Could you explain the terms you're using here?
- What's an OK MOVE?
A move that works, that is, it's allowed by the system. Moving a page to a nonexistent page is an "OK MOVE". Moving a page to a history-less redirect is usually an OK MOVE.
- What's a BADMOVE?
A move that doesn't work: failed move, can't do it, that sort of thing. Should have said failed move or something. Moving a page to another Article with a history is a BADMOVE.
Page A ---BADMOVE---> Page B (history-less redirect to page C)
- How does a page C come in on BADMOVEs?
Page C in the example you cited is just some random page the redirect points to. It's important to distinguish between page B and page C the same way this works:
Penguin is an article Phoenix is an article Ice Bird is a history-less redirect to Penguin Fire Bird is a history-less redirect to Phoenix
You can move Penguin to Ice Bird but not to Fire Bird. Phoenix is our "Article C"
Hope that cleared things up.
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
Penguin is an article Phoenix is an article Ice Bird is a history-less redirect to Penguin Fire Bird is a history-less redirect to Phoenix
You can move Penguin to Ice Bird but not to Fire Bird. Phoenix is our "Article C"
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.
And in a previous message:
I'm telling you, one of these days a vandal is going to realize that Page moves require little work to be done but can cause massive damage that requires lots of work to fix, and then create multiple puppet accounts and capitilize on this behavior.
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.
-- Tim Starling
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org