Talk:Society Gardens

what does "values longevity" mean in this context? --JWSchmidt 03:22, 7 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * just intended to mean values not just popularity, which may be temporary, but also the characteristic of being, approaching or tending towards long lasting, durable, sustained Philralph 15:13, 8 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Reply re unprotecting Main page
Reply re of unprotecting Main page of Sustainable Community Action (copied from Help talk:Main Page )

Summary: Unprotecting at the present time seems inapproriate because of current and seemingly ongoing vandalism and the nature of vandalism in the past (apparent strong opposition to sustainability information even existing), but situation can be reconsidered in the future, for example when Main Page redesigned.

Although it may be Wikia advice not to unneccesarily protect a Main Page (on a specific wiki), maybe the people who can best judge this are those who use, or regularly use, the wiki in question. (Further notes on this below in response to Mindspillage). Philralph 13:57, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course the suggestion isn't that you have to open the Main Page up to any sort of garbage people want to put on it.


 * The English-language Wikipedia's main page wasn't fully protected until roughly 1 year ago; it was constructed with a collection of templates that were themselves editable by anyone, and it wasn't until it started getting serious organized vandalism attempts that it was finally closed off. By that time there were hundreds of thousands of srticles and tens of thousands of active usere. The other English-language projects are by association so high-visibility that they too are attractive targets for vandalism. However, it was several years before this happened, and Wikipedia is by no means a frivolous project, either! Even still many of the smaller-language Wikipedias where they are not such attractive targets do not have their main pages protected, including the Nynorsk, Estonian, Irish Gaelic, and Scottish Gaelic Wikipedias, which are all more concerned about attracting new contributors than making sure the front page is never edited badly.


 * You don't have to allow people to push the anti-sustainability points of view on the main page if there's a consensus that it shouldn't be there. How do you handle it when they do so on other pages in that Wikicity? There are plenty of other pages there (and it looked like a really nice resource, when I was looking through it). If someone vandalizes it, why not remove it, warn the users, and if it's necessary block the user or protect the page temporarily to stop an attack? But it seems like you have enough activity and enough good users there that someone who wants to make trouble will be stopped or reverted before too long, whichever page it is.


 * The main page is the front door of your wiki, though, and as posted there, a new contributor who sees it and finds that it isn't editable may be put off and never come back; almost all of the Wikicities projects are still small enough that we'd rather not lose anyone when reverting bad edits would also solve the problem. Does this address your concerns? Thanks, Mindspillage 23:02, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * To address your second comment, I'll be happy to add that wiki to list of wikis I keep an eye on, which include a variety of others that are known to attract spam, vandalism, and other troublesome edits. Mindspillage 23:03, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I think Phil is overrreacting here. However, it is the case that the SCA user community is very small. Probably only 3 people check the site and contribute anything like regularly. So it might be a bit more vulnerable than Mindspillage thinks. I'm happy to have the page locked and the talk open, as changes to the front page should probably be discussed first anyway. (By the way, i'm not entirely sure why this discussion is taking place here.) --Tim Gray 09:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi, Mindspillsge, Thanks for your reply, and especially offer of help to keep an eye on things. Also thanks for compliments on sca21.


 * One of the main concerns here is that its not just the size of the wiki that'll influence whether or not its susceptable to vandalism, etc., but also the nature of the subject the wiki is about. So although Wikia may strongly argue, and continue to strongly argue, for not over protecting a wiki's Main Page, the actual decision at any particular time perhaps still rests best with those who actually use the wiki (in other words the 'local' consensus). Philralph 13:57, 27 March 2006 (UTC)