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Editing Privileges?

arn

arn

macrumors god
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,415
5,881
Hi all,

Is it time to rethink the current Editing privilege settings?

We had to "guess" at the start to figure out a good balance for Spam vs. enough people to keep the guides fresh.

We started by allowing all registered users to edit and new users needed 20 posts. We also had a system to open certain pages to the general public.

The general public pages have drawn spam attention, and we had to limit editing on the MacBook Pro page because if it.

Do you think we should open more editing for anyone who simply registers? Or maybe only 5 posts?

thoughts?
arn
 
i think that you should be registered to make a change. I don't look at the guides that much, but when i see them i noticed that i could edit them if i wanted to. As i mentioned (somewhere) yesterday, i think that spam should be hard to post, but i know that we can't limit newbies from posting threads, so…

I do think, that if spaming becomes a problem on the guides, that they should be sent to a mod first and be apporved. I know its hard, but it would be effective. Just my thoughts.
 
A smaller post requirement sounds good, since abuse is very uncommon from signed-up members (and it's easier to stop it when it occurs). 5 posts sounds like a good balance.

I think we should continue with world-editable pages. Even with the recent abuse, it was mainly just three pages being abused, compared to the much larger number that were world-editable. The spammers don't seem to be very responsive to changes, for example when the Intel iMac page was renamed the spam for that page stopped. From this it seems (for now, at least) that we could just remove global editing for pages that are abused, and keep the others editable.

The other issue is talk pages. It's helpful to have them open for everyone, and in many cases anonymous users have pointed out mistakes or useful additions that could be made. However, in the case of [guide]Talk:MacBook Pro[/guide], they can face abuse just like world-editable pages. It would be useful to make certain talk pages editable only to members, is there an easy way to do this?
 
I think we should test the waters some more - Perhaps experiment by making editing more open with no registration required, allow more world editable pages or a 'single-strike' rule where all pages are initially open but if it's spammed once it gets locked to members only. We want it to be as open as possible, even if it means a bit of work moderating. I think it's too early to decide the balance.

Also, I wondered if it would be possible to allow normal members, such as myself, to perform roll-backs on spammed pages? Or perhaps add an 'alert moderator' button? Several times i've discovered spam i've not been able to tidy it up as efficiently as a moderator can and I haven't been able to easily inform one of its presence.
 
Here's an interesting page talking about wikispam and how to deal with it...some cool stuff in there.

http://chongqed.org/

Some of it isn't really relative...but spam like this is apparently a huge problem with wikis.
 
Well, I don't use the forum much, and I signed up way before the deadline for the Guide edit, so although I think I'm still a newbie, I'm able to post. I like that. But I don't like the guides. Is it a help center, encyclopedia, or how to? Would newbies know?
 
how about if the person who wants to edit it has over 20 posts it goes straight on to the guide but if they have less then it has to be approved by a mod.
 
Moses:SonOfGod said:
how about if the person who wants to edit it has over 20 posts it goes straight on to the guide but if they have less then it has to be approved by a mod.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that's possible. :confused:
 
I just got 5 posts I can't edit. Do I have to wait awhile?

I was snookered into believing Warcraft III runs "perfectly" and at full resolution on MacBook Pros. Three grande later I want to give people a heads up that this may not actually be true but I can't edit the wiki which in my mind is blatantly misrepresenting reality. =/
 
DeadPrez said:
I just got 5 posts I can't edit. Do I have to wait awhile?

I was snookered into believing Warcraft III runs "perfectly" and at full resolution on MacBook Pros. Three grande later I want to give people a heads up that this may not actually be true but I can't edit the wiki which in my mind is blatantly misrepresenting reality. =/
Click to expand...
Yeah, you have to wait a little for it to get into action. ;)

Why are you urging to do the guides so bad? o_O
 
DeadPrez said:
I just got 5 posts I can't edit. Do I have to wait awhile?

I was snookered into believing Warcraft III runs "perfectly" and at full resolution on MacBook Pros. Three grande later I want to give people a heads up that this may not actually be true but I can't edit the wiki which in my mind is blatantly misrepresenting reality. =/
Click to expand...
It might be, as mentioned above, a short wait.

But, FWIW, WCIII does run perfectly at max res and full settings on my MBP, or at least close enough that it's perfect "enough" for me.
 
JSW,

In truth I am "hardcore" WC3 player and while I suppose that will discredit me in some people's eyes when it comes to performance, my MacBook Pro tests at any resolution show serious performance problems in "medium to large" fights. In fact, the difference between the highest settings and the lowest settings are negligible.

Perfect? Far from it. Playable? Depends are your definition but for switchers used to a consistent frame rate, not even close.
 
I haven't been following the whole Intel Mac WC3 thing. Is there any chance Blizzard will make a UB for it?
 
You guys probably have a better sense of the amount of spam involved, but I find even the 5 post limit highly restrictive, because it prevents occasional readers from adding potentially valuable information. Most wikis don't even require registration for this very reason and only rely on captchas to prevent automated spamming.

I think requiring registration is already enough of an inconvenience to deter the vast majority of spammers/vandalists. And for the remaining few, an occasional look at 'recent changes' and an account/IP ban should do just fine.

Just my two cents.
 
lionel77 said:
You guys probably have a better sense of the amount of spam involved, but I find even the 5 post limit highly restrictive, because it prevents occasional readers from adding potentially valuable information. Most wikis don't even require registration for this very reason and only rely on captchas to prevent automated spamming.

I think requiring registration is already enough of an inconvenience to deter the vast majority of spammers/vandalists. And for the remaining few, an occasional look at 'recent changes' and an account/IP ban should do just fine.

Just my two cents.
Click to expand...

Yea, but if all you had to do was register an account, anyone could still come and edit the pages and vandalize as much as they want. A 5 post limit is nice, but would be even better is if there was some sort of submit system with some people reading through the submissions to determine if it's information worthy of being put up.
 
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