Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal/Poll

Straw poll for increasing autoconfirmed

Please see the talk page for the discussion which led to this poll.
See also: Special:ListGroupRights

Autoconfirmed users may move pages, edit semi-protected pages, and upload files or upload a new version of an existing file. They are no longer required to answer a CAPTCHA when adding external links, and may mark pages as patrolled in Special:NewPages.

No change

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

(4 days / 0 edits)
  1. Per above, no change is necessary. The current level is sufficient to prevent simple vandalism. That is the general purpose of semi-protection, which is the most widespread application of the autoconfirm limit. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. No, the present situation is good enough. New editors are vital, we should keep making it as easy and quick as possible for them to be able to edit fully especially considering the high turnover of editors we regrettably have. The autconfirm should be set at the lowest level possible to prevent basic vandalism. Also with the proposal at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Routine semi-protection to allow more semi protection of BLPs increasing the autoconfirm level will affect more and more new editors. Davewild (talk) 20:43, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  3. No change is necessary. The system is designed to keep users from editing semi-protected pages long enough to let them cool off and go find something else to do with their lives rather than hitting "f5f5f5f5f5". It also must be considered that there are legitimate users who would be hurt by this policy, particularly ipusers who want to participate in improving articles at AfD that might be semiprotected. As it stands, they are just barely able to do that, by seeing the AfD on the first day, getting autoconfirmed, and editing the article before it changes. Under any longer number, that simply wouldn't be possible. The function of this system isn't to punish users who don't have an account, it is simply to keep simple, everyday vandalism from happening. I fear the writer of the proposal doesn't quite grasp that. It's a tool for preventing simple vandalism while at the same time not punishing new users, and it does it's job very well in that balance. Autoconfirm works, semiprotection works, no one complains about not being able to edit. Celarnor Talk to me 20:45, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment:The critical thing on AfDs is not how an article reads; it's the lack of reliable sources. An editor who isn't autoconfirmed can still (a) list newly found sources in the AfD discussion (and would be well advised to do so early, the day that AfD discussion begins, rather than waiting for four days and then editing the article to add them. Celarnor Talk to me 21:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    While you're certainly right, unfortunately, AfD isn't always perceived that way. I've seen people post sources and have people still !vote delete with a rationale "I don't see those in the article". See immediatism. Celarnor Talk to me 21:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    The AfD may well have closed at that point per WP:SNOW) and (b) post to the article talk/discussion page, providing sources. (And by the way, you haven't explained why you would oppose a change to 4 days plus 10 edits; that would allow new editors to edit semi-protected pages just as quickly as they do with the current system.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    No, it wouldn't. They would have to wait until they got 10 edits, in addition to the four days. Trivial, yes, but pointless for stopping vandalism; it would be trivial to write a bot that opens up a socket to the IRC recent changes feed, pulls a diff and looks for uncapitalized letters after periods and capitalize them, who could reuse the bot and cycle the account used as many times as they want. That wouldn't do anything to stop a determined vandal and would only harm new users. The cost is outweighted by the benefit. If what a new user wants to edit is a semi-protected page, which is a page that probably gets a lot of attention and is thus a highly discussed or highly controversial topic that gets a lot of attention, what's he supposed to do? Just go elsewhere? Celarnor Talk to me 21:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    I don't think anyone here claims that a truly determined vandal will be deterred by any kind of autoconfirmation process. Quite the contrary: this system is in place for the purposes of avoiding casual, drop-by vandalism, and this is what it should be most successful in. And—I am tempted to use sarcasm here—how many vandals do you believe would have the knowledge (and the time) to write a bot? We are adding an editing threshold in order to save ourselves from sleeper accounts, a method which anyone can think of and execute without the slightest difficulty. We are not here to eliminate vandalism (nor can we), but we can certainly limit it to a great extent, without otherwise disrupting the normal operation of the encyclopaedia, and thus relieve our vandal-fighters and release resources which could be better utilised elsewhere, more constructively. Waltham, The Duke of 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    Arguments that say "it would be trivial to write a bot" are very unconvincing to me, since although I have a PhD and have been using computers for most of my working life, I would have absolutely no idea how to even start writing a bot. I strongly suspect the same is true of 99.9999% of our vandals. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  4. No change needed We want users to be bold, putting out some ridiculous edit-count based measuring stick for when we consider you a 'real' editor is, frankly, absurd. -Mask? 21:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  5. Oppose the continuing degeneration of Wikipedia from a free horizontal people's encyclopedia to a hierarchical and insular institution hostile to the public. Skomorokh 21:45, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    This is irrelevant, because the measure will not affect confirmed editors, and it will not affect unregistered editors either. This only changes the provisions of the registration process; unconfirmed editors are, one could say, in a limbo state, neither here nor there. No serious editor is expected to linger there long. Waltham, The Duke of 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  6. No change needed The growth of semiprotects as bad enough without making it even harder for them to be edited. Remember the slogan "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." GameKeeper (talk) 22:01, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  7. No motivation has been given to cause this change. Being tired of vandalism isn't good enough and there's no reason changes to autoconfirm would reduce it. It also would not reduce sleeper account instances, since those with enough planning can just wait out any longer period and lob a few bot-made edits into the pot. Most importantly, it violates the paradigm that all new users are welcome, because we are a wikipedia. You do not have to prove yourself, you can dive in and get messy right now. Except on a few articles where we're having temporary difficulties - but we've taken steps to stop those difficulties in a way that doesn't require any proof of dedication from you. Splash - tk 22:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    For information, tho, I would like to note that the reason edit counts did not enter the discussion seriously when WP:SEMI was first being proposed was because Brion Vibber indicated it was not easy to do. We took the decision that it was better to ask for something we could get than to ask for a longer list we could not. Times and technology change, of course. Splash - tk 22:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    Although it should also be noted that many people at the discussion didn't like the idea of including an edit could requirement, believing that it would promote editcountitis. Celarnor Talk to me 23:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    I am sure that our newcomers will grow paranoid by having to count up to twenty. (There, you made me use sarcasm.) Waltham, The Duke of 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  8. The potential benefit from any further reduction of drive by vandals with an increase of requirement is minimal. Determined one would likely happily meet the easier increase. The disadvantages of the bigger increase far outweighs any potential benefit gained. KTC (talk) 23:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  9. From a slightly different perspective. I would like to see semiprotect used more, but this is only practical if it is not made too stringent.DGG (talk) 04:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  10. I don't see that a change is needed. Determined vandals will open as many socks as needed to get around whatever requirement there is. The current 4 days cools off the bored middle school kids who want to type "I like cheese" on high profile pages. (And what is it about cheese that is so popular with the vandals???)--Fabrictramp (talk) 16:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    The thing is, even if it does cool them off when they create the account and find that they cannot edit high-profile pages, they can try again a few days later when they feel like vandalising again, and under the current system they will be able to write whatever they want. How is this effective? Waltham, The Duke of 03:33, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  11. The changes proposed would not require much additional effort to get around: that is, the difference b/w current state and the proposals is not sufficient, in my mind, to serve as much of a speedbump. The status quo is fine with me. - Philippe 03:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
    Let me get this straight: this does not look enough of an improvement to you, so you propose that there should be no improvement at all? Waltham, The Duke of 01:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  12. Terrible idea that will make it more difficult for experts to contribute in their area of interest. If I have spent my life researching killer whales and want to make an improvement to the killer whale article, the article is basically on perma semi-protection so I have to register an account and wait four days. This is already pretty bad, but now we're saying that I'd have to make a bunch of edits on articles that I know nothing or care nothing about, to demonstrate that I can be trusted to edit the article that I do know something about? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    No; you will register once the first time you come to Wikipedia, and spend some time learning how the place works. These twenty edits could very well be distributed between the Sandbox and your user page, if there is absolutely nothing in these 2.3 million articles that might interest you. You wouldn't want to start on the wrong foot in the article on your favourite subject because of editing inexperience, would you?
    PS: I don't about "permanent", but right now the article is not only unprotected, but featured. Waltham, The Duke of 01:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Now you've limited the number of people who can help correct errors to those who want to "learn how the place works". That's cutting off a lot of people who can help correct a specific problem but don't want to involve themselves in Wikipedia as a whole.
    We currently have no significant problem with page-move vandalism. To hazard a guess, on average probably 1 or 2 of 2+ million articles is suffering from that problem at any given time. On the other hand, it's a good bet that a large percentage of currently semi-protected articles (i.e. hundreds and hundreds of articles) contain a statement that is inaccurate or substantially misleading. One of these is a non-problem, but a mild inconvenience, and the other is a genuine problem, but one everyday editors and administrators can easily ignore. It is a mistake to exacerbate the genuine problem in order to make the non-problem less of an inconvenience; although the accuracy of our articles doesn't impact us, it certainly impacts the reader experience. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Just my luck to pick an article that came off three months of semiprotection today ;) I am aware that this article is Featured, and perhaps rightly so. However, I know the subject material well enough to know that it would benefit from attention from an expert on the subject. Most new content on Wikipedia is contributed by people with very, very few edits. They show up, they write on what they know about, and then they leave. These are contributors that we must allow to edit. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Mr Parham, you do not seem to appreciate the fact that significant resources are spent in vandal-fighting of all types, while they could be utilised instead in increasing the quantity and, much more importantly, quality of our content. Even if only two articles are maliciously moved at any given moment, a claim for which you have not yet furnished me with any proof, that makes for thousands of them in every single day. And it is not as easy to move them back as it is to revert a simple instance of page-blanking. Mind you, that does not mean that simple vandalism is not resource-consuming as well. It might not be what will make this project collapse (yet), but there are great and undeniable benefits in curtailing it. In addition, the less vandalism there is, the fewer are the probabilities that a reader will encounter a compromised version of a page, and it is to our interest to lower this figure, no matter how low it is already.
    Clayoquot, even an expert wishing to contribute good material might suffer its removal if they do not proceed in the right manner, especially if their actions result in extensive alteration of the article. A well-argued message in an article's talk page might be more effective for such drop-by editors. All that said, what you say is probably besides the point, because such editors are very likely not to concern themselves with registering an account; in this case, they are still ineligible from editing semi-protected articles. If they do plan on visiting at least a few times, however, and start their editing by registering an account, then after a while they will be able to edit said articles, a privilege otherwise not afforded to users with no intent to contribute seriously. Waltham, The Duke of 15:43, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  13. I don't see what this will solve. Short of requiring a serious time and edit commitment (which will not happen, and should not), this will not stop determined vandals, such as Grawp. It currently already provides enough deterrence for fly-by vandals, so there isn't really a need to put more barriers on editing. seresin ( ¡? ) 03:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  14. I can only see requiring edits increasing, if not vandalism, other unhelpful edits. If someone is willing to wait four days to do heavier vandalism, I doubt it will be too taxing for them to say, add a space to a bunch of articles. Lunar Jesters (talk) 20:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Oppose - but this is not the option I was expressing opposition to. Once you have created the account it is trivial to click edit 10 times on your newly created sleeper account in order to "activate" it. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 20:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Clicking "edit this page" does not increase your edit count. You have to make a change to the page and save it for that to happen, and most vandals don't manage 10 edits before they get blocked. Very few manage 20. Hut 8.5 20:42, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Someone else has already given a helpful hint to vandals on how to edit a page without getting blocked while you are getting in your qualifying edits. I won't repeat it here. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 20:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Under the current system, you can create an account, sit around for a few days, and start mass pagemove vandalism. It doesn't require much effort at all, and therefore there are a lot of people who do this to get around the semi-protection system. Requiring people to have a decent edit count acts as a much higher barrier, and there aren't many people who are going to bother to write the bot to automatically make these edits. And your brilliant strategy would probably be make it rather obvious to an RC patroller or even a countervandalism bot that the account is trying to get around the semiprotection system. Hut 8.5 20:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Are you seriously suggesting that we start going after new users whose first few edits are minor copyedits simply because they may be on the track to creating vandalism? As a test, I've started writing the aforementioned bot in Perl to see how difficult it would be. Waiting a random number of minutes between 1 and 30, grabbing a random page and pulling the latest version is 16 lines. The detection algorithm itself for missing capitalization after a period is and fixing it is 15 lines. The rest of it is stuff any high-school student in a Java class could figure out. Anyone determined could get around this tiny speedbump for any account they ever create with an hour or two of initial work. It's completely ineffective and pointless, and as long as we assume every correction contribution isn't vandalism, then there's no way to preemptively block such users. Celarnor Talk to me 22:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    No, I was thinking of something simpler - "add some whitespace to twenty pages". What legitimate new user is going to do that? Of course determined users can get round any anti-vandalism precaution - there have been cases of vandals spending months working their way to adminship and then going wild deleting the main page, so do we hand out adminship to all registered users, as we can't stop vandals getting it? No, because anti-vandalism precautions reduce the number of people who are willing to try to get the access. The number of vandals who are willing to write bots to carry out their vandalism is very, very low, even though it isn't actually that hard to do. Hut 8.5 15:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    Celarnor, if we get actual good edits out of this I'm not going to complain. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  15. Let's not get more restrictive unless we have a really clear reason why it will help, and it doesn't cost us much. To me, lengthening the time and edit requirement fails both: It's not clear how it would help, as others have pointed out, and it will present a pain to newbies who genuinely want to help out. It's already difficult enough to explain to newbies when they're doing cut and paste moves: "well, the way you're supposed to do it is to use the move button, which for you should show up in a couple days." They're like, "if I'm not supposed to do it by cutting and pasting, why don't you give me the tools to do it right?" What's to stop a vandal from redirecting a page somewhere else anyway? I get the feeling that a lot of newbies feel oppressed by the restrictiveness of this place. Some are too shy to edit, others get frustrated and leave. Let's be as open as we can without making major sacrifices. delldot talk 21:24, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  16. Oppose to easy to game the system Alex Bakharev (talk) 10:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  17. No change needed Zginder 2008-05-16T12:39Z (UTC)
  18. I would leave before a change is made Absolutly no change needed, it's fine, sure, vandals are annoying, but you don't seem to realise that this is creating an oligarchy. There are thousands of accounts who register and do only about 4 edits a month, and these are beneifical edits. I recently registered a sockpuppet and made 43 edits with it as a test. 37 of them were to the mainspace, one was to a wikipedia space page and the otehrs were to article talk pages. On the talk pages, I was treated like shit by the more experienced users, and we don't want that to get any worse.--Phoenix-wiki 14:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  19. No change to granting of autoconfirmed. However, I support lowering the page move rate limit for this user group to limit the effect of page move vandalism. --- RockMFR 18:26, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  20. There are too many semi-protected pages to countenance forcing new users to wait longer than they already do. Powers T 13:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

