Wikimedia Forum/Nuke extension on Wikimedia

Discussion moved from metapub([1]):

Enable mw:Extension:Nuke on WMF wikis by default

The following discussion is closed: Extension:Nuke is to be enabled on Wikimedia — vvv 08:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This would help stewards mass-delete pages when necessary on small wikis, and gives local sysops that ability as well. This extension doesn't allow administrators or sysops to do anything they can't already, but simply makes it faster. I suspect enwiki and other large wikis will want to opt-out; would users from those wikis please note that we are not trying to force this upon you. Any wiki which wishes to have this disabled, can do so.

List of wikis not included in this proposal: chrwiki (already has it); commonswiki (already has it); dewiki (should decide for themselves); enwiki (should decide for themselves); frwiki (should decide for themselves); mediawiki.org (already has it); metawiki (already has it); pdcwiki (already has it); ...?

Arguments in favor

This would ease the work of SWMT members/stewards/sysops cleaning up newpage vandalism/copyvios very much.
More server friendly than doing these deletions manually or per script.

Arguments against

Sysops going nuts can delete hundreds of pages very soon and these had to be restored manually or with a script.

Support

Support — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:52, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Yesterday i was deleting one of newbies copyvios i was remembering this extension ! I think it would be useful for admin in all projects meanwhile helping steward serving as SWMT --Mardetanha ^talk 18:21, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think this is an excellent idea and will prove quite helpful to deal with page-creation vandalism from vandals with sleeper registered accounts. (Not to mention obvious copyvios as noted by Mardetanha). Cirt 19:07, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
+ that sounds reasonable, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| ∇ 19:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Good idea, could be useful for Incubator as well. SPQRobin ^(inc!) 19:13, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, by all means. --EivindJ 07:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, very useful — vvv 13:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, A good idea, plus being more server friendly than Twinkle's batch delete function. Soxred93 15:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Laaknor 18:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support very good idea. Majorly ^talk 13:02, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please do, but advertise it widely so that big and middle-size wikis can opt-out before it's enabled. guillom 13:38, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Very good idea againt vandalism. I now use a homemade bot to so such mass-delete actions and this could be superb. Mwpnl 23:55, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Pietrodn · talk with me 06:52, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would be very useful. --Erwin(85) 09:02, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Though I'm inclined to agree with guillom's assertion that we should advertise it so decent-sized wikis (other than those outlined) can still opt out. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:25, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support →Christian .И 20:18, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This extension is required in large wiki for deleting copyvios.--Kwj2772 08:02, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I concur.--Kul 00:22, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
support —DerHexer (Talk) 10:40, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I don't see the problem with having it on large wiki's. On a large wiki your are more liekly to get mass page creation vandalism. Admins are meant to bre trusted sp they are unlikely to go mad.
Support- I'd trust the sysops with a possibly useful tool, they are the most trusted community members after all. RedThunder 01:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support We can already do this with pywikipedia, but such an extension greatly simplifies such a task. Annabel 10:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Of course individual wikis can turn this off, and the change should be widely foreshadowed. +sj | help with translation |+ 06:02, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sure, giving wikis that need the extra tools some help is a good thing. MBisanz ^talk 11:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - sensible suggestion. WJBscribe (talk) 16:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Support. Alex Pereira ^falaê 16:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support — This extension will be better than any javascript tool, and it will help in deleting massive vandalism pages. _macy 03:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but for the obvious reasons, it may be useful to hack in something to limit it's use. Maybe once per sysop per 24 hours? Thunderhead 14:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support with the opt-out option.--Yaroslav Blanter 20:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - no question - very useful on many wikis. It is transparent after all so people can see what is being done. I have used it quite frequently (& if it really worked for images it would be even better :(). --Herby ^{talk thyme} 06:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Seems sensible from what I can tell. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 07:18, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support useful tool.--J.Wong 10:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sensible. Durova 01:52, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Only on the condition that any project can easily opt out of it, and there's a delay BEFORE it's enabled, and all projects are notified ahead of time and given so much time to opt out. Say, 1-2 months. rootology (T) 04:51, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support with caveats as stated by many... projects can opt out, some time between approval and implementation, all projects given a chance to decide about opting out before it goes into effect. ++Lar: t/c 17:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Found my way here from Mike's post to foundation-l. Looks potentially useful, to me; if any specific wiki wants to opt out, that sounds fine by me. Some effort to limit abuse might go a long way in quelling objections -- might limit how often any given admin can use it, for example. Luna Santin 01:39, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

Oppose I STRONGLY disagree here, much damage can be caused with this script. A rogue sysop could easily delete thousands of pages in a very short time and at this time they would have to be manually restored as to my knowlege no script exists to mass restore pages. We have already seen that many vandals are patient enough build up a good reputation and get sysop rights. Just to reek havoch. I would only trust this power to 'crats and stewards. Prom3th3an 07:20, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is an argument against wikis, not an argument against this proposal. Further, you may misunderstand what this feature does - it allows deletion of page creations by a single user which are still in recentchanges. That is, you cannot delete old pages, nor a list of arbitrary pages - this doesn't allow anything sysops cannot already do, it only saves them time and effort. — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There does exist a script to mass restore pages. I've used it myself. Majorly 16:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

