Seems like a good idea, assuming that it doesn't create server problems.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I think most other wikis allow mods to do this, seems logical.
Zzzzzzzzzz
We do have a reversion tool, although it has to be applied to each page individually. We can pick the version we want to revert the page to, so we can clear a string of bad edits all made in a row by reverting to the latest good version.
As you mention, though, Drac, doing a mass reversion would mean that we could erase good edits made after the vandalism. And since we don't always hear about the vandalism as soon as it happens, as often as not, there are good edits made after it, and because we have to do each page individually, we can see whether that's the case and restore the good edit after we do the reversion.
edited 7th Sep '13 10:53:43 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I used to be an administrator on a MediaWiki site. There was an ability to remove all edits by a user on a page as long as that user was the last user to edit the page.
Another functionality I noticed to be absent was the undo edit button. I realize how it could be abused in edit warring, but the user who made the edit should at least be able to revert their own.
Speaking as someone who currently is a MediaWiki administrator, that is still a feature; it's referred to as "rollback".
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Yes, that was the term I meant to use. Thanks!
Zzzzzzzzzz
If you edit and then want to remove it, it's easy enough to simply C&P the "from" in the history and make another edit.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I actually meant that a mod should be able to rollback all the pages a user has edited within a certain timeframe. But if it would do more harm than good, so be it. (Still seems like it would be useful for the trolls that keep recreating accounts really rapidly.)
edited 7th Sep '13 12:05:41 PM by DracMonster
Zzzzzzzzzz
I understand that. But that would mean that we didn't see the edit history on each page, and wouldn't know whether there had been any good edits that we should restore that had been made after the vandalism.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
This can probably be done with a script ignoring all pages where the vandal is not the last editor.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Wouldn't be surprised if someone has suggested this already.
Cleaning up vandals could be quicker if the mods could mass-revert all of an accounts' edits back to a certain point. It would remove the trolls' satisfaction of all the extra work they create if it were less effort to clean up after them (for a mod only, obviously) than it takes to vandalize in the first place.
The only downside is it would sometimes also vaporize legitimate edits, but probably very little since normally only a short time frame (a day or so) would be needed.