One hour and ten minutes

  1. Anyone who has had time to count to ten should be allowed to use their newly created account for whatever they wish. Since almost all the popular articles are restricted, it should not take waiting four days to put together an edit to an article, after which you really can't remember what you wanted to fix anyway. Longer delays and edit counts are meaningless because they can be mechanically overcome in the most trivial sense. There are 7 million registered usernames, 99% of which were created over 90 days ago and have no edits. If the requirement in using them was 10 edits, they would all have 10 edits. If the requirement in using them was 100 edits, they would all have 100 edits. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 20:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Oppose Way to short of a time, if this were passed it would seriously limit the effectives of semi-protection. Vivio TestarossaTalk Who 05:16, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    Here's what it wouldn't change. It wouldn't change the fact that Ip users can not edit semi-protected articles. It wouldn't change the fact that 97% of vandalism is by Ip users. Let me see, sounds like it wouldn't change anything. Would it change the number of people rushing out to register usernames? Not likely, 7 million have already been registered, and probably 99% of those have never been used. But don't worry about it "passing". So far it has less than 2% of the votes. 199.125.109.67 (talk) 15:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    The fact that IPs can't edit a page is rather meaningless when they can spend ten seconds creating an account and edit it anyway. The fact that not many people support a proposal does not make it a good idea or go any way towards justifying it. Hut 8.5 15:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    I couldn't have said it better myself. Some of the best ideas have no support at all. My point is that they don't spend 10 seconds creating an account, so it doesn't matter if the waiting period is ten minutes or ten years, the effect is still the same. 199.125.109.67 (talk) 15:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. The less the better. More equality for Wikipedia users!  Grue  15:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

