Wikivoyage talk:Community policies

External Links Policy

Would it be bad for the site to have it linked in two places? Or at least have the Manual of Style cross-ref'ed from the P&G page? I put it here because I couldn't find it when I was looking for it and there are lots of references to the External Links Policy when removing extlinks from pages, reverting changes, etc. It was difficult for (at least) one person to find, it has probably been difficult for other people to find. As with all policies, if you want someone to read them, you need to make them easy to find. -- (WT-en) Rob (Payne) 22:45, 10 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I don't think it could hurt to link to the policy in more than one place. The external links policy is probably cited more often than any other when reverting or changing edits, so it seems sensible to explicitly link to it from the policy page. -- (WT-en) Ryan 01:16, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I vaguely remembered reading something about why more policies weren't listed on this page, and found the discussion at Project:Manual of style#Rollback. It was a rather heated discussion, and while I do disagree with Evan and feel that it's more important that information be easy to find instead of hierarchically organized, it looks like an issue that may be just as polarizing as heading changes, so I'll back away slowly now and leave it for others to hash out if they want to. -- (WT-en) Ryan 04:15, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'll go learn from history and read that discussion. Thanks for the pointer, Ryan. -- (WT-en) Rob (Payne) 08:30, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I've added the External links policy to the page. Here's hoping Evan is too distracted by crying babies to notice ;) (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:40, 11 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I see Evan's gone and reverted it again. Will you please explain to me why choosing what links are allowed and what are not is a matter of style, not policy? And why is it a Bad Thing to link to the page from more than one place? (WT-en) Jpatokal 20:33, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

No he didn't. Now be quiet and don't disturb the parental bonding. -- (WT-en) Colin 21:10, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Did too (), I just reverted it back. And let's keep innocent little babies out of grown men's edit wars... (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:30, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

That was four days ago -- you've only reverted once so far. Evan has only made one edit since then, and that was the pub. Jet lag? :-) -- (WT-en) Colin 21:38, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

D'oh! (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:29, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

We have a Project:Utilities page that lists all the Wikivoyage: namespace articles. I think there's some value in further subdividing the space for navigational reasons, rather than copying all the links in the utilities page to P&G, MoS, and Help, as well as everywhere else. Will it help if I outline what I think is "policy", what I think is "style", and what I think is "help"? I'm not sure if the problem we have here is that you don't understand why I think there's a difference, or if you don't agree with me. --(WT-en) Evan 22:59, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I can't speak for Jpatokal, but my argument for linking to Project:External links on both the policy page and the Project:Manual of style is that it encompasses both style and policy - it describes how to handle external links on a page (style) and what is an acceptable external link (policy). Users looking for the rules about external links would seem (in my opinion) equally likely to look in either place. Additionally, I don't think it hurts to link relevant topics from two different places; we count on common sense to prevail when including the most important cities on region pages (for example, the Bay Area (California) has a link to San Francisco but not to Dublin (California)) so it doesn't seem unreasonable to count on using common sense to prevent clutter on policy and style indexes. That said, at this point I would rather have you busy experiencing what it's like to be a new parent instead of arguing of the minutiae of Wikivoyage linking policies, so this definitely isn't a point that needs to be discussed at length right now.

Also, I started trying to sub-divide everything in the Wikivoyage namespace a while back but didn't finish. The current page is at User:(WT-en) Wrh2/Help and may be useful as a starting point if you do plan on subdividing Project:Utilities. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 02:03, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I think it'd make a good replacement for Project:Utilities. I'm not a big fan of hierarchical lists (I like page sections and separate pages better), but it should probably just be moved there soon.

Also, I disagree that Project:External links is both style and policy. I've always thought of "policy" as "collaboration and behavior rules and processes", like how we pick new administrators and how we delete articles. I've thought of "style guidelines" as "rules about content". In other words, policy is about people, and guidelines are about text and pictures.

Maybe I'm being too persnickety, but I really think that rules about how we interact should be called out, and have more gravity, than rules about content.

