Wikinews:Admin action alerts

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/Archive 1

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April Fools Hoaxes to be Deleted

Be sure to add the {{delete}} tag to the article before listing below. You also may want to list the user on: Wikinews:Vandalism if they are a repeat prankster.

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Protected pages

Dan100

Talk)

Opposed. Where does this creeping protectionism stop?

First it was the Main Page. Then it was old news articles. Now there's a proposal to start protecting templates that could be used to disrupt "every article on the site".

There is one act of vandalism on the Source template in its entire history, from an IP which resolves to Belgium of all places. Dan100 fixed it 12 minutes later, which is great - this is a sign that we have enough alert RC monitors to make any vandalism short-lived.

I just finished adding the well-received "Wikinews" template to add to all articles that reference another Wikinews story in the Related stories section. Suppose that gets used on a bunch of stories, and a vandal alters it for a few minutes one day. Will that template then be protected as well? Wonder if I want to try a subtle style change to try and improve it later on? I shouldn't have to be an adminstrator to contribute neat ideas like that and be able to further develop and maintain them. It's simply not the wiki way to protect pages at the drop of a hat.

There needs to be a line in the sand past which further protection is detrimental to the wiki nature of Wikinews. A single act of vandalism is not enough to justify a sacrifice of the wiki spirit. Protection should be a last, and temporary resort. Giving up a little bit of liberty to edit the site, for the illusion of a bit more safety from vandals, will only show that we deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Sure the Admins can protect a template here, and a template there. Always with a promise that this is the last one, or that this was a special case. That's how restrictions on liberty always sneak in without anyone seriously objecting until it's too late.

If this is done for pragmatic reasons, I will understand, but it is corrosive to the Wiki spirit. — DV 10:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to withdraw this proposal, if I may. It seems that a better way to avoid such meta-template problems is simply to use 'subst:' in the templates when they're used. That would mean altering the templates would have no effect on existing articles. Dan100 (Talk) 11:55, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You have restored my faith in the wiki spirit!

However, won't "subst:" obscure the use of templates for new or casual contributors?

People tend to learn best by example. If experienced editors use "subst:" with templates, the evidence that a template was used is eradicated for less experienced contributors who look at the article's markup later on for clues.

Also, while it's not impossible to copy and paste the expanded template contents from older articles into newer articles, now that we have a lot of stories that are related to each other, it would be nice to be able to copy and paste the new "Wikinews" source template instances from one story to another using the template instantiations and not the expanded template contents.

It's great that you're looking for a technological alternative for your proposal. — DV 12:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I changed the writing guide and reporting tools to use Subst, but it's not a widely known or understood function :(.

I mean, I think we need to use either this method or protect templates (which I agree isn't a good solution). Otherwise the risj for massively site-disrupting vandalism is too great, in my opinion. Dan100 (Talk) 17:40, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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