2 days and 5 edits

  1. Personally I'm not experiencing any trouble with new users. I propose we should make the wikipedia (if slightly) more open. -- Taku (talk) 02:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
    What topic are you working on? I want to go there! Kaldari (talk) 18:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    Mostly geographic ones; stations, small villages, etc. The dearth of new contributes is more problematic than the troubling behavior of some few new users, in my opinion. -- Taku (talk) 21:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. Like Taku said, we need less elitism, not more. Monobi (talk) 03:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  3. Days do not really matter, edits do. Zginder 2008-05-15T19:38Z (UTC)


4 days and 10 edits

  1. Going from 4 days, zero edits, to requiring 4 days, 10 edits, could have a significant impact on trolls, who now can easily create a bunch of sleeper accounts and return later to use them for move vandalism. And it might reduce spam, because of the CAPTCHA requirement. On the other hand, it will not affect - in any way - a regular editor who makes 10 or more edits in their first four days of being registered. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:51, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. With my heart and soul. 10 edits isn't enough to present a challenge to well-meaning editors, but it would be a real thorn in the ass to a sleeper-account vandal. Ziggy Sawdust 03:22, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    Huh? What makes you think that counting to ten without even having to take your socks off is so hard? 199.125.109.105 (talk) 20:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  3. Yes. Note that it's not currently technically possible to require mainspace edits. And this requires 4 days and 10 edits. — Werdna talk 13:28, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  4. While I have my doubts about adding an editing requirement, a minimal edit requirement would help disable sockfarms. Remember what's been said on this before: we need to make introduction for new users to be as painless as possible; requiring 10 arbitrary edits before allowing them to edit semi-protected pages seems like it might not be so bad, but we must be wary of entrance costs as the low entrance cost of Wikipedia is one of the things that drives its continued improvement. Nihiltres{t.l} 13:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  5.  penubag  (talk) 15:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  6. Also happy with the below option, but this is my first choice. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 22:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  7. This makes it hard for vandals to commit vandalism on different accounts, but so new users don't get discouraged for long being unable to edit certain articles. Hello32020 (talk) 01:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  8. This is my first choice. A minimal number of edits will do a great deal in making sleeper socks less attractive to their operators by making them have a higher cost for using. I think the 7+20 possibility is also acceptable, but beyond 20 we would be making too much difficulty for editors adding references to articles, and I don't see any merit to going beyond 7 days. I also think the current status is acceptable. GRBerry 01:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  9. This should be enough. I wouldn't object strongly to 7+20, though. --Tango (talk) 15:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  10. Adding edits, rather than days, makes more sense to me. (My ideal would be 4 days/20 edits, but 4/10 is good and 7/20 is acceptable.) Gnome de plume (talk) 16:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  11. As things stand currently, I believe that 7 days is high enough that it would deter good editors due to the long delay before they could edit semi-protected articles. 10 edits is enough to deter most casual vandals from creating sleeper accounts; besides, if they're willing to get 10, they'll be willing to get 20, and sleeper accounts are often inactive for much longer than a week before being used anyway. The purpose should be to simply deter mass creation of accounts that don't even edit and still get autoconfirmed. Perhaps once flagged revisions is out and semi-protection can be used much less frequently, we can go with a higher autoconfirmed requirement. For now, 4 days and 10 edits seems to strike the best balance. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 21:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  12. Number of edits is what matters. Adding days would have little effect, if any. Rivertorch (talk) 06:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  13. I believe this is the best option. Also, if we want to reduce vandalism we can just check our watchlist. ~AH1(TCU) 17:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
    There are over 2,300,000 articles on the English Wikipedia; most of them are not watched by anyone. Waltham, The Duke of 19:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
    Watching edits is more important than watching articles. See the question/proposal at Wikipedia talk:Recent changes patrol#Collaboration 199.125.109.105 (talk) 20:47, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  14. OK Aaron Schulz 05:58, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  15. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:54, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  16. This wouldn't affect well-meaning editors and would hurt vandals. However, as Werdna noted above, this wouldn't require mainspace edits, which would be preferable. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 17:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  17. Looks like a good idea. krimpet✽ 02:18, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  18. If possible excluding edits in one's own userspace.  Sandstein  11:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  19. Preferred choice, but I would also be fine with the 7/20 option too. Risker (talk) 17:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  20. Adding a minimum number of edits even if it is small is a good idea and reducing the time limit is probably not so good. I favor this one but won't strongly object to the 7/20 option although it seems like more than necessary. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  21. Would close the door to sleepers. Zginder 2008-05-15T19:37Z (UTC)
  22. Worth trying as an experiment.-gadfium 19:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  23. This seems like a reasonable change to things less conducive to trolls and vandals without putting an undue burden on the vast majority who actually want to make improvements to the encyclopedia. Aleta Sing 00:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  24. The current 4 days is fine. Requiring some number of edits increases the probability that the editor is a serious one, not someone out to vandalize or troll. So, what should the number be? No matter what is picked, someone could produce reasonable arguments against it. The number 10 has historical basis (it's the number of human fingers) and is not overly restrictive. Our goal should be to encourage participation, and this would do that without overly restrictive requirements. Truthanado (talk) 00:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  25. I'm torn on this, as I think the bar to entry to Wikipedia should be so low as to be invisible to most all users. On the other hand, the discouragement of sock farms is a highly attractive proposition, particularly when increasing autoconfirmation by just a few edits could have a measurable discouraging effect. I think this is a happy medium. Ford MF (talk) 03:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