HOWEVER, I also think that the policies, guidelines, and help pages need to be accessible. If we need to have other kinds of indices -- ways of pointing at the same pages -- I'm all for it. I'm even up for re-aligning the triumvirate of policies, style guidelines, and help pages, if we need to. But I'd like to have it done with some forethought, and with better reasoning than "maybe someone looking at page X could benefit from the information at page Y". If we go that route, we just link every page from every other page and everyone gets lost in the noise. --(WT-en) Evan 09:37, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

It makes complete sense to divide policies and guidelines into non-article policies ("collaboration and behavior rules and processes") vs. article style/content guidelines ("rules about content"). I think the problem is that an index with a title of "Wikivoyage:Policies and guidelines" is an obvious place to put ALL policies and guidelines -- changing the names to something like "Wikivoyage:Content policies" and "Wikivoyage:Administration policies" (not great suggestions, but you get the idea) would go a long way to making the organizational structure clearer. If others agree that the naming isn't all that clear then I'm sure a someone could come up with an alternative that made the purpose clear. Ditto for "Wikivoyage:Utilities" - when I think of a utility I think of a tool, not a namespace index ("Wikivoyage:Namespace Index" maybe?). -- (WT-en) Wrh2 12:21, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I didn't understand the distinction before this explaination. Maybe either article name changes (as Ryan suggests) or a bit more explainatory text in each article detailing the types of stuff mentioned and where to go for other types of stuff (e.g. "This Policies and guidelines page details our consensus about how we go about writing Wikivoyage. For consensus regarding the content of articles (what should be in an article, not be in an article, and so forth), please see the Manual of Style"). Or something more ingenious. -- (WT-en) Colin 12:43, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

What about "Community policies" and "Content guidelines"? I prefer the name "Manual of style" rather than "Content guidelines", but I'm totally willing to bend on it. I also like that "policies" sounds stronger than "guidelines", which I think is the message we want. And, yes, the name of this page is misleading -- it's copied from Wikipedia back in the day. It doesn't actually have any "guidelines" listed! --(WT-en) Evan 13:10, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Works for me. I also rather like "Manual of Style" - perhaps just set up Wikivoyage:Content guidelines as a redirect to Project:Manual of style? Moving Project:Policies and guidelines to "Wikivoyage:Community policies" is (in my opinion) the more helpful change, although it is nice to have a counter-balance. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 13:27, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

This has been sitting here for four days now without further comment -- if no one has any objections I'd like to move the current page to Wikivoyage:Community policies, and create a redirect for Wikivoyage:Content guidelines that redirects to the MOS. Any objections? -- (WT-en) Ryan 00:52, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'll set this up so someone else can knock it down: I was thinking that perhaps "community policies" sounds like policies made by the community, and that folks won't understand that they're polices about the community. Other than that, I think this is a good way to go. --(WT-en) Evan 08:07, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Since there has been no knockdown, page moved. -- (WT-en) Ryan 02:07, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

I agree with everything Ryan says, but as I'd already written the below before I saw his response... so as for which one I think is the problem, the answer is both and then some. I'll enumerate:

I don't understand your distinction in general, as previously discussed here.
I don't understand why we can't link to pages from multiple places. Policies and guidelines are for online use, so links are good.
I don't understand why this page in specific is filed under style, not policy. Only a small part of the page concerns how to format external links, the bulk of the page — and the subject of constant squabbles — is what links are permissible and which ones aren't. Note that Google finds 13 uses of "external links policy" and 8 uses of "external link policy" (exact string searches) on Wikivoyage, so evidently people do think of this as a policy, not a guideline. (WT-en) Jpatokal 20:03, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Time for a vandalism policy?

I think the time may have come when we need to become considerably more hard-nosed about dealing with intentional vandalism. The problem is getting worse all the time, and the vandals aren't just the the usual "Hortense Schlummerstein is HOTxxx" victims of teenage hormone poisoning; some of them have made it completely explicit that they're out to do real damage. Even though they basically can't do lasting, irreparable damage to articles, then can do harm to Wikivoyage's reputation and credibility. Furthermore, time spent on cleaning up the messes they create is time we can't spend on more constructive work.