If I understand the extension correctly, it will only delete pages edited by a single user... I don't think we're going to see "thousands" of those lying around unless they were just recently created by a spam bot. If a script to mass-undo admin actions doesn't exist, it wouldn't be very hard to make one. If somebody wants to put in several months or work to do two minutes of damage, I think we're still coming out ahead. May be worth rate limiting the extension, though. Luna Santin 20:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I think if a community want this function on, they can discuss in their village pump and then request this function. The meta folk cannot impose a vote here on behalf of the local communities, who maybe even doesn't know that there is a proposal here, or who cannot read english and cannot talk here. The whole situation remembers me of that at the beginning of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.--Wing 13:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Did you read the proposal? "enwiki and other large wikis will want to opt-out; would users from those wikis please note that we are not trying to force this upon you. Any wiki which wishes to have this disabled, can do so." guillom 14:27, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I read the proposal. But I cannot speak for the zh-wp for example, and cannot speak for its community. So the community must at first discuss the issue by itself. And when that discussion, which can really last long, came to a conclusion, the vote here is already run. And probably the few voters here had then already imposed a tool on the zh-wp. And exactly because of this I oppose this suggestion.--Wing 14:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And I cannot list zh-wp on that list above because I cannot represent the zh-wp community to list itself there. No one can do that without the community had discussed before. --Wing 14:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Developers add new features to the MediaWiki software all the time, without asking for anyone's permission. guillom 06:14, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Stop haranguing him. It's ridiculous to assert that Devs insert extensions and updates as big as this without community consultation. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:20, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral/Comments

Neutral I like the idea having Nuke on small wikis without active local sysops. But on the other projects it should be up to the community to decide that. I don't know why enwiki may decide it for themselves but the others not. --Thogo (talk) 19:20, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly because I cannot list them all. The "...?" meant "Please help me out by listing other large wikis which should decide for themselves" — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:02, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I should also point out that it is a really low-impact change - it only affects the ease with which sysops may delete bad page creations by a single user. — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:05, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would rather like it as an opt-in. With auto-opt-in for wikis without own sysops. --Thogo (talk) 19:20, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. --MZMcBride 19:36, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Btw., I asked on dewiki (without linking this discussion), what they think about having it there. Let's see what kind of arguments they give. One is that a going-mad sysop could delete thousands of pages and one had to restore them manually... --Thogo (talk) 20:07, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In a sense, it currently is an opt-in in that you just make a bugzilla request after showing a bit of consensus onwiki (that's what we did on Commons). I think it would be a good idea to get this on some small wikis, but I don't think enabling it almost globally is the best idea. Maybe enable it for wikis covered by SWMT or something like that? —Giggy 13:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In general, can someone please explain mass deletion. How is it done and how can you check which pages to delete. I don't get it from the extension page. Pjetter 19:40, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You enter a username, which gives you a list of their recent page creations (including media uploads) with checkboxes. Specify a deletion reason, specify the pages to delete, press the button and they're gone. This can already be done with scripts, but using the extension is easier (especially for stewards, who would otherwise have to import the script to any wiki where they need to do many deletions after a spambot, vandal etc.) — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:10, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: this is a big proposal, involving hundreds of wikis. I do not think metapub provides a wide enough and an accessible enough forum for consensus-deriving discussion of this Wikimedia-wide topic. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Moved down for more exposure. Will post to foundation-l — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 13:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Implementing

Now, before implementing that proposal, we need a list of small wikis where it should be enabled. Any ideas where should we get that list? — vvv 08:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why only this extension should be enabled in "small" wiki? I think it is more useful in LARGE wikis.--Kwj2772 10:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not "small wikis", all but the largest wikis. This should be easy to implement in the same way that JeLuF did for enotif on bug 15031. Cbrown1023 talk 18:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do we still have an opt-out list? ~~I posted an opt-out suggestion on ru.wp village pump, and it got two votes and no oppose votes, so I suggest that ru.wp is also excluded.~~--Yaroslav Blanter 08:17, 25 September 2008 (UTC) Now the first objection came, let us wait.--Yaroslav Blanter 18:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good question: en.wikt would like to opt-out, what is the process? Robert Ullmann 11:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Op-out

chrwiki (already has it)
commonswiki (already has it)
dewiki (should decide for themselves)
enwiki (should decide for themselves)
frwiki (should decide for themselves)
mediawiki.org (already has it)
metawiki (already has it)
pdcwiki (already has it)
en.wikt (en:wikt:Wiktionary:Grease pit#Extension:Nuke)
zhwiki (proposed by user:wing; need further discussion)