7 days and 20 edits

  1. Although I should have no problem with retaining the current number of days, the arguments about four days being too few have convinced me somewhat. I believe that one full week and twenty edits is a perfect compromise between deterring vandals and not driving well-meaning contributors away. Anything less than this, although less effective, will still be an improvement over the current system; anything more, however, will be hard on our editors. Waltham, The Duke of 19:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. I agree with the Duke. I was flabbergasted when I first found out that a user became autoconfirmed after four days. I don`t think a waiting week to edit semi-protected pages is unreasonable, nor is requiring twenty edits. Its a perfect amount of time to allow new contributors to get their feet wet while deterring sleeper accounts. Mister Senseless™ (Speak - Contributions) 02:43, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  3. Good compromise IMHO. It should be 20 mainspace edits, in order to avoid the "edit your userpage 20 times then vandalise" trick. Accounts created through SUL should be automatically autoconfirmed. MER-C 10:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  4. Suppose it's a good compromise; 7 days seems a reasonable period of time. GDonato (talk) 15:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  5. Yes, this seems about right. It would not seriously impact legitimate editors, as 20 edits is a very low barrier, but it would seriously hurt serial vandals and sockpuppeteers by making it much harder for them to create new accounts. MER-C is right that this should be mainspace edits. Hut 8.5 21:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  6. This will do much to thwart vandals like User:Scibaby, who creates sleeper socks, waits 4 to 10 days, and begins to attack the semiprotected articles on global warming. Whether it's 4 days or 7 days really makes no difference to me. The minimum number of edits is critical, and 20 seems like a reasonable number to me. [Edit:] I also support MER-C's suggestion to require 20 mainspace edits. I retract this statement because it cannot be implemented. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 21:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    And you honestly don't think that Scibaby isn't smart enough to count out 10 edits or 20 edits or 50 edits or 100 edits on their newly created sleeper accounts? Please. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 20:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  7. A few edits before someone can start moving pages sounds very reasonable. Dorftrottel (ask) 22:06, May 7, 2008
  8. Sensible. Discourages sleeper sockfarms without setting the bar too high for genuine contributors. One week is an intuitive time frame, which makes it attractive. DurovaCharge! 22:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  9. This is a justifiable barrier to abusive socks. Dragons flight (talk) 22:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  10. HAGGER!!!!!!!!! If Grawp, or the "1000s of socks" guy, had to make 20 good edits with each sleeper before he could activate it, we would probably see a decrease in vandalism, or at least an increase in helpful typo corrections... Thatcher 23:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    You really think that he couldn't just write a bot to make 20 capitalization / punctuation edits that could be easily found by simiple algorithms? Is the benefit from that really worth the newbie-biting? Celarnor Talk to me 23:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    There's no "biting" involved. "Your account is not seasoned enough to do that" is not the same message as "You are a bad editor." If you are worried about newbie biting, look at the addition of CSD tags to new articles with no article talk or user talk discussions, and new pages patrollers who told me it would be "too hard" to give new articles 24 hours to ripen before tagging them. Thatcher 16:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    Hang on. This only works if, apart from upping the dress-code on Wikipedia, you also want more protected articles. Otherwise, it won't make any difference to vandalism as almost all articles are unprotected. The same is true of most of those preceding you. Saying this kind of change reduces vandalism also relies on more articles being protected. Is this a wikipedia or not? Splash - tk 23:57, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    Don't you have to be autoconfirmed to move pages? If not then strike my vote entirely, I have no opinion (other than that page moves should be throttled, but that's a different poll.) Thatcher 00:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    I believe you do, as was noted in the discussion. (And seems to be indicated at Help:Moving a page.) Anyone have a link/proof? - jc37 00:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    An account need to be autoconfirmed to be able to move a page yes. KTC (talk) 04:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    I can understand why Thatcher was confused; the opposition has focused on casual vandalism (blanking, introducing nonsense, etc.), which, true, will not be that much affected by the proposed changes (except for semi-protected pages, which are usually thus treated because they are more controversial and therefore more susceptible to vandalism). However, the main reason for this is that the hard-to-revert moves will be severely cut down by extending the auto-confirmation period, as will image-uploading- and link-spamming-related vandalism, which are certainly more disruptive than the more harmless forms of vandalism (some of which are bot-reverted anyway). Waltham, The Duke of 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  11. 7 days/20 seems reasonable to me; slightly higher numbers would be acceptable to me, too. -- Ed (Edgar181) 23:57, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  12. I think it is a little to easy to get autoconfirmed; it needs to be raised a little. More than this, however, seems ridiculous. Paragon12321 (talk) 00:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  13. Seems about right to me, I would support a larger increase, but not too much larger. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 01:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  14. 4 days always seemed too short but I don't think extending the days will have much of an impact; it's coupling this with an editing threshold that matters. If implemented, I expect many aspiring vandals will be blocked before they reach autoconfirmation which allows more creative forms of damage to be done. Support in spades.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  15. This seems a reasonable barrier to prevent abuse, while not causing a significant problem for new editors. New editors probably shouldn't be moving pages anyway (given the complexity of the naming conventions). It should also help tone down misc. vandalism on sprot'd pages. --Bfigura (talk) 02:06, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  16. Seems like the best alternative. - Rjd0060 (talk) 05:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  17. It would seriously deter move vandals. The benefits gained from autoconformation are not all that vital so newbies should be able to go a week without them. -Icewedge (talk) 05:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    The ability to edit pages is a pretty vital benefit. You're proposing to prevent people from editing the many hundreds of semi-protected pages for potentially extended periods since it is entirely common for a user to log in only occasionally to make a quick fix. Not all editors are prolific, and this change makes the non-prolific into the unwelcome. Splash - tk (talk) 12:29, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    It is my opinion that Wikipedia is not building its future on editors who will drop by once every two months in order to fix a spelling error in a semi-protected article. You are, of course, welcome to disagree. Waltham, The Duke of 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    You're a good editor, at a glance. You're contributing to 'the future of Wikipedia'. Yet your first 20 edits took you more than a month, and were comprised of just three (3) to articles, each of which were minor fixes. I'm glad we had not then followed your present advice of shutting the door that let you in. It is easy to be cynical and slapdash about pulling up the ladder after oneself — after all you needn't worry the consequences — but it ranks as one of the most serious mistakes that a visionary project can make. It is harder by far to stand with your principles and be proud, not scared, of them. Splash - tk 23:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    Perhaps I'm missing something, but how would this proposal have affected those first 20 edits of TDOW's? (Much less to having been "shutting the door" if this proposal had been implemented at that time.) Could you please clarify your example? - jc37 23:28, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    Precisely which articles he edited isn't material to my central point, of pulling up the ladder after oneself. Splash - tk 23:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    Then I guess I'm not seeing your point (or at least not understanding the ladder reference, and it's intended application, then). Would you clarify? - jc37 00:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    He means, I think, that I boarded the ship and then pulled up the ladder so that nobody else could come up. This is utterly untrue, however; the proposed auto-confirmation system would not have affected my inaugurating editing in the least. As Splash says, my first twenty edits comprised three minor fixes in the mainspace—none of these was semi-protected, according to the logs, but even if it was, I should have simply made my typo fixes elsewhere. They also included eight edits in my user pages, three in the Village Pump, and six others in the project namespace. Furthermore, my first move was on 1 August 2007, and my first image upload on Wikipedia was on last April Fool's. As you can see, my ticket would have still been valid one-and-a-half year ago.
    I was talking about editors with no intent to contribute seriously; these are the only editors who would have found nothing to do but edit a semi-protected page. I, on the other hand, was an editor who simply started slowly, as I am sure many others do (I also had lessons to pay attention to, again like many others). Simply enough, there was absolutely no fuss. Editors in a great hurry to register and start editing away in the few pages where they cannot are rather suspicious in my books, and these are the only ones really affected by the proposed change (movers aside). Waltham, The Duke of 01:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  18. to deter sockfarming and movevandals. The above issue of only a few pages being protected is not a problem, as articles hit by sockfarms can be protected. P.S. I am not particular fussed on the number of days/edits, but a number of preferably mainspace edits would accomplish the wanted benefit. Agathoclea (talk) 09:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  19. Would stop the casual vandal - the most prevalent kind. Deli nk (talk) 11:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  20. Sounds good to me. shoy 15:45, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  21. Seems reasonable. Whether it's 4 or 7 days matters little - the editing threshold is key here. Orderinchaos 16:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  22. Yet another software change influenced by vandalism, but seems reasonable to me. Ten edits seems like too little in terms of malicious socks, but I don't believe twenty will be too much for constructive newbies. Perhaps this change should be accompanied by better advertising WP:RM as a means of page moving. This change will be useful for user scripts that can cause controversy when coupled with inexperience, like Twinkle. GracenotesT § 17:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  23. Seems beyond reasonable, to me. If I may suggest this actually be 100 edits, instead. It's a nice round number and absurdly trivial to achieve. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 18:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    100? You are being serious, right? Some people take more than a year to reach that number. People can take weeks just to get 10-20, especially if they can't edit the more popular, semi-protected articles. 10-20 is iffy enough, but 100? That's terrible ... Celarnor Talk to me 18:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    I think Mr Cohen here is using an old salesman's trick: show the client the most expensive product so that the more moderately priced ones will actually look cheap. 10–20 looks much better now, doesn't it? :-D Waltham, The Duke of 23:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  24. Very reasonable proposal, especially given the fact that Wikipedia has become such a widely used resource. Little if any negative impact, and can definitely help to restrict the Grawps, Serafins, and others. Even better, make it twenty mainspace edits and don't count deleted contributions (i.e. nonsense pages). --Ckatzchatspy 18:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  25. Sensible, and sets an elegant bar that 1/ discourages throw-away sock puppets (too much effort); 2/ doesn't put off new editors. Anthøny 20:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  26. Reasonable proposal, seven days and twenty edits. After seven days and twenty edits, vandalism only accounts have usually been identified and blocked. AIV is sometimes populated with accounts which have been recently editing, but the account was created long before. Most of the time a vandal-only account won't use the extra tools (move a page, for example), but those that know the power can easily abuse it if they wished. I think seven days and twenty edits is the maximum needed; longer will discourage and frustrate genuinely well-intentioned users. PeterSymonds | talk 20:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  27. I'd like a small edit minimum before autoconfirm takes place. I'd also be content with 4 days/10 edits over 4 days/0 edits, but I feel this is a little more reasonable. --CapitalR (talk) 21:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  28. Yes. Sceptre (talk) 21:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  29. Why not. Hobartimus (talk) 21:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    For the long and varied list of reasons that people in other sections of this page have suggested. Such a flippant approach as yours to policy-making is bound to make bad policy. Splash - tk 23:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    There is nothing remarkable here, I find no valid reason to oppose this. I'm particularly opposed to giving move rights to accounts with 0 edits. Hobartimus (talk) 14:40, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  30. This would do wonders in fighting so-called "sleeper vandals". I don't support anything more than 7/20 because anything above that might turn off some potential editors. Some sleeper vandalism will always get through (they are quite determined), but 7/20 seems to be the right balance. --FastLizard4 (Talk•Index•Sign)
  31. Autoconfirm is pretty useless as is. Mr.Z-man 01:58, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  32. Oh yeah! I have been wanting it to be like this ever since I became autoconfirmed! :D Tiptoety talk 01:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  33. I think that it would take this much time/edits before a noob can have a sense of the general environment and be capable of utilizing the autoconfirmed tools. It would help with slashing the sleeper vandals as well. Singularity 02:13, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  34. Absolutely. This would give some real teeth to semiprotection to stopping vandals that have specific targets through sleeper accounts. And realistically, how many legitimate new editors are moving around pages and properly uploading images within their first week and/or 20 edits? Since Commons is available for free images, the only things new editors couldn't upload would be nonfree images or images intended for vandalism. The second is certainly no loss, and the first is something one should have a good degree of experience before working with. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  35. 1 week sounds better than 4 days. OhanaUnitedTalk page 03:37, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  36. Absolutely, a great idea. I thnk this'd do a great deal to curb vandalism and spambots and the like. --Liempt (talk) 05:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  37. This is a good idea overall. It starts the relationship out right with new users: work well with others, gain trust, and you will have full editorial powers. It doesn't prevent jumping right in and editing. It does prevent certain behaviors known to be problematic and requiring more effort to undo. Newbies who get hooked will soon be full editors, while socks and other transient and uncommitted types will have a barrier to get past. Best of all, it's universal and requires no administrative, involvement-of-flawed-human-beings supervision. I also concur that the 20 edits should be in the mainspace only. --Dhartung | Talk 06:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    Please note—this is for all editors who support 20 mainspace edits for autoconfirmation—that this option is not on the table (look at the top). Apart from the apparent technical impossibility to apply it, such a provision would make the current proposal much stronger than it really is. Users do not need to edit articles in order to learn the basics of editing, and it might be counter-productive to force it upon them. Especially since the Sandbox and the editors' own user pages are the primary places of harmless practice and they are not in the main namespace. Waltham, The Duke of 10:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  38. I'm a fan. The ability to move pages is the one that creates the most headaches, and most vandals don't get beyond five edits before they're blocked, let alone 20. --jonny-mt 09:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  39. This seems like the most reasonable suggestion. 4 days is too short, and 20 edits isn't too high of a requirement to put new editors off. At least a week and 20 edits gives new editors a chance to get used to Wikipedia before they can do anything extra - • The Giant Puffin • 10:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  40. I think this represents a measured and appropriate response, making sleeper accounts significantly harder to maintain without impossing a significant barrier for new users. henrik•talk 13:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  41. This would be a big improvement over what we have now which. 7 days doesn't seem at all unreasonable. Kaldari (talk) 16:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  42. Most reasonable of all suggestions. Could help with protection of pages whilst vandalism and/or sockpuppetry may be occuring. Rudget (Help?) 17:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  43. A week and 20 edits definitely seems reasonable. hmwithτ 17:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  44. Yes, I agree. This is an important safeguard, and Waltham has covered the reasons why this is the best option. Tony (talk) 17:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  45. This is the best choice: it'll slow down Grawp for starters (who struck again earlier today, and I had to protect a bunch of deleted pages), reduce vandalism further, and as Thatcher said, we might see an increase in corrections. Acalamari 18:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  46. Yes, that seems reasonable. Ashton1983 (talk) 19:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  47. I don't really care whether it's 4 or 7 days, but my favorite sockpuppeteer would really be disappointed if he couldn't immediately start creating dozens of crazy name redirects with his sleeper accounts. (edit: strike that; he could still do that, nevertheless...) 20 edits is a nice and effective threshold that is not overly annoying for new interested editors, I think. – sgeureka t•c 17:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Hear, hear... other than the fact that I don't have an account at this time. 68.101.123.219 (talk) 17:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  48. This seems like a reasonable proposal that will help control vandalism without having much effect on limiting access. Peacock (talk) 03:48, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  49. A good compromise between giving new accounts freedom and deterring vandalism. Suicidalhamster (talk) 11:52, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  50. Or more. FT2 (Talk | email) 19:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  51. Agree with this. Best choice. Noble Story (talk) 02:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  52. One week is a solid, sensible duration. --Stormie (talk) 05:03, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  53. 20 edits and 7 days is a fair compromise that will allow users to get used to Wikipedia before doing the potentially more troublesome activities of moving pages and uploading new files. An edit count threshold of 20 will reduce sleeper accounts, while not being so high it could deter users. 4/10 is my second choice. Camaron | Chris (talk) 15:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  54. 7/20 strikes a good compromise between preventing 'HAGGER!!!!'-like page move vandalism and deterring good-faith contributors. RichardΩ612 Ɣ |ɸ 19:52, May 13, 2008 (UTC)
  55. Happy‑melon 21:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  56. I probably would support a longer/higher count standard, but this seems to be where the consensus is falling, and it is better than the current standard. -- Donald Albury 02:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    Better, by what measure? The Wikipedia won't be better, it will only change the way that socks get implemented. The only thing that will change is that less people will contribute to important articles. How you can call that better is beyond me. There are only about 5,000 editors who contribute more than 150 edits in an entire month. Yet hundreds of millions of people use Wikipedia, and can be expected to contribute when they wish. Not a year later, but now. Restricting them to contributing to less important articles is foolish. Saying that we only want 5,000 editors to be able to edit all the important articles is ludicrous. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 02:45, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    Since when does semiprotection make an article more important? There are currently fewer than 4000 pages in the main namespace that are semiprotected, including redirects, out of more than 2 million. Mr.Z-man 02:58, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    More important in the sense that more people refer to them than any others. Out of those 4,000 protected pages you will find most of the 4,000 most used pages. There are a few exceptions, as some pages are more attractive to those less mature, and protection levels are constantly changing, but for the most part that's the case. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 05:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    Right idea, wrong direction. Important articles get semiprotected. While it doesn't necessarily impart "importanship" by the mere virtue of semiprotection, not just any article gets semi-pd'd. Like the IP above me said, within the ranks of semi'd articles on any given day, you'll find the most useful material on Wikipedia. Celarnor Talk to me 17:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    I would suggest you take a look at Special:ProtectedPages. This shows all the semi protected articles larger than 50 bytes (anything smaller than that is probably a redirect). While there are some "important" articles, a large amount seem to be various insults and expletives, articles about sex, video game/anime/cartoon articles, and internet memes. Our most useful and important articles indeed. Mr.Z-man 02:14, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
    Even without looking at that list, however, one could argue that several articles are probably describing a controversial subject—which is why they have been semi-protected—but not necessarily a popular or even important one. Waltham, The Duke of 02:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
    I watch changes to the category daily. Elohim is currently protected along with Apple, Abortion, Ancient Rome, Communism, Canada, Gold, Greece, and Liberalism. There are also A LOT of pop culture in there (Family Guy, etc). Celarnor Talk to me 19:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  57. This seems like a reasonable approach. Cirt (talk) 11:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  58. Seems to be reasonable enough, a good attempt to stop sock abuse and banned users. Carlosguitar (Yes Executor?) 16:52, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  59. Seems like a decent approach. Going from my personal experience, I had no need for any of the "special" rights conferred via auto-confirm for quite awhile. The only problem I see is page moving, which new users may need to use if they accidentally create a page with a spelling error, etc. (I think I've done that). Lazulilasher (talk) 00:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  60. Seems to be the best option. Maybe it can be stated 20 edits outside of the user's own space? Alex Bakharev (talk) 10:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  61. If a user want to contribute, these criteria should be easy to reach. On the other hand, I doubt a move vandal would put this type of work in to get to this level. SpencerT♦C 11:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  62. Good for newbies to get to know the ropes before they start playing around with page moves, uploading, etc. Good (i.e. bad) for vandal-proofing and SPAs. Although, I have seen above that userspace edits should not be counted. I'm 50-50 with that one. If we must, we should raise the edit level to account for, say 8 userspace edits, but we shouldn't discount them. This, that and the other [talk] 11:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  63. Fully support.  – ukexpat (talk) 13:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  64. --Conti|✉ 14:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  65. Supportper Spencer, and per my experience with vandalism. For someone who really wants to help out, this is not a very difficult goal to obtain. It would make it much more difficult to register 25 accounts and use them all for vandalism. Under the present system (and any system which does not include an edit count criteria) all you have to do to vandalize semi-protected pages is create accounts and sit around. With this system, you actually have to work to vandalize semi-protected pages. To refute the inevitable "That's not much work" comments, look at my main userpage and try to figure out where I really keep my stuff. It's not that hard to figure out. Since I introduced my present userpage format, (i.e. total chaos) I have made at least 30,000 edits that involve vandalism (reverting, warning, reporting, requesting protection, etc.) and I have never had my real userpage vandalized. Never. I said all that is to point out that from the standpoint of a vandal, it is not worth it to do all that work (making 20 edits with each account) just to vandalize and then be blocked. J.delanoygabsadds 14:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  66. I think this is a good level. Requires some familiarity with the Wiki and constructive edits, while not being unduly burdensome. I, however, do not want to quibble with what space the edits occur in.-- danntm T C 15:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  67. Support (the above 4/10 would be my second choice.) Although it may take a little work to implement it, I think having a requirement of a reasonable amount of editing will all but eliminate sock farms and seriously cut down on the amount of socks in general. Also, I don't think requiring a small amount of editing will deter newbies from joining. (As an example, I had more than 220 edits before I was auto-confirmed) Still, I don't think we should add more than 7 days to the time because it would be somewhat discouraging to register an account and find out you have to wait a week to edit semi-protected pages, and more than 7 days could start turning people away. Thingg⊕⊗ 15:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  68. Support However, if we implement Sighted revisions, I would support removing more restrictions for un- or newly-registered users. Jclemens (talk) 15:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  69. Support 7days/20edits seems to be the right amount of (wikipedian) accountability for most puppet/vandal prevention. This would allow more resources to be devoted to the prevention of more virulent forms of vandalism as well. -Kain Nihil (talk) 16:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  70. Support As the person who originally came up with the proposal (Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal), I believe that this is the best compromise of trying to prevent drive-by vandalism and not alienating new users. 7 days and 20 edits is perfect. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 16:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  71. Support This proposal seems to strike a happy medium between current policy and some of the more extreme measures proposed on this page. One week and a very small amount of edits seems quite reasonable to allow an account to become fully active. American Patriot 1776 (talk) 20:04, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  72. Support This is long overdue - sleeper accounts? --Rschen7754 (T C) 22:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  73. Support —LegoKontribsTalkM 02:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  74. Support it's all been said above. Johnbod (talk) 12:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  75. Support, but I agree with Jclemens, six votes up. ZsinjTalk 13:31, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  76. Support, pity it can't be 20 non-deleted contributions. I also like the idea of re-visting this once sighted revisions has been implemented. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  77. Support, the autoconfirmation limit has always seemed too lenient to me. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 18:20, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  78. Support, the time needed for autoconfirmation now is far too short, and with no edit limit, there's the chance of sleeper accounts. --Patar knight - chat/contributions 23:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  79. Support - A Seven Day 20 edit waiting time should be ample to insure that the user won't abuse the move and up-load features. --Mifter (talk) 01:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  80. Support I think people need to be serious about Wikipedia before they should be able to edit semi-protected pages. I've only done one edit but it was an entire article with 23 references. I wouldn't mind doing 19 more edits before I'm allowed to tamper with semi-protected pages. --J TerMaat (talk) 02:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  81. Try this for a bit, however separating moving permission seems necessary. - RoyBoy 16:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
    See that proposal below, last section. Equazcion •✗/C • 17:09, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  82. Support, this new limit will help ward off vandals. I also agree with the 20 mainspace edits thing. 4 days is far too short a time.Xp54321 (talk) 19:54, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  83. Seraphim♥Whipp 12:51, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  84. Support Would stop 95% of the serial vandals. PrestonH 20:16, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  85. Support It is highly unlikely that a newly registered user would be in a position to have a real need sooner than 7 days (and it isn't a huge jump from 4). Requiring 20 edits isn't a high hurdle, and it isn't going to trip up any genuine editor. It will give the creators of sleeper accounts extra grief, so good thing! Mayalld (talk) 10:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
  86. Support: I've seen enough sockfarms in my time here working WP:AIV and CAT:RFU that I believe the current 4 day standard is anything but woefully inadequate. It's the edit count that'll make the biggest difference. --  Netsnipe  ►  13:48, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
    I don't think the edit count would make any difference, other than to keep serious editors from editing semi-protected articles. By serious editors I mean experts in their field - college professors, PhDs, etc. Any vandal can create an account, 10 seconds, click random article 20 times, click edit, add a space, delete a space, in 60 seconds they are done. Wait a month, and then start using the account. While waiting create 30 more similar accounts. Or 300. Or 3,000. Adding 3 days just means more time to create more sleeper accounts. Adding edit counts is a trivially overcome obstacle to any vandal. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 23:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
  87. Support: The 20 edits is the key, IMO. I fully support this proposal. MahangaTalk 19:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
  88. Support: I very much approve of this proposal. Any sort of edit count requirement will make a huge difference. 96.226.112.38 (talk) 17:18, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
  89. Support: Seems about just right. Making the requirements higher than this will be far too elitist IMO, but this should effectively reduce the number of impatient vandals and trolls. GizzaDiscuss © 22:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
  90. Support with comment I think this is definitely the best option but as stated before, this would need to be mainspace edits. ŠξÞÞøΛ talk 18:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
  91. Support with comment - It would seem that the 20 edits should be outside the User and User_talk namespaces. I don't think they have to all be in the Main space, but it shouldn't only be in the user's own space. If there was a way to count non-self User space edits, that would be fine, too. Until you see how a user reacts somewhere other than his/her own page, you don't really get to know the user. --Willscrlt (Talk) 22:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
  92. Support Seems pretty sensible. :-) Stwalkerster [ talk ] 23:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

