Thread:Dragonfree97/@comment-452-20150817194203

Hi, I was going to reply to your comments regarding the security updates in the thread, but it's now locked.

Dragonfree97 wrote:

The whole thing just reeks of over-protectivity. I think you made some great comments over-all, but this sentence in particular is a fantastic point, and reminds me of Help:Common mistakes.

The arguments for this nonsense are reminding me more and more of the tired old arguments "Anyone can edit a wiki, therefore all wikis are full of false information" and "Anyone can edit a wiki, therefore I'm going to unnecessarily protect all pages on the wiki".

Dragonfree97 wrote:

What about scripts that for instance modify a message a user sends, such as chat censor scripts? Are they going to be allowed? I don't think that user-level chat censor scripts should be allowed in the first place. There are very few policies which should be enforced via technical restrictions, which I think is kinda the whole point.

In general, scripts that prevent people from doing things are generally against the TOU. It's more common and acceptable to simply tell them not to do/say something, and block them if necessary.

In this particular case, I think the chat moderators should be the ones running a script to auto-kick on certain words. I personally use a flood-detector, which auto-kicks if someone says the same thing 5 times in a row, or spams more than 10 letters in a row. I could have put it in the core scripts so that it was impossible for someone to type "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa", but I don't think that would be allowed, because it's "restricting functionality" or something.

Maybe chat censor scripts are allowed, but I hope this perspective helps anyway!

Dragonfree97 wrote:

At the risk of drawing up a terrible analogy,[...] terrorism? The wiki-terrorists are winning, and have the self-satisfaction of knowing they've ruined things for everyone.

...actually, the code review generally making javascript editing unpleasant is a lot like the TSA generally making airplane travel unpleasant. And "assume all admins will add malicious code" is exactly like "assume all travellers are carrying a bomb".

So I don't think it's a terrible analogy at all! 