Auth for large deletions?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 08:49:12AM +0000, WikiAdmin wrote:
>  The FedoraProject page FUDCon:FUDConF10 has been changed on
>  04:49, 4 January 2009 by anonymous user 83.233.30.38, see
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:FUDConF10 for the current
>  version.
>  
>  See
>  https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=FUDCon:FUDConF10&diff=0&a...
>  for all changes since your last visit.
>  
>  Editor's summary: yPcpCeDuDlxsyIQa 
>  
>  Contact the editor:
>  mail: No e-mail address
>  wiki: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:83.233.30.38 
This was a vandal who deleted the entire contents of a page and
replaced them with a tiny set of gibberish.  I reverted the change of
course.

Is there a way to require authentication for large changes like this
while still keeping a page editable by the public?

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
  http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

[Jon Stanley]

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Paul W. Frields <stickster(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  This was a vandal who deleted the entire contents of a page and
>  replaced them with a tiny set of gibberish.  I reverted the change of
>  course.
>
>  Is there a way to require authentication for large changes like this
>  while still keeping a page editable by the public? 
I'll let one of the MW experts answer for sure, but I don't think so.
Wikipedia has this exact problem and they have a bot that goes through
and reverts such edits immediately (note that since subscribing to the
recent changes RSS feed, I've caught a few of these myself for other
FUDCon's and reverted them)

[Ian Weller]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 10:30:22AM -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>  This was a vandal who deleted the entire contents of a page and
>  replaced them with a tiny set of gibberish.  I reverted the change of
>  course.
>  
>  Is there a way to require authentication for large changes like this
>  while still keeping a page editable by the public?
>   
Nope.

The best thing to do is watch pages that are editable by anyone and
revert them by hand as soon as possible.

-- 
Ian Weller <ianweller(a)gmail.com&gt;                  http://ianweller.org
GnuPG fingerprint:  E51E 0517 7A92 70A2 4226  B050 87ED 7C97 EFA8 4A36
"Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet."
  ~ Douglas Adams

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 10:30:22AM -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote:

>  This was a vandal who deleted the entire contents of a page and
>  replaced them with a tiny set of gibberish. 
I'm fairly certain that this was a bot testing to see if anonymous
editing works.  I've had open wikis inundated in the same way, first
gibberish, quickly followed by pages of porn links.  I suspect the bot
checks pages later to see if they were reverted, and if not, puts up
more links, etc.

-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41