14 days and 40 edits

  1. Per my comments in the discussion on the talk page. - jc37 18:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
    Note that I would support 7/20 as my second choice. - jc37 21:17, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. ditto -- Fullstop (talk) 03:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  3. First preference, with 7/20 as a second preference. Stifle (talk) 09:02, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  4. Or the one above or below. This abuse needs to stop. -- lucasbfr talk 18:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
  5. Support - I consider it important that users have to put in effort to Wikipedia before being trusted with risky functions. —TreasuryTag—t—c 18:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    Oppose - Risky functions? You are calling editing an article a risky function? Please, get real. Most of the millions of people who edit Wikipedia make only one edit. Often to make a spelling correction or other trivial edit. Hardly a "risky function". 199.125.109.105 (talk) 20:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    It's the page moving privilege that's being referred to as risky. Though I agree that editing isn't nearly as risky, and its increased requirement would just be an incidental result of preventing bad page moves. Hence my suggestion to separate the two, see below. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    I'm talking about editing semi-protected pages; as it is, a page semi-pd will only offer any degree of protection against a particular user for 96 hours, then we're in an awkward position. Raising the 96 to 336 (a scale factor of 3-and-a-half) would have a tremendously positive impact. Not many pages are semi-pd, of course. —TreasuryTag—t—c 07:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    No, just the ones that get the most exposure and that people want to edit the most. Making them wait 3.5 times longer PLUS making them edit elsewhere before they can do that is going to have a very negative impact on new users. Celarnor Talk to me 16:58, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  6. First preference, with 7/20 as a second choice. The shorter lengths are too short, and the longer lengths are arguably too long. Horologium (talk) 11:56, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

30 days and 90 edits

  1. SRSLY. I would support any increase from the current but this is the one I support the most. Linear order from current to here by amount of increase. :) ++Lar: t/c 00:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. I would like the requirement to be 90 unreverted edits in article space, so that people who come here to cause trouble or play are forced to help build the encyclopedia first. And for accounts that are not autoconfirmed to not be able to edit BLPs. Anons can edit the talk pages. This will also help prevent edit wars on BLPs between anons that are in fact the article subject and other editors. WAS 4.250 (talk) 13:02, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    The BLP idea sounds interesting. I added some thoughts on your talk page. - jc37 19:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    The BLP idea is basically the same as the perennial proposal to semi-protect all BLP articles. It's been rejected many times in the past. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    So have innumerable other proposals that now are enacted. : ) - jc37 03:21, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    This one was the subject of a rather extensive discussion and was rejected, very recently (April), see here. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Door #8: Separate confirmation levels for semi-protected edits and page moves

I honestly feel like I want to support a really high standard for autoconfirm, because the lack of the ability to move pages really doesn't fly in the face of free-editability, as no one with constructive intentions who's been here less than a month is going to know how to, or feel the need to, move any pages. However even someone here a few seconds may want to edit semi-protected articles. They're such different privileges with such different associated risks, that I think they really need to be split into two different confirmations -- a high requirement for moves and a low (or unchanged) requirement for semi-protected edits.

