On 08/01/07, bbatsell <wikipedia(a)theskeptik.com> wrote:
These steps are so tedious and error-prone that we
have screwed up
numerous times already, and that has been exploited. I'm not sure
how many more times we can allow pictures of cleft penii or vaginal
sores ON OUR FRONT PAGE without losing tremendous amounts of
credibility.
With regards to yesterday's ranting, this is a perfectly appropriate
example of what automation of administrative tasks should be used
for... but I would see no reason the code can't be released. There's
no complex checks involved a vandal can game if they know the details,
simply generating a list of all transclusions from a single page and
then setting protection for each. Unless the bot does something I'm
not understanding, releasing the code gives no loss of security and
allows the community to feel a lot more comfortable permitting it.
As an aside, every minute a vandalised image is covering the main
page, we serve it up to around two thousand people (give or take 50%
based on time of day, etc). Something to bear in mind.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk