Requests for Comment/Anti-vandalism system for Qualitipedia-affiliated wikis

Introduction
Good morning/afternoon/evening, Qualitipedia users.

As an admin of mh:crappygames:Crappy Games Wiki and mh:awesomegames:Awesome Games Wiki for more than half a year, I have seen lots of cases of vandalism by users and sockpuppets.

All Qualitipedia-affiliated wikis are wikis — knowledge databases that allows anyone to edit and expand. Because of their nature, vandalism is bound to happen. Vandals only exist to make inappropriate edits and humiliate wikis. But it seems that no one has ever tried, or bothered to reduce vandalism at all. Blocking them wouldn't probably help much, either. And yes, while it can prevent vandals from doing their jobs, it doesn't make them give up or anything. They can still create new accounts and continue doing their jobs, thus making sure that the cycle will never break. Vandalism is like a disease. It can be cured once symptoms start to develop. But if that disease can be cured, why not try to prevent it instead of curing it multiple times?

Therefore, I — Katsumi — would like to introduce my proposal for the new anti-vandalism system, or Anti-Van™ for short. Its aim is to prevent vandalism on the Qualitipedia-affiliated wikis much more efficiently. The Moderation extension is required to implement Anti-Van™ properly.

Here is how it works:


 * When a new user joins one of Qualitipedia's wikis, they are always in the "locked" state. Every edits of theirs are not saved immediately like usual; instead, it is sent to a queue, waiting for approval from admins.
 * Until this edit is approved, the page is unchanged and the user can still edit their own version of the page.
 * If this edit shows signs of vandalism, it is to be rejected. Admins can use this to detect vandals, sockpuppets or sockpuppets capable of vandalism.
 * Once the user's edit count reaches 15, they can request an admin to "unlock" them. If they are "unlocked", any edit of theirs will be saved immediately.

With Anti-Van™, the vandalism problem can be easily solved. Why? The reason is that a handful of Miraheze wikis are implementing their own variant of Anti-Van™, like Hololive Wiki; and you can see that there are little no signs of vandalism (or you could just say, "it works"). Please keep in mind that there will eventually be some sort of workaround, and complaints from newbies about the draconian Anti-Van™ system. Nevertheless, I'm one-thousand percent sure that my solution will eliminate vandalism almost entirely and admins will no longer have to suffer stress and headache from jerky vandals.

With that said, please cast your vote, and let me hear your opinions. ''超ヤバいっす! 豪雷と嵐で New Style!'' ⚡ Thunder Gale Katsumi ⚡   talk    contributions  12:06, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) Considering that not all admins are active all time, this may be effective.  16:38, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 2) surprised an approval system hasn't been tried before. gets my two big fat chubby thumbs up, though i wonder how it'll discriminate subjective (or in QP words, "biased") edits, since admins will review them with potentially different points of view. i guess intercommunication between staff will play a big role there. also gotta admit the RfC is kinda hilarious in a good way Yonydesk (talk) 16:46, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 3) Absolutely! The moderation extension is flawless. Qualitipedia wikis in particular can benefit greatly from this variant of the extension with the most organised vandalism-prevention tool we could've asked for. So I'm supporting this with no parallel feelings at all.  17:17, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 4) If other wikis are implementing things like this (and said systems are working efficiently), then why not us? This would prematurely stop vandals in their tracks and would potentially quell the number of immature users down (thus possibly preventing QP's biggest problem, major immaturity, from festering any further). Marxo Grouch  (talk) 18:06, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Not only will this certainly cut down on vandalism, but it will also cut down on crappy edits from potentially troublesome users. My only concern is the potential tedium with having to look at these edits, but there's always the option of adding the role of a moderator to some more users if needed. --Blazikeye535 (talk) 19:47, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) This could be effective given by the fact some wikis are also adopting this extension as well, and this may help cut down vandalism from users who solely created their accounts just for vandalism and other types of trollism towards the wikis, besides, given by the fact admins are usually not active at certain times, this could help prevent vandalism during their inactivity. Dragonite (talk) 20:29, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * , with my comment down below in consideration. MoistyPorky.jpeg Moisty (talk) (CentralAuth) | Posted at 21:37:49, 27 June 2022 (UTC) MoistyPorky.jpeg
 * 1) Why not?  23:56, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 2) I'm certain it will help reduce sockpuppetry. Honestly, I'm surprised we haven't done this yet.  -  16:24, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 3) This has gone too long without proper moderation and this system should solve this. Although if this is intended to restrict vandals, does this mean low quality edits (nitpicks, useless points, grammar corrections) get monitored as well? If yes then thats a plus as well as we could use this system to tell whether the user is legitimately serious on contributing or not. Although maybe that would limit others that want to contribute but I think it may work in the long time for the quality of the wikis to be cleaned. If other questions, I do want some more specification on what does get considered to be flagged in this system apart from blatant vandalism since I don't think it should be too strict at the same time. Equal One (talk) 18:52, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 4) Quality control on these wikis sure has been low. Let’s fix it. DeadPixel (talk) 19:50, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 5) That sounds like a really interesting idea. It can even stop sockpuppets too. BaldiBasicsFan (talk) 20:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 6) I guess if it's okay, it would make it even easier to reduce the vandals, but vandalism is the least of problems, as most of these edits are removed immediately and are very noticeable, the sockpuppets is not so easy but still when they discover that there is someone who is from this type of accounts, it is quickly blocked if it is a controversial user or that generates vandalism (although in this case it would be even easier to notice)-Remely1000 (or simply Rem69) (talk) 03:46, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 7) Nice idea, at least no scum like -abigblueworld- could do the massacre anymore. Szczypak2005 (talk) 17:29, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 8) I like this idea, particularly because I don't feel like admin activity has been particularly high lately, and this'll allow edits to be checked over before they are published, which in turn will really increase an actual amount of moderation among the staff. Also, yeah, this will slow down vandalism quite a bit. Wing Commander confed star.pngTigerBlazer  23:25, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 9) This seems like a good idea. MatthewThePrep (talk) 19:42, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * 10) This can notice admins and moderators when edited and it helps prevent bad thing from happening to this article. Seem that it works today. --PictureField55 (talk) 09:41, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) Absolutely not. The moderation extension is terrible. First of all, this is blatantly assuming bad faith. Second of all, the admins simply do not have time to moderate every single edit by a new user that they come across. Our admins are not robots. Third of all, this will make editing take even longer than necessary. If anything this will take even longer to clean up vandalism since admins will have to sift through every single edit and pick out which ones are vandalism. It is better to just moderate vandalism the old fashioned way, via Recent Changes. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 14:21, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I guess I was right about "somebody will complain about this draconian vandalism moderation system of Katsumi". But just look on the bright side: it reduces vandalism more efficiently. And best of all, it doesn't show the vandalised version to the public. But then you might actually have a point about its flaws. And besides, if no admins want to moderate the edits, I will. I designed the system, I'm fully responsible for it. I'll do the heavy-lifting, so if you want to help, you're welcome. 超ヤバいっす! 豪雷と嵐で New Style! ⚡ Thunder Gale Katsumi ⚡ KamenRiderRevice-logo.webp  talk  KamenRiderRevice-logo.webp  contributions  15:24, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It doesn't really reduce vandalism, since not every new user is automatically a vandal. Besides, vandalism doesn't necessarily need to be hidden from the public, and if it does, there is a tool to hide revisions. The moderation extension is also not very good, since it makes a user have their own version of the page. It had to be disabled on Reception Wikis Wiki since it was causing problems. Also, I enabled the moderation extension on Absurd Shows & Episodes Wiki due to frequent vandalism, and since that vandalism seems to have been the only activity on the wiki, it got closed for inactivity, so I had to make it private. Moderation doesn't solve the vandalism problem, it just makes less users see it. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 15:32, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * i really don't get why you say "vandalism doesn't necessarily need to be hidden from the public". if one wiki you had was closed due to having to hide vandalism then go guess why you had to hide it: vandalism isn't good activity. the consequences of vandalism are misinformation or spam that readers SEE, information that's not related to the page at all and damages its integrity. by logic, the moderation proposal works because the vandalism is filtered through the reviewing process. it's unrealistic to 100% solve vandalism; on the contrary, it can be mitigated via a moderation filter, which is the point of this proposal. Yonydesk (talk) 16:46, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It wasn't closed to hide vandalism, it was closed due to inactivity, and lack of user interest. I only enabled moderation as a last ditch effort to stop the vandalism, but since the vandalism didn't stop, I had no choice but to close the wiki since there were no edits. The wiki closed on it's own, I just made it private so that nobody could adopt it. And the filter will just give admins more work, since they will constantly have to be sifting through edits. This won't reduce the amount of vandalism, and thus it won't really change anything. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 18:05, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * my point was that if the only activity you had in your wiki was vandalism, then you can't use it as a parallel to a wiki where its activity is more than just vandalism. we receive good+bad activity; yours only received bad activity. not a good comparison. also, if admins are supporting this, it means they're up to do the work. besides it'll be only for newer accounts so it won't be as much as you imply. Yonydesk (talk) 18:25, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Firstly, all queued revisions will get reviewed and approved if it isn't vandalism. Many forums do this for posts by new users, and I don't see how stuff taking longer to be publicly visible matters more here than on a forum site. Secondly, while I'm not an admin, I think the admins here have the capability of reviewing every edit by new users. -  16:22, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 1. Not really, as patrolling is common on wikis. 2. We can get patrollers if necessary. 3. This wouldn’t affect most edits, as most people who do edit are regulars with very little users who are new.   02:30, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
 * 1)  Why are you guys limiting the abilities of the newcomers? Given that you guys protect the “essential” templates, temporarily protect the most targetted page. Y’all seem to love Wikipedia and their policies and techniques, so why not use them for this? -- Cheers, Justin Aves (talk • contribs • global • rights) 22:04, 27 June 2022 (UTC) moved to abstain
 * wrong. this is not limiting newcomers' abilities at all. they still are able to edit. the only difference is that their edits must go through an approval process before being public. that's not taking any ability away, that's just passing an edit through a moderation filter. Yonydesk (talk) 22:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * If there are problematic edits temporarily protect the page and indefinitely protect it if it’s seems to be a strong target. Moderation is the worst extension that Miraheze has. -- Cheers, Justin Aves (talk • contribs • global • rights) 22:23, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Also, Wikipedia doesn’t have Moderation on, instead it uses the resources they have, like protection, blocking, etc. They get vandalized more often than our wikis do and they do a pretty damn good job at preventing and stopping it, so since QP admins and WP admins have something in common (having nothing else to do than stalk Recent Changes, in which, I’ll have the prerequisites needed for administrator), why not just follow their steps. It’s more logical than this hellhole of a system. -- Cheers, Justin Aves (talk • contribs • global • rights) 22:32, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Per Yonydesk. No offence, but that’s really stupid. MoistyPorky.jpeg Moisty (talk) (CentralAuth) | Posted at 19:42:56, 29 June 2022 (UTC) MoistyPorky.jpeg
 * How the fuck is that stupid? I’m going off of what I’m seeing. Qualitipedia users quote a Wikipedia policy in like every sentence, so how is it “really stupid” if I’m giving an idea from Wikipedia? It’s a good alternative instead of whatever this is. -- Cheers, Justin Aves (talk • contribs • global • rights) 01:48, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) Personally I don't think it's that much of a big deal, but instead of forcing them to wait until 15 edits, could we just let them get through some requests and if most of them are good, we can unlock them? 15 edits is a bit much TBH. FatBurn0000 (sandbox | CentralAuth) 23:14, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 15 edits is pretty low, though. I got 15 edits within my first month in Qualitipedia.   23:56, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) Hmmm, I think that would be a bit problematic. --DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 18:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Would you like to explain how this would be problematic? Marxo Grouch (talk) 23:30, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) While I am not intensely familiar with QP’s policies and guidelines (I will be in the coming days), what I do know is that admins are not robots. They do not have the time or patience to go through every single new edit by new users. Yes it may eliminate a small amount of vandalism but for huge wikis, it would be incredibly tedious and not worth the effort. BrandonWM (talk) 14:48, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I’d also like to note that this tool could easily be abused by administrators or bureaucrats if they choose so. I’m not saying an admin necessarily will, but are the actions logged for the public? Do we get to see what was accepted and what was declined? There are a lot of transparency issues with this extension that have also made me oppose. BrandonWM (talk) 14:53, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that the fact that none of the admins opposed this invalidates the "they do not have the time or patience to go through every single new edit by new users". You can look at the recent changes of the wikis yourself, there aren't that many edits by new users. -  19:49, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) This tool can be easily abused by admins. And also, this may make Qualitipedia without newcomers. Am0ngU$ (talk) 23:18, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * You do not have a signature template, therefore you shouldn't sign that way. If you want one, you can create one, but note that it is only necessary if the signature you want to use is too big to fit in the signature box in your preferences. FatBurn0000 (sandbox | CentralAuth) 22:03, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It's better if we limit how many newcomers there are. It will mean we have less people to look after so we can turn our attention to more important things. Marxo Grouch (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Abstain

 * 1) I like the idea overall, but it worries me a bit that it might detect edits that it might consider vandalism when they’re far from it for any reason. YouKonade (talk) 18:51 PM, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * This would only be an issue if a manual reviewer misjudges the edit. --Raidarr (talk) 12:12, 12 July 2022 (UTC)