I don't have a particular policy in mind, but I believe there should be one. Let's discuss. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 11:24, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

I've been having these same thoughts for some time now. I know there's some noble intent concerning openness behind it all and I've read everything I could find on Wikivoyage about it, but I don't see how the waste of time is worth it. Call me curmudgeonly, but I'm apt to have a quick trigger finger on the block button when the perpetrators are obviously malicious (i.e. moving and renaming critical pages)--and I feel policy should back that approach. Will consider some suggestions. -- (WT-en) OldPine 12:13, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

I agree that something really has to be done about this, but we do have to be careful: we can't be making any unnessecary enemies. If we're going to have a hard-nosed policy, we have to set standards: Should there be a minimum number of times the member has been warned before we bring the hammer down (like a three-strikes law)? How serious are the edits? Etc. (WT-en) PerryPlanet 13:12, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

Strongly agree that too much time is being wasted dealing with those who use the site as a playground. I'd be in favor of allowing more flexibility in handling vandals, including blocking problem users, but I've got the following concerns:

I'd like any guideline to stress an innocent-until-proven-guilty policy. Not everyone is technically savvy, reads all of the policies before editing, etc. If someone is adding racial slurs to Niger that's clearly vandalism, but if someone keeps adding their hotel to an article they may just not understand how the site works and we should be trying to educate them rather than exclude them and lose a potentially valuable contributor.
I think any changes to policy should stress that a block should occur only when damage is not easily controlled. Threatening or misleading other users, multiple page moves, or repeatedly modifying critical pages such as the Main Page are terribly disruptive. Adding "Bob is gay" to twenty random articles is not.
I'd like any policy change to include some flexibility for using "best judgment". Vandals by nature look for corner-cases and try to make things difficult, so I think we need to trust the community to make good decisions when dealing with these individuals. For example, if someone is modifying hundreds of pages with an automated script it doesn't make sense to constrain an admin to following a "three warnings" policy.
Assuming that the ultimate solution will involve blocking users, I'd suggest a guideline that automated vandalism (bots) should be blocked for up to one month, while if we must block real people (user or IP) we do so for a couple of hours the first time, a day the second, and a time to be determined by whoever applies the block thereafter. An exception would be misleading user logins such as O1dPine (with a "1") which current policy states can be blocked indefinitely. Some warning should be given prior to blocking, although I would trust the judgment of admins here to understand when a vandal knows what they're doing and a warning would be useless.

-- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:09, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

I agree with Ryan. We do have a policy that I still tend to agree with - Project:How_to_handle_unwanted_edits#User_ban. Our policy has been slowly forming and changing itself as needed... we indefinitely blocked the Jpatokal impersonator... we've been blocking script using vandals/spammers. But I still think we should think hard and practice restraint before getting too block happy. We did sign up as janitors, and occasionally we do have to use the mop. I still think it's better in the long run for us to maintain that kind of attitude, rather than a turn into taser-wielding hall monitors. We may have to spend a little time reverting some edits, but at the end of the day it's really not that hard or time consuming... and the alternative is that we take a similar hard line like Wikipedia does... which in my opinion is no less time consuming, and breeds a more hostile environment. I really just don't think that it's that out of control... as the site grows we'll get more vandals, but also more users and more admins... As Ryan (and our policy) stated above: a block should occur only when damage is not easily controlled... can someone show an example of a situation that was just impossible to deal with, or even all that time consuming? We're already blocking script users, and anyone who is vandalizing manually is just a minor nuisance. Let him run free for 10 minutes, then open his contributions page and click "rollback" 20 times... that'll take you 30 seconds. If you don't have time to do it, or are frustrated, let someone else do it... someone will. I had a rollback war the other day on Dubuque... and I chose to revert each edit as it happened, over a 20 minute period... but I just as easily could've let him have his fun until he got bored, and then rolled back once 1/2 hour later. About the most obnoxious a user can be is by moving pages around - see Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Tay - I'm not totally against putting short blocks on really disruptive users, but again, I just don't think it's really that disruptive... however if we were to start blocking a little more frequently, then I would say this kinda vandalism is what warrants it the most...

Another thought might be to start extending move-protection to more pages than just the main page. We could even extend it to all pages in the WT namespace, and make it a policy that any moves of policy pages be discussed first. Just a thought. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 17:58, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

I agree with Cacahuate that our slowly evolving "anti-vandalism" policy is basically working. Of course I might just be more tolerant than most of vandalism—I actually find vandalism a rather productive feature of wikis. My first experience editing a wiki (and realizing that I actually could edit a wiki) was minor vandalism, and I venture to guess that many users also first edit a wiki when they encounter vandalism and try to get rid of it. So rather than "discredit" our site, vandalism that slips through the cracks may actually bring in more users.

