User:Citylover/Testarticle49234

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Introduction, part 1

This is a test article in order to find out if Wikipedia allows new users to immediately create new pages or if users have to wait a couple of days/weeks and make a minimal amount of useful edits before being granted the right to create new articles. I am the founder, owner and bureaucrat/administrator of an own MediaWiki-based (unfortunately still in MediaWiki-version 1.5.3, PHP: 4.3.11; MySQL: 4.1.18) wiki where I have the problem of anonymous IP's creating several dozen new articles every day that are totally useless and introduce link spamming there and I have to find out how to reconfigure my MediaWiki-software in order to exclude such users. I tried to find more information about how Wikipedia handles this problem of new articles, but missed that information when I tried to create a new article, so I decided to create a new "test user account" and then immediately a new, useless page. You can delete my test account and this page here immediately, but please include more information about new pages so that newbies know if they have to be a member of the Wikipedia community for some time or having made a minimal amount of edits before being granted the right to create new pages or if the can immediately start creating new pages after having created an account.

I have now found out that it is indeed possible to immediately create a new page after having created a new user account. This is quite astonishing, but obviously Wikipedia is still astonishingly open (and this is good so as long as the community can still handle/control the number of useless new pages being created by new users).

I have launched/outlined an elaborate and systematic discussion about the topic of excluding/including particular user groups (anonymous IPs / registered users / registered users with a minimal amount of time having been registered or a minimal amount of edits / administrators) for several modes of editing (creating pages or only editing pages) on my own wiki, if you are interested, please write it here, I can give you the link to this discussion.

Introduction, part 2

I would like to change the editing rights on my MediaWiki. If you look at the pages Special:Recentchanges (sorry, this link here is only valid for my own wiki, but not for Wikipedia, so it is actually useless in this context here), you will see that every day now, several dozens of new pages are created. These pages have nothing or hardly anything to do with the general content/topic of my own wiki anymore and are created by anonymous people or even robots in order to promote their drug-related websites by link spamming. I have to stop that as quickly as possible. Possiblities are now:

Two general steps

Two general steps that should be done first of all anyway (I planned these steps anyway since Winter 2006):

• Extract/store the whole content of the whole wiki (all pages including the page history) into a separate downloadable file that can be downloaded and installed into any new, "empty" wiki. This measure might also help to upgrade to the new MediaWiki-version.
• Secondly: What is probably necessary anyway and should be done now: Install the newest version of the MediaWiki software (already version 1.6.5 as of now)
• I would also be willing to buy a second account if it is too risky to "try around" on the my one and only account (costs: 60 dollars, but it is worth it, because losing the whole wiki would be rather bad and I would furthermore have 12 gigabytes more of personal storage as a not unwelcome "side-effect").

Measures against the ongoing and future vandalism

Measures in order to protect the wiki better against vandalism in the future (hopefully with the help of the new version 1.6.5). It is also important to distinguish between unauthorized creating of pages (first section below) and unauthorized editing of pages (second section below):

Measures against the unauthorized creating of new pages

• Only bureaucrats and administrators are allowed to create new pages. A very good proposal, because like that, I can keep control over the wiki while not stopping page-editing. People would have to ask me first before creating new pages and I would only allow creating new pages to people that I already know.
• Only bureaucrats, administrators and registered users whose user account has existed a particular minimal amount of time and/or who have made a minimum amount of (useful) edits are allowed to create new pages. (I think that Wikipedia discussed this more strict option than the option just below but has now the less strict option of just below).
• Only bureaucrats, administrators and registered users are allowed to create new pages. A good, but problematic proposal because it would still be relatively easy to create a new account and then massively create new pages, for example for links spamming and if I ban these users, opening immediately a new account and continue vandalizing. (Wikipedia has chosen this possibility as for now).
• All user names and even IP addresses are able to create new pages. (This is a very bad idea, but still possible on my own wiki, but abolished on Wikipedia after it was still possible in the year 2005).

Measures against unauthorized/unwanted editing in general

• Only bureaucrats and administrators can edit pages. This would actually mean that I would be the only person who would be able to edit pages because I am the only administrator. Furthermore, it would be difficult to find out who else would be suited as an administrator too because nobody would be able to edit pages even benevolently, so I would hardly be able to find out who is a benevolent contributor and who is not. People would have to "prove" by writing e-mails to me that they are interested in contributing and then, I would grant them administrator rights on a provisional base.
• Only bureaucrats and administrators and registered users who have been registered for a certain amount of time are allowed to participate/edit pages. This would be a relatively good option, but people could circumvent that measure by beginning to register several accounts, wait several days and then as soon as the accounts become usable for editing, subsequently use all accounts for useless editing.
• Only bureaucrats and administators and registered users are allowed to edit a page. This would mean that everybody would be immediately able to edit a page as soon the user account has been created.
• All users, even anonymous users are allowed to edit a page. (This is the case now on my own wiki and also still on Wikipedia.)

Closing down the whole wiki

• A radical solution that I want to avoid at all costs: Delete the whole wiki (disable the wiki software so that the whole wiki is inaccessible).

Probably impossible to implement

The 2 proposals below are probably impossible to implement, even with the newest wiki-software:

• Automatically delete all edits made after a certain moment (for example deleting all edits made before the middle of April 2006), I doubt if this is technically possible
• Automatically delete all edits made not by myself after a certain moment, but I doubt if this is technically possible (especially because I also edited page versions that were previously edited at least once already by other people)