I know the consensus above is going towards 7 days/20 edits, but this proposal was a response to recent move vandalism, and I urge everyone to really consider the effect that would have on semi-protection. If move vandalism is what we seek to address, then let's just address that, without having to deal with the issue of semi-protected edits, which is only even related due to a technicality in the software. I accept that the requirement for semi-protected edits may also warrant an increase, but I wonder if everyone really feels it warrants the same increase as the requirement for page moves.Equazcion •✗/C • 12:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

This is a much, much, much better idea than creating a longer window during which new users can't edit pages. Like I said in the talk pages, these are really two separate issues, and only one of them has presented itself as something that needs to be fixed. It seems rather harsh to punish new editors by further increasing the amount of time where they can't edit semi-protected pages just to change how long before they can perform page moves. Celarnor Talk to me 14:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

This split is only justified if we are to adopt a high auto-confirmation threshold, and that does not seem to be consensus so far. How is seven days and twenty edits much? First of all, this is a measure against vandals; true, the usual vandalism on pages can be more easily reverted than moving around pages, but why not avoid this where we can? Semi-protection would be largely useless if an a vandal could create an account, leave it for four days, and then freely vandalise popular pages. Unless, of course, you should like to increase that limit as well: having, say, a threshold of four days and five edits for editing semi-protected pages and seven days and twenty edits for moving. At any event, they would be so close that it would be ridiculous. As for my other point, newcomers should not be able to edit semi-protected pages from their first seconds. These are usually much-viewed pages, and most newcomers' ignorance of Wikipedia's core values and editing practices would easily result in very public mistakes, and in the subsequent harsh comments. Not all editors—experienced or not—are good at avoiding newbie-biting; why let newbies go to the places where they would be most likely to receive it? As I have said again, a slightly higher auto-confirmation threshold than the current one (including editing pages with the silver padlock) would be beneficial for both the project and the newcomers. Waltham, The Duke of 15:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
That sounds good in theory, but semi-protected articles are generally the ones people want to edit the most. If potential new users see an article they want to edit and then find out they can't until they wait a week and perform 20 edits, it's reasonable to conclude that a good many of these people simply won't bother. Having to wait 4 days without requiring any edits on the other hand isn't enough to deter constructive people. This discussion started because of page move vandalism, which is a pain to revert, and often even requires admin intervention. It can't remotely compare with edits to semi-protected articles, which can be fixed with a click or two by almost anyone. It doesn't make sense that something so much more potentially damaging has the same requirement as something so benign by comparison. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I do not believe that we really want some of our most popular articles to be treated as sandboxes. They are not just amongst the greater targets for vandalism, but they are also some of our strongest test-edit magnets. I insist that newcomers should pass from a brief adjustment period before being given access to articles which have been protected from editing by anonymous accounts for a very good reason. Auto-confirmation is a transitory period between being unregistered and being fully registered, and should be dealt with as such. It would be completely useless if someone could by-pass it simply by registering and waiting a little.
Besides... The KISS principle has its merits. It will be much easier for newbies to accept a single intermediate period before receiving full editing privileges than having to pass through two (or more, if we are to pursue this trend further) such stages; it's too much to take in, especially for such a short time span. Explaining auto-confirmation in a place seen by all new users as they register will be enough to make them understand the concept that there will be some limitations. If they have the understanding that we want in Wikipedians, then there should be no problem. If not, then they are probably either going to leave early, or to cause problems (or both).
Why should we content ourselves with fixing one problem when we could do away with another at the same time? Sure, simple vandalism can be reverted more easily than moves. But why keep valuable resources tied up in vandal-fighting when they could be more constructively used elsewhere? We have to think forward. Waltham, The Duke of 03:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  1. Per above. There's no reason to keep the two inseparably linked like this if circumstances only call for changing one of them. Celarnor Talk to me 14:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    The circumstances do call for changing both of them, because the current system is almost completely useless. Waltham, The Duke of 15:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    How so? Changing the requisites for move rights would (possibly, although extremely unlikely, considering there are numerous avenues to farm edits with bots which would be trivial to write) eliminate the HAGGAR spam. Celarnor Talk to me 20:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    The circumstances may call for changing them both, but not each by the same amount. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  • This sounds like a totally separate proposal to me that should be dealt with separately. Kaldari (talk) 18:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    • I disagree. The other options are to either extend or keep unchanged the requirement for doing both. This option says each privilege should have unique requirements instead. It's yet another possible answer to the same question. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I do think a too high page move limitation will have a unwanted sideeffect when well meaning new editors will get into the habit of doing page moves with cut and paste. Agathoclea (talk) 20:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    • That's easier to deal with. That can simply be deleted. Reverting a page move, especially when performed multiple times (i.e, A > B > C) isn't anywhere near as simple. Celarnor Talk to me 20:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

