STOWiki:Anonymous editing

Voting
This vote is now closed. Half-open state with Foundry namespace remaining editable by registered users only clearly wins.

We are currently in an anonymous editing trial due to close at the end of the year or a little after. The wiki is presently in the half-open state. This vote is for what state you would like the wiki to be in after the trial concludes.

Legend

 * Fully open
 * This is a vote to open all namespaces to anonymous editing and semi-protecting high-traffic pages and key templates.
 * Semi-protected pages can be edited by registered users and admins, but not anonymous users.


 * Open
 * This is a vote supporting either fully open or half open expressing no preference between the two options.


 * Half open
 * This is a vote to open the main namespace and all talk namespaces to anonymous editing.


 * Closed
 * This is a vote to allow only registered users to edit anywhere on the wiki.


 * Abstain
 * This is for those of you who prefer the view from the fence.

If we end up keeping the wiki in the half-open state, should the Foundry namespace be opened to anonymous editing?

The vote that led to this trial is archived here.

Trial period

 * The trial period started November 15, 2011 and will last approximately six weeks.


 * Only the main namespace and all talk namespaces will be open to anonymous editing.


 * Before the trial period starts:
 * We will try to get an extension installed that will allow the admins shut down anonymous editing through a wiki special page.
 * We're also considering changes to the patrol feature built into MediaWiki that may affect most registered users (explained briefly in the following section).
 * We will get our abuse filters set up by Curse.

(Due to this, we can't yet say when the trial period will start. It's safest to assume it could start at any time.)


 * The vote that will be opened four weeks in will determine whether we, at the end of the trial period:
 * Expand anonymous edits to all but protected pages.
 * Keep only the main and talk namespaces open to anonymous edits.
 * Alternatively, that and open the Foundry namespace too.
 * Return to allowing only registered users to edit.
 * And possibly other options we think of before the trial period ends.

Patrol feature
By default, MediaWiki has a "patrol" feature that displays ! next to all edits made by non-admins. This indicates they are "unpatrolled," and we can patrol them by using a link on the edit's diff page. This isn't very useful to us with default settings, so we've largely been ignoring it.

We're considering changing the "autoconfirmed" user group so that a user doesn't become autoconfirmed until they've been registered for 30 days and have made 50 edits. Additionally, we'll change the settings so all edits made by autoconfirmed users are automatically patrolled. This will serve as a way to flag only edits by new users.

Further, we may be giving all autoconfirmed users patrol rights or creating a separate user group of "patrollers", meaning some/most of you will also be seeing the ! flags next to new user edits. If you check the diff, you would have the option of marking the edit as patrolled if you see no problems. Again, this would be an option, not a responsibility; the only responsibility here would be not to mark bad edits as patrolled.