Just got back from some travel and am only starting to digest the responses, but let me clarify one thing: it's not "minor" vandalism (e.g. a badly concealed shoutout to a girl by a love-starved teenager) that is starting to bug me. We can still deal with that under the unwanted-edits heading. It's the overtly malicious and destructive stuff, and the spam ingeniously constructed to get past the filters, that is an escalating problem, for which I don't think the unwanted-edits policy suffices. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 12:00, 21 October 2007 (EDT)

To me, user bans are basically just giving trolls what they want: attention. And they are really a very ineffective means of thwarting trollishness—if the troll in question has a dynamic ip, he only needs to reconnect to the internet to gain a new ip (rather than feebly continue under the same, already identified ip). If they do, as I suspect, actually encourage trolls by giving them a reaction and making it seem as though they've "gotten under our skin," then they would actually be counter-productive. Moreover, if Wikipedia serves as a guide, a liberal user ban policy begets their political use against "troublesome" users who are in fact good-faith editors who have challenging viewpoints or disagree strongly with majority points of view.

Also, I'm not convinced that the page moving vandalism is any more disruptive, but it may be that not all of us are familiar with the easiest way of reverting page moves: Go to the move log through Special:Log and from there an admin can one-click revert all page moves displayed. Using this tool, undoing page-move vandalism is just as easy as any other type of vandalism. And page-move vandalism is almost always easier to detect anyway. The most disruptive vandalism I know of is page-creation spam, but that takes an extraordinary amount of creative deviousness to be effective, and I believe that only one mental patient from MI has really got what it takes in this category. But blocks would not help with this case. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 21:39, 20 October 2007 (EDT)

You know, I think I'm going to side with Bill's inclination that we develop a policy that better deals with issues of vandalism that harasses our users and readers. I think blocks may be a wise way to go, now, though of course it should be further discussed. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 10:30, 23 October 2007 (EDT)

My suggestion is do nothing. The current method for dealing with vandals seems to work well, even if it does seem to be a waste of time. Vandals are a little like terrorists and hackers. If you make it harder for them to do trivial damage (like the kind that wikivoyagemaster or wikiwack or whatever do), they'll just get more sophisticated and do damage that is much harder to detect (I'm not sure I should give examples of that kind of damage here). So, I suggest we let them have their fun and leave well alone.--(WT-en) Wandering 10:45, 23 October 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, well, the "Don't be a cunt" photo was pretty good. Just not sure I liked it on the Main page for five minutes. Anyhow, as my opinion above was no doubt part of a propensity to rage due to recent depression. I've decided to return to my Zen roots and not give a good goddam (and maybe be a cunt if I feel like it). You folks seem well up to it, so I'll just pitch in and do a revert here and there, maybe a delete just for fun. -- (WT-en) OldPine 12:47, 23 October 2007 (EDT)

Something I'm not clear on - why is anyone other than administrators allowed to move pages? I'm not sure what vital purpose is served by letting non-admins do it, and restricting it to admins would wipe out a whole category of vandalism. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 15:02, 27 October 2007 (EDT)

The "whole category" in this case is pretty much one persistent twit. Anonymous users are already blocked from moving pages, and it's easy enough block any registered users abusing the privilege. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:03, 28 October 2007 (EDT)

I think there's more than one. I recently wasted a lot of time cleaning up after User:(WT-en) Coon Duhh and another guy who seemed to be competing with him. Other admins did more than I. How does one block a user from abusing moves? If I'd known that was possible, I'd certainly have done it for those two. (WT-en) Pashley 23:56, 19 December 2007 (EST)

Having just instituted a rare and very temporary page protection on the much-vandalized Gay and lesbian travel page, in response to a particularly persistent vandal, I am now coming to the position that the existing policies might (I'm honestly not sure) indeed be sufficient. However, to use those policies, one must be able to find them. It took me a while poking around the policy pages to come up with a justification for using a 20-minute protection in this particular case. One reason for a vandalism policy page is to centralize and codify all that, even if the policy contains nothing original. I'm still not sure the existing suite of policies suffices, but either way, let's put 'em where we can find 'em. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 12:52, 22 November 2007 (EST)

That sounds reasonable. I also like that the page was protected as opposed to blocking the user, especially since it was just one page that they were after. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 19:37, 22 November 2007 (EST)

Agree with Bill about the policy page. I dealt with this guy today and blocked one user account and two anons in the "battle", as they apparently just jumped to new IPs. I thought often about protecting the page, but decided at least this way I knew where they would be vandalizing. I really feel that there should be some off-site, private communications between admins about vandalism, so that we can voice concerns without tipping our hands, but hey, whatever. The problem is not that bad I hear (particularly if you don't deal with it). --(WT-en) OldPine 20:40, 22 November 2007 (EST)

Open proxies

I've been doing a bit of checking in connection with that incredibly persistent gay-travel vandal, and it's doing most if not all of its dirty work by way of an open proxy. This exact behavior is why many other wikis have adopted a no-open-proxy policy. Our goals are not necessarily the same as theirs, but should we consider going to this policy on the grounds that it's the least onerous way of dealing with the vandals? What are the down sides? -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 13:20, 25 November 2007 (EST)

Downsides include a small amount of processor overhead on the servers and a small bit of bandwidth overhead for WT. From the idividual user's side I can not really think of any downsides as there really is no reason why anyone should need to connect to WT completely anonymously. Banning open proxies has been common practice for years on most open to the public services that are susceptible to abuse; irc (Internet Relay Chat) is a good example of a service that generally ban them by default --(WT-en) NJR_ZA 23:56, 25 November 2007 (EST)

That sounds reasonable... – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:22, 26 November 2007 (EST)

The mood was quite different on this topic over here, but having read up a bit on open proxies now, I'd support this too. If no one objects here after a while, we should bring this discussion over to shared, so that other language version users and IB see the discussion. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 14:45, 26 November 2007 (EST)

It seems that the idea over at shared was that we should wait until there is an overwhelming spam problem (as judged by some overwhelming majority I guess)--at least those who gave a reason used that. I guess that's measured against some experience that I don't have, because I'm ready now. --(WT-en) OldPine 15:24, 26 November 2007 (EST)

I've re-opened this on Shared. Let's see if that discussion gets legs, and if it does, try to do things consistent with a broad-community consensus; if not, continue it here and do what we decide locally is best, because this is getting ridiculous. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 10:05, 27 November 2007 (EST)

There is a fairly definite downside. Some contributors might need anonymity, or need a proxy to bypass censorship. For example, I live in China. There are things I write on Wikivoyage that the gov't here might not approve of. I've never felt it was necessary to contribute anonymously to protect myself, but others might or I might in the future. Also, the gov't here might block the site; it often blocks Wikipedia. If they did that then I'd either have to use proxy or stop contributing. (WT-en) Pashley 20:13, 28 November 2007 (EST)

Wikipedia has dealt with this downside pretty well, I think. I would definitely support creating closed proxies for use on Wikivoyage if we go through with an open proxy ban. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:19, 28 November 2007 (EST)

Chuckle. Being in China, I can't read your Wikipedia link without a proxy. (WT-en) Pashley 21:42, 28 November 2007 (EST)

New here but one of my "specialist subjects" elsewhere is vandalism on open proxies. I really do understand that there are places where proxies are essential and some very valid edits come from them. However I also know that when the contributions are predominately vandalism quite a reduction can be achieved by blocking them. Equally you tend to get rid of at least some of the bot created pages too. Cheers --(WT-en) Herby ^{talk thyme} 06:09, 8 January 2008 (EST)

Is it possible to block anon edits from open proxies while still allowing anon viewing and logged-in editing? I'm in China; if the gov't here decides to block us as they have Wikipedia, the only way I could either view or edit would be via a proxy. (WT-en) Pashley 09:06, 8 January 2008 (EST)

Move privileges

While goofing around with the usual suspects today, I got to thinking. Could we treat move privileges like we do recent changes patrol privileges? That is, users would only unlock move privileges after a certain period of time (10 days would work well, I think). This would make blocks effective (unlike now), as the blocked user would then need to re-register and wait a week and half before trying it again, and then we could just block them once more.

Virtually anything a vandal does on Wikivoyage can be cleaned up later with very little effort, except for these combinations of unwanted edits plus multiple moves. That is slower to clean up since it requires sorting out what actually happened to the original page. And it tends to mess up page histories more than the normal revertable edits (not that this is that big of a deal). But remove the moves from the equation and the job is far easier. Of course, this proposal requires some technical support, and it's been about half a year since the last time a feature request was actually implemented.