This is a great proposal. In this new access level, we could add all those new permissions that have been popping up recently (ie. rollback, accountcreator, ip-block exempt et certa) and confine it into one usergroup. Also high risk pages can be accessed by good-faith contributers like Special:Unwatchedpages. Additionally, we could also limit all those high risk scripts (twinkle) to this access level. -- penubag  (talk) 01:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Since this requires more programming development than the main proposal on this page, and, as such, is outside the realm of this poll, I moved this thread to the talk page. Please obviously feel free to continue to discuss. Please also see the original parent thread. - jc37 02:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
(ec)There's no reason to keep the two inseparably linked like this if circumstances only call for changing one of them. Please note that the standard MediaWiki software puts registered editors into one of two categories: not autoconfirmed, and autoconfirmed. Door #8 requires the software be changed, to something like "autoconfirm 1" and "autoconfirm 2", with different criteria and with each conferring different user rights. The poll being considered is the best that can be done given the existing software. Unless the developers commit to rolling out a software feature for two (or more) types/levels of autoconfirm, it's pointless to have this discussion. And even if there were consensus for multiple autoconfirms (sure, why not, it makes things flexible), if it's going to take six months to get there, then that's six months during which the above proposal doesn't get implemented, even though the vast majority agree that something needs to be done, NOW.. (If you don't think it will take six months, consider that not only do developers have to code and test the change, but decisions need to be made - by consensus? - as to (a) whether these are two sequential or two alternative autoconfirm levels; (b) what the criteria for reaching each will be [note the difficulty of agreeing when there is just one autoconfirm], and (c) what rights each autoconfirm type will grant, once reached.) So let's improve the current situation, NOW, and then turn to discussing how to improve on that, rather than being diverted into a debate about "great proposals" that actually can't be implemented any time soon. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
The addition of an edit count requirement is also a change to the software. The addition of another confirmation level is yet another change to the software, granted, but they are both changes, and I think regardless of the added effort it may take, this is the smarter option.
With regard to the recent moving of this discussion off this page, I ask kindly that you please leave this section here. Whether or not it's a viable alternative to the other options on this page is not for any one (or two) people to decide. If you disagree with it, simply say so. Equazcion •✗/C • 02:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
The addition of an edit count requirement is also a change to the software. No, it is not. Changing the autoconfirmed threshold to require a combination of time and edits requires only an admin to act. This has already by implemented on other language Wikipedias; no new programming is required. By contrast, no Wikipedia has two different types of autoconfirm. That would require developer assistance, not to mention building community consensus (as discussed above). -- John Broughton (♫♫)
Building community consensus, I believe that's what this page is for. As for the effort the change would take, see Mr. Z-Man's comment below, it apparently would be a fairly simple thing to implement. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
To clarify: I think this option is important to consider because given that the alternative seems athis point to be changing the autoconfirm requirement to 7 days and 20 edits, my top concern is that this is a hasty response to the page move vandalism that's been occurring recently. People may feel the need to do what's necessary to put a stop to that, despite the incidental change to the semi-protection requirement, which they may see as unfortunate but nevertheless necessary to accomplish the page move restriction. I feel they shouldn't need to make that compromise -- there's no reason that both privileges should have the same requirement, and I think at this point it's detrimental that they don't. 7 days and 20 edits is a very significant change to semi-protected edits that I'm not sure everyone's fully thought through since this discussion has centered so much around page moves. Equazcion •✗/C • 02:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I think sleeper accounts used to edit semiprotected pages is nearly as much of a problem as pagemove vandalism. As for software issues, this would be fairly easy to do though - create a new autopromoted group, remove some rights from autoconfirm, add them to the new group. I would not necessarily be opposed to this, but I think with the issue of sleepers bypassing semiprotection (see the history of Evolution for a particularly bad example), WP:BITE problems associated with new users getting images deleted due to copyright reasons, and the potential (though I haven't seen it yet) of patrol abuse, that it would be better to just raise the requirements of all of them. I would be opposed to lumping all the new user groups together though. Mr.Z-man 03:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree that sleeper accounts might be a problem, and perhaps they occur at least as often as page move vandalism -- but they're definitely not equal in terms of how easily they are reverted. Move vandalism has so much more disruption potential because it takes multiple steps and admin tools to perform. Whereas semi-protected edits are reverted by anyone in one or two clicks. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes its easy to revert, but the point of semiprotection is to reduce the amount of reversion necessary to maintain articles. IMO it currently doesn't do that near as effectively as it could. Mr.Z-man 03:24, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree, however the need to prevent vandalism needs to be balanced with the need to keep the encyclopedia freely-editable. I'm not against increasing the requirement for semi-protected edits -- I just think a larger increase is warranted for moves, and there's no reason we must be locked in to changing both by the same amount. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
You seem to be supporting a split on principle, but we have not heard anything specific yet as far as the proposed limits are concerned. I suppose you have a high edit threshold for page-moving in mind, or else the difference between the thresholds for semi-protected-page-editing and page-moving would be ridiculously small, too much for any meaningful distinction between the two groups. The fact remains that a) a high threshold for moving could generate other problems, some mentioned and others not yet discussed; and b) a low threshold for editing semi-protected pages would retain and prolong the existing problems. A good balance needs to be reached, and I believe that the community has been quite successful at that so far, judging by the poll above. We can kill several birds with one stone here, and none of them needs to belong to the protected species (a.k.a. newbies). Further changes to the software can be discussed later, in time, and with information available from the application of the selected solution here. As I've said again somewhere in this increasingly long page, let's take things one step at a time, please. Waltham, The Duke of 04:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
For some reason I thought this was obvious, but personally I feel that if another confirmation level is created, I'm fine with the page move threshold being 7 days and 20 edits, or whatever people end up agreeing on here. I'm not trying to get the move requirement increased past that. My concern is that semi-protected edits really aren't what most people who voted here are concerned with tightening, at least not as much as page moves. I feel we should have the option to set unique limits for both, and I think forcing everyone to choose an across-the-board standard for two privileges that really have very different levels of risk involved is a very dangerous thing to do. Thinking of this as "a nice thought for the future" while we take the initiative to prevent move vandalism now by also vastly limiting semi-protected edits is, I think, a big mistake. Equazcion •✗/C • 04:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Philosophically, you might be right, considering the difference of revert times and levels of complexity. However, on a practical level, I have separately argued the need to raise the bar for edits on semi-protected pages as well. What is the benefit of letting brand-new editors edit pages which have been protected in order to fend off vandalism, test edits, and tendentious editing? People who come here and do not have the patience and understanding to look around and learn the basics of editing and policy, and would instead insist on editing straight away a very small number of very specific semi-protected pages, are most likely vandals or POV-pushers, and it would be a bloody good thing if they could not edit these pages, at least in the beginning and until the "cool off", as they say. Auto-confirmation should be a vestibule for all editors, and it should not be applied fragmentarily. People should know that we have behaviour standards in the community and editing standards in the encyclopaedia to uphold; it is not the undeniable right of everyone to come here and wreak havoc. Applying auto-confirmation universally is saying to people that if they want to enter they have to do it our way. It sends off a message that we want people to get. Semi-protecting pages, on the other hand, and letting people to register, wait four days, and then vandalise them at will or do whatever else they want to do in there, is like giving the world a reason not to take us seriously. And it's not changing the fact that we're flooded with sockpuppets and that thousands of man-hours are lost daily in vandal-fighting (and I mean the revert-with-a-click-of-a-button type). Waltham, The Duke of 07:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I understand that you want to prevent vandalism on our most sacred of pages, and I again agree that the requirement for semi-protected edits may need to be raised, but again that needs to be balanced with free editability. A lot of very popular articles are semi-protected pretty much on a permanent basis (Family Guy is one that comes to mind specifically) and people might join just so they can edit an article like that. Telling them they have to achieve our trust first before they can do that is leaning away from being welcoming and towards the elitism that we strive to avoid here. And autoconfirm was never meant to infer trust, by the way, just slow people down. They need to be slowed down more now, it seems, but let's be careful not to take the opportunity to create a class system. This is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, "you can edit this page right now", and so forth, and yeah sometimes that's a pain, but that's the way it is. People call us foolish, to be so trusting of people we never met, but that is nevertheless a fundamental principle of this place. Everyone is trusted until proven otherwise. We all knew that a long time ago. So in conclusion: semi-protected edits are a sticky situation because increasing its requirement means toying with free-editability, while page-moves are not quite as much of a concern there and also are more potentially disruptive. It therefore seems clear to me that one should be much harder to do than the other. Equazcion •✗/C • 08:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • It looks like, based on the WP:Flagged Revisions, that there may be two new user rights: Surveyor and Reviewer. These are not administrative, rather article quality assessment functions. My point is that these rights would not be automatic, as is currently set for autoconfirmed, but more like rollbacker, granted after some vetting, but not a RfA type process (or a maybe a very minimal version of it). But Surveyor could (or some other unambiguous term), in effect, be a new level of trusted editor/established editor that the community knows is not a vandal, and is very familiar with editing requirements, policy, guidelines, tools, etc. In other words, one that the community knows can be trusted to assume some more responsibility, but at a lower level than admin. And that level could include page move, since it's a function that new editors don't need, and shouldn't be doing, until they are VERY familiar with WP processes. Yeah, I know, it's more bureaucracy, but we need more now that WP is gotten so immense. There needs to be a level, or several levels, between autoconfirmed and admin from a trust point of view. Autoconfirmed is not a trust level, it just means the user registered and waited four days. ie - a possible sleeper account. And the bar to admin rights is way to high for this kind of stuff. This will also split out the issue of increasing the autoconfirmed bar from that of page moving, since they really are different issues. IMO. — Becksguy (talk) 03:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

support for two separate confirmation levels

There are a lot of different things being discussed above, so to get this "poll" back on track, here's a designated section to voice your support of having two separate confirmation levels: one for page moves and one for semi-protected edits.

  1. I support my own idea based on my rationale above :) Equazcion •✗/C • 04:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    How original... :-D Waltham, The Duke of 04:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  2. Strong support-- penubag  (talk) 04:08, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  3. Support based on my previous reasoning. Celarnor Talk to me 04:09, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  4. Support, I oppose increasing the level for editing semi portect articles but support raising it for page moves. Davewild (talk) 06:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  5. Support but is this technically feasible? GameKeeper (talk) 07:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    According to Mr. Z-Man in one of his comments above, it does seem to be feasible. Equazcion •✗/C • 07:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  6. Support two levels and raising both, but with move much higher. — Becksguy (talk) 08:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  7. Oppose strongly - creating un-necessary complexity; I reckon that editing semi-pd pages and moving pages are both high-level functions that deserve equal, and high-level, guarding. —TreasuryTag—t—c 18:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    I mostly agree, but I don't think people are supposed to oppose here... Waltham, The Duke of 20:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  8. Oppose - new users often create articles with incorrect titles, they should be able to clean after themselves. What I would support is Move Protection of all established articles (defining established as , say more than 1 year old with more than 100 edits). Moving of such articles require WP:RM anyway out of respect to the authors. The protection from the pagemove vandalism is an additional benefