" on that same page:
To put this into numbers, looking at just edits (and disregarding account lifespan), the edit threshold, number of users who meet or exceed that threshold, and the percentage of the userbase that this represents are as follows: Edits Num users % of userbase 1500 2500 0.23% 2000 1923 0.18% 3000 1293 0.12% 4000 924 0.09% 5000 711 0.07%
In other words, only a tiny percentage of users would get this, and if a vandal is willing to make thousands of good edits just to have a window of opportunity of a few minutes in which to vandalise: a) It's rather unlikely. Let me put it this way: If someone wanted to damage the Wikipedia, to me this seems to be an enormously inefficient and ineffective and labour-intensive way to do it. b) It's probably a net win anyway. In other words, the vandals would have to do enough useful stuff to cross a threshold, more than the damage they would do in those few minutes. In other words, you harness the power of the vandals, by getting more out of the vandals than you put in, so you're still better off.
Thoughts: not to be a jerk, but this is more of a Wikien-l issue
You're not being a jerk, and I understand what you're saying.
However, there *is* a significant technical aspect to this, and ignoring that technical aspect is a good way of guaranteeing that it won't work. There are two sides to this: 1) Getting general agreement. 2) Implementing it.
Finding something that can be agreed upon does little good if there is no interest in implementing it, or if implementing it causes so much load, or difficulty, or takes so much effort that it's not worthwhile, or just simply can't be done. Therefore the technical aspects cannot be ignored, and need to be discussed too.
There's a user JavaScript tool that was developed some time ago which provides about the same one-touch rollback capability for any user
I know, but as you say it's not ideal, and just not as good as a server-side solution. Furthermore its very existence is evidence of a desire that the Wikipedia were better in this regard.
we have an extension suitable for this.
Yes, your GiveRollback extension ( http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/GiveRollback/ ). I've read through the code, and (please correct me if I'm wrong) it seems to be a way that bureaucrats can add and remove rollback abilities for named auto-confirmed existing user accounts.
That's definitely an improvement, although I'm wondering if the addition and removal can't be largely automated to enormously reduce the load on bureaucrats (i.e. this would be a good UI for the exceptions, with the general case being handled automatically).
I think that the important aspect of manual reverting is the ability to enter summary of the edit, i.e. to explain why someone is reverting.
When I revert someone they are I think always: a) an anon b) have written something like: "YOUSE ARE ALL BOGANS WHO CAN KISS MY 733T FURRY BUTT!!!! WOOT!!! YOUSE HAVE BEEN HAX0R3D BY S0nIc WaV3!!!!" c) my edit description is usually "revert" or "rvv" or just "rv".
So: 1) Is a more detailed description really necessary? (e.g. "Revert: Buttocks need branding with hot poker iron" ?) 2) The default "Revert edits by [[User:x.y.z.w]] to last version by [[NiceGuy]]" that I think you get on rollback are nicer anyway than the descriptions I use.
Not only that, it can generally be rolled back by *anyone*, even an anonymous user.
Exactly. This is about making what people can already do easier for those who have stuck around long enough to know what's expected, and know outright vandalism when they see it.
At the moment, here's what I'm thinking:
General idea / spec:
Technical rules: * Upon exceeding 2000 edits and also having an account for more than 2 months and having never been blocked for any period of time, the user shall by an automated process be granted the ability to do limited rollbacks. * These limited rollbacks can only be used on anons (as a technical restriction). (For named accounts need to do it the old slow way). * You lose limited rollback ability immediately and automatically for violating 3RR (i.e. if you use the limited rollback on the same article within 24 hours, then the limited rollback permission is automatically removed from your account). [Or perhaps it should just refuse to let you do a limited rollback in this situation?] * Maximum of one limited rollback every 5 seconds (e.g. by server-side sleep() for a few seconds, or by saying "too many rollback requests in too short a time. Press refresh in a few seconds to try again"). * Bureaucrats can add or remove the limited rollback permission at their discretion.
Social rules: * You can only rollback for blatant vandalism or a very obvious mistake (i.e. an edit description should not be required because the reason for the revert should be obvious. If an edit description would be required, then revert manually).
I would appreciate comments on whether: a) it seems technically feasible and/or sensible b) if I can deal with the political slog to get agreement, if there is anyone out there that might potentially be interested in building it, or a bit of it? c) if you think it can be improved / simplified d) Are any of the technical rules not required, or are more required? (e.g. is 3RR restriction required? Is limited rollback throttling required? Is there a better way of doing it?)
Comments / thoughts?
All the best, Nick.
I would disagree with the idea of restricting it to rolling back anons only, as I think with a requirement of that many edits this wouldn't be an issue. Your ideas of using the 3RR rule to autoremove the rollback is a good idea, though.
Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I would disagree with automatically enabling this ability and instead would suggest that users who are into vandal fighting request it in a similar manner to bot requests.
Hope I've been helpful.
—Xyrael On 13/07/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj@gmail.com > wrote:
This has been brought up several times, you may want to review [[Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges]] on en: for more
information
on the past findings.
Having read through that page I just have to say: Gosh, what an amazing amount of debate and polling, with most of the people in the discussion having zero capacity to fix it, and all leading to no real conclusion.
The worry of course is that it makes vandalism very, very easy. If the threshold were low then it would be open for abuse by vandals.
I agree, and that's why I'm thinking a high threshold.
User contributions follow a power law (example graph: http://wikiq.nber.org/figs/png/eswiki-20060620-hist_log_total-edits.png ). i.e. the total number of users who would have edits in the 1000's is a very small percentage of the total userbase.
Using the figures from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edit... (with hasn't been updated since March, but it'll do for a quick calculation), and the figure of "English Wikipedia had about 1,064,259 registered users" on that same page:
To put this into numbers, looking at just edits (and disregarding account lifespan), the edit threshold, number of users who meet or exceed that threshold, and the percentage of the userbase that this represents are as follows: Edits Num users % of userbase 1500 2500 0.23% 2000 1923 0.18% 3000 1293 0.12% 4000 924 0.09% 5000 711 0.07%
In other words, only a tiny percentage of users would get this, and if a vandal is willing to make thousands of good edits just to have a window of opportunity of a few minutes in which to vandalise: a) It's rather unlikely. Let me put it this way: If someone wanted to damage the Wikipedia, to me this seems to be an enormously inefficient and ineffective and labour-intensive way to do it. b) It's probably a net win anyway. In other words, the vandals would have to do enough useful stuff to cross a threshold, more than the damage they would do in those few minutes. In other words, you harness the power of the vandals, by getting more out of the vandals than you put in, so you're still better off.
Thoughts: not to be a jerk, but this is more of a Wikien-l issue
You're not being a jerk, and I understand what you're saying.
However, there *is* a significant technical aspect to this, and ignoring that technical aspect is a good way of guaranteeing that it won't work. There are two sides to this:
- Getting general agreement.
- Implementing it.
Finding something that can be agreed upon does little good if there is no interest in implementing it, or if implementing it causes so much load, or difficulty, or takes so much effort that it's not worthwhile, or just simply can't be done. Therefore the technical aspects cannot be ignored, and need to be discussed too.
There's a user JavaScript tool that was developed some time ago which
provides
about the same one-touch rollback capability for any user
I know, but as you say it's not ideal, and just not as good as a server-side solution. Furthermore its very existence is evidence of a desire that the Wikipedia were better in this regard.
we have an extension suitable for this.
Yes, your GiveRollback extension ( http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/GiveRollback/ ). I've read through the code, and (please correct me if I'm wrong) it seems to be a way that bureaucrats can add and remove rollback abilities for named auto-confirmed existing user accounts.
That's definitely an improvement, although I'm wondering if the addition and removal can't be largely automated to enormously reduce the load on bureaucrats (i.e. this would be a good UI for the exceptions, with the general case being handled automatically).
I think that the important aspect of manual reverting is the ability to enter summary of the edit, i.e. to explain why someone is reverting.
When I revert someone they are I think always: a) an anon b) have written something like: "YOUSE ARE ALL BOGANS WHO CAN KISS MY 733T FURRY BUTT!!!! WOOT!!! YOUSE HAVE BEEN HAX0R3D BY S0nIc WaV3!!!!" c) my edit description is usually "revert" or "rvv" or just "rv".
So:
- Is a more detailed description really necessary? (e.g. "Revert:
Buttocks need branding with hot poker iron" ?) 2) The default "Revert edits by [[User:x.y.z.w]] to last version by [[NiceGuy]]" that I think you get on rollback are nicer anyway than the descriptions I use.
Not only that, it can generally be rolled back by *anyone*, even an anonymous user.
Exactly. This is about making what people can already do easier for those who have stuck around long enough to know what's expected, and know outright vandalism when they see it.
At the moment, here's what I'm thinking:
General idea / spec:
Technical rules:
- Upon exceeding 2000 edits and also having an account for more than 2
months and having never been blocked for any period of time, the user shall by an automated process be granted the ability to do limited rollbacks.
- These limited rollbacks can only be used on anons (as a technical
restriction). (For named accounts need to do it the old slow way).
- You lose limited rollback ability immediately and automatically for
violating 3RR (i.e. if you use the limited rollback on the same article within 24 hours, then the limited rollback permission is automatically removed from your account). [Or perhaps it should just refuse to let you do a limited rollback in this situation?]
- Maximum of one limited rollback every 5 seconds (e.g. by server-side
sleep() for a few seconds, or by saying "too many rollback requests in too short a time. Press refresh in a few seconds to try again").
- Bureaucrats can add or remove the limited rollback permission at
their discretion.
Social rules:
- You can only rollback for blatant vandalism or a very obvious
mistake (i.e. an edit description should not be required because the reason for the revert should be obvious. If an edit description would be required, then revert manually).
I would appreciate comments on whether: a) it seems technically feasible and/or sensible b) if I can deal with the political slog to get agreement, if there is anyone out there that might potentially be interested in building it, or a bit of it? c) if you think it can be improved / simplified d) Are any of the technical rules not required, or are more required? ( e.g. is 3RR restriction required? Is limited rollback throttling required? Is there a better way of doing it?)
Comments / thoughts?
All the best, Nick. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton sean@silentflame.com wrote:
I would disagree with the idea of restricting it to rolling back anons only, as I think with a requirement of that many edits this wouldn't be an issue. Your ideas of using the 3RR rule to autoremove the rollback is a good idea, though.
Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I would disagree with automatically enabling this ability and instead would suggest that users who are into vandal fighting request it in a similar manner to bot requests.
As I see it, we've got a few options...
1. Just give it out, to all autoconfirmed users. 2. Give it out to all autoconfirmed users who have passed some additional threshold, such as edit count; record user edit counts somewhere, or maintain a flag on their account which is updated when the desired threshold is passed. 3. Have bureaucrats and stewards give it out.
Each option has benefits and each has disadvantages. For instance, suggesting #1 on wikien-l would be liable to get me shot, owing to En Wikipedia's lack of desire to use simple functions such as block against users who deserve it. Abuse it? Blocked. Simple.
Reliance on either of #2 or #3 alone isn't quite optimum in my book. What we *could* do is combine the two. If the implementation for #2 added users to a group with the rollback permission (granted one-off on their 2000th edit, to take an arbitrary figure), as opposed to adding them to an implicit group (effectively re-granted with every session), then it could be revoked for the short or long term by bureaucrats and stewards and ArbCom, oh my.
Retaining option #3 would allow it to be given back, or given out prematurely.
#2 as an implicit group is not too horrendous to code into MediaWiki; we can add a new column to the user table and add checking code to the edit form or Article::editUpdates() method, etc. The more complex proposal starts to look uglier, so I'm thinking implementation of that *might* be via an extension, assuming we have or could add all the required hooks and grappling ledges.
Rob Church
I would agree that whatever happens it should be a permission that stewards can revoke; that ability should always be there. You've got some good arguments for an automatic level of granting, but perhaps a page where you can hit a button to request the flag might be more appropriate, a page that only works once and only once you've met the requirements? I don't know about the coding of this but it would mean that any user who had lost the flag for any reason would have to use a request page to get a b'crat to assign it again, meaning that they could be checked out for a 3RR violation or whatever. I am against any form of automatic upgrading once edits are made because it makes the permission seem like an automatic right of making those edits, and this could be socially abused. I know it could be made clear, but I can foresee many conflicts over permissions being revoked, so having to ask for them (in a sense) may prevent upset. Does this make any sense?
—Xyrael
On 13/07/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton sean@silentflame.com wrote:
I would disagree with the idea of restricting it to rolling back anons
only,
as I think with a requirement of that many edits this wouldn't be an
issue.
Your ideas of using the 3RR rule to autoremove the rollback is a good
idea,
though.
Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I would disagree with
automatically
enabling this ability and instead would suggest that users who are into vandal fighting request it in a similar manner to bot requests.
As I see it, we've got a few options...
- Just give it out, to all autoconfirmed users.
- Give it out to all autoconfirmed users who have passed some
additional threshold, such as edit count; record user edit counts somewhere, or maintain a flag on their account which is updated when the desired threshold is passed. 3. Have bureaucrats and stewards give it out.
Each option has benefits and each has disadvantages. For instance, suggesting #1 on wikien-l would be liable to get me shot, owing to En Wikipedia's lack of desire to use simple functions such as block against users who deserve it. Abuse it? Blocked. Simple.
Reliance on either of #2 or #3 alone isn't quite optimum in my book. What we *could* do is combine the two. If the implementation for #2 added users to a group with the rollback permission (granted one-off on their 2000th edit, to take an arbitrary figure), as opposed to adding them to an implicit group (effectively re-granted with every session), then it could be revoked for the short or long term by bureaucrats and stewards and ArbCom, oh my.
Retaining option #3 would allow it to be given back, or given out prematurely.
#2 as an implicit group is not too horrendous to code into MediaWiki; we can add a new column to the user table and add checking code to the edit form or Article::editUpdates() method, etc. The more complex proposal starts to look uglier, so I'm thinking implementation of that *might* be via an extension, assuming we have or could add all the required hooks and grappling ledges.
Rob Church _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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