To be effective, this feature would also need to be accompanied by a rethink of our Project:How to handle unwanted edits policy on blocks to make it easier for admins to temp-ban move-abusing editors. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 05:45, 20 December 2007 (EST)

It is a pain undoing the moves, though it does have its detecting pleasures! Still, I'm not sure that reacting to a couple of juvenile pranksters is such a great idea. A simple addition to the policy that permits speedy temp-bans when an obvious act of vandalism using move is in progress should do the trick. While the move block is a good idea, protections are a slippery slope because new kinds of vandalism will lead to new (always incremental) forms of protection and these will keep chipping away at the openness of wikivoyage. I don't think we are at that point of desperation with move vandalism yet. I do notice that these guys are coming in more often but, hopefully, with schools closing for the winter break, they'll be on their way home to mom soon, and will return next semester as adults!--(WT-en) Wandering 10:00, 20 December 2007 (EST)

addition to the policy that permits speedy temp-bans when an obvious act of vandalism using move is in progress - support. ~ 203.144.143.4 10:56, 20 December 2007 (EST)

I'd support Peter's original suggestion of 10 - 15 days before move privileges kick in... that's kind of a swell idea – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 13:58, 24 December 2007 (EST)

Me too. After the pain of cleaning up after the last bozo, I thought of suggesting restricting moves to admins, but I really don't like that solution — sure, it would solve the problem but it goes against the basic desire for openness. This is a much better solution. (WT-en) Pashley 15:12, 24 December 2007 (EST)

Move vandalism, for the time being, seems to be confined to two users (could be the same user?). Methinks the reaction is too strong. A simpler approach would be to automatically block a user for two hours after two moves of genuine pages, increasing the length of the block as the serial nature of the vandalism evolves. It's not like the move privilege is being misused in a big way.--(WT-en) Wandering 18:33, 24 December 2007 (EST)

On the other hand, a quick scan of the move log over the last few months shows that it has never been used by a new user for a non-vandal move. In which case, the waiting period for move privileges is not, in practical terms, changing the openness of wikivoyage. I guess I move to the let's do it column!--(WT-en) Wandering 23:22, 24 December 2007 (EST)

Any objections to the setting up of a page where contributors who can't move pages (ie anonymous users now, new users if the changes proposed above are made, and also anyone who thinks a page move is probably appropriate but isn't 100% certain or maybe isn't confident about doing it themselves) can propose page moves? ~ 203.144.143.6 02:15, 25 December 2007 (EST)

yep, the talk page for that article is the best place to discuss moving it if youre unsure... – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 13:58, 27 December 2007 (EST)

Actually, I hate the idea of waiting periods. The auto-patrol feature is, in my opinion, ridiculous too. I think the best option would be to have bureaucrats or admins be given an extra button that will allow us to flip off the move privileges or turn on the auto-patrol feature for certain users. I think that would be a little more wiki of us, because someone would propose to the community that a certain user's move privileges be revoked and after a discussion and consensus then a bureaucrat could revoke such privileges. A waiting period, is ridiculous because if someone comes along and notices a misspelling in the name of an article he/she could sign up and fix the problem, but not if he/she has to wait 10/15/30 days for the privileges. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 17:04, 27 December 2007 (EST)

I favor admins being able to block moves for one or two hours on their own initiative after two vandal moves. Permanent or long-term bans and unbans should be by consensus.

Since Sapphire brought it up, I believe RC auto-patrol is now nearly moot as scarcely anyone is marking edits as patrolled. Thus we are making redundant checks and nobody knows if we are being thorough. --(WT-en) OldPine 19:18, 27 December 2007 (EST)

Since we're on the subject of marking edits as patrolled (I know, should be a separate question and not here!), what is the general policy. Is one supposed to mark an edit as patrolled only after cross-checking the info (does the hotel exist sort of thing) or always if the edit looks genuine? Also, I hate the fact that the "undo" does not automatically mark the edit as patrolled (I know that rollback does but what if we're undoing a non-vandal edit that needs, um, undoing?).--(WT-en) Wandering 19:55, 27 December 2007 (EST)

Not sure there is consensus on that. Different people want different levels of checking. The take I took is that we are patrolling for vandalism, including false info to some degree. Formatting, spelling, etc, are up to the individual. See discussion at: Project:Recent changes patrol. On the undo, I usually try to go back and mark it patrolled, and agree it's a pain. I believe it was put in as a tech request already. --(WT-en) OldPine 20:02, 27 December 2007 (EST)