Semi-protection level for pages

Added the puppet estimator to Itty Bitty Wiki Tools.

I did post something like this earlier in the subforum, but hey, this is the kind of system I personally would like to see. The issue comes to deciding on what conditions users can use the semi-locked pages.

I think that FE is (if it's actually implemented) going to pluck a random number of edits/days/posts or any combination of these out of thin air and prevent anyone from editing a semi-locked page that don't have the required number.

How soon can we implement it? This troll is REALLY FUCKING OBSESSED and it'd be nice to try and deter him by not being allowed to edit.

That vandal sure brought to light how much we need something like this. It sucks when all legitimate tropers have to suffer when a page gets locked because of a few persistent extremist hardliners who silence criticism against anything they like.

Nuh uh. It's not many people who want us to bow down to the ending writers. It's the same guy. The one frankly creepy guy. If I had to choose between confronting Angelus and him, I'd take Angelus. No joke.

Hehe I know in the case of the ME 3 crusader, it's all one very persistent guy. I was speaking in general terms for TV Tropes as a whole, and how semi-protection can benefit the site.

Absolutely. How many times has the one guy made socks for My Little Pony? Or a different guy for Kaptain Krabb...is it? for Spongebob? It's sad. It's honestly sad. And the worst thing is, we can't tell'em. It only encourages them, but then ignoring doesn't do a thing when they are more persistent than Spike pursuing Buffy.

You know what, I think if we suggested we each pay fifty dollars for Eddie to do this it'd get a lot of support.

I think this is an excellent idea. Popular but divisive works and tropes would definitely benefit from this.

Until a device that lets you punch people in the face over the internet is invented, this sounds like a great way.

How long would the lockout be for new users to wait until they can edit semi-protected articles?

edited 23rd May '12 1:20:46 PM by VmKid

I don't think that's something that's going to be made public.

It should also include some edit counts rather than just a time limit.

I did some thinking about the logistics, and I'm not so sure that including more than a marginal number of edits (25-50 or so) in the requirements are really desirable. We don't want to induce editor lockout if we protect too many pages and require significant edit requirements, and it's pretty easy for a dedicated troll to spam some null edits for a couple hours if that were the primary limiting factor.

I guess what I'm saying is that while including some number of edits is good, time should be the primary limiting factor here.

Why not both? That is, you cannot edit protected pages until you have both X number of edits and Y amount of time has passed.

edited 23rd May '12 1:55:49 PM by ccoa

I agree that both is good; the other concern is that you don't want trolls to be able to passively bake accounts for X days.

Heck, if Eddie could code it, you could even have a sliding scale that allows for varying levels of protection based on previous vandalisms, etc.

I was personally partial to 30 days + 50 edits myself as a base value for The Fast One to work with.

That was my original idea.

Sliding scale? No, I don't find we need so many permutations.

Well, it was merely a thought to throw out. Almost a if there were such a thing.

Agreed that it's unnecessary, but it's still the ideas stage.

If a threshold is announced publicly, then it can be both time and number of legitimate edits required to edit semi-protected pages. What vandal would wait out, say, 30 days and make 50 legitimate edits just to hop onto a semi-protected page to vandalize it?

If one criterion is decided upon, then that should not be announced.

edited 23rd May '12 2:47:27 PM by JudgeSpear

One concern raised was trolls could just bake accounts and wait for them to be allowed to edit\make a batch of null edits to get to the pages they really want to attack. Between the obvious troll names and being able to trace which accounts have used the same IP, if we can keep track of new users we should be able to largely overcome that problem.

Good point. A semi-protection system should have people checking new users manually or even possibly detect and disallow null edits to bake new user accounts.

I know I said before, but it is possible to code in an edit being rejected if it's written a certain way. Game Faqs for example do not allow Nazis or Hitler in their posts. While it may not be worth the trouble imagine if the Mass Effect troll was copying and pasting the same nonsense he did from his other sixty socks and the system identified it, automatic bounce, he gets sent back to Google.

I don't like the idea of the threshold being 30 days and 50 edits. Why not make the time just the same as for how long someone has the "new account" tag, which is less than a month, and the number of edits be realistic for someone in that time (say, 3-5 edits per two days? I don't know how much people edit)?

Fifty edits seems a bit high, if you ask me. I mean, my account didn't get fifty edits until a good few months after creation due to my initial habits of occasionally fixing grammar and spelling mistakes and nothing else. I'd personally make it 20-30.

You'd also have to protect against null edits somehow, else someone make a troper page, null edit it fifty times, then go on a vandal spree, and considering some of the vandals we've seen in the last year... it wouldn't surprise me if they did just that.

How about a system where new accounts can be unlocked at ten edits, but those ten have to be approved by the staff?

If I'm not mistaken, we get quite a few new accounts every day. True, not all of them ever reach ten edits (forum RP sockpuppets, etc.) but it still seems like an awful lot of work for a rather small group of mods.

(Hey Eddie, as a side note, could you give us a ballpark on how many accounts are currently registered here, and how many new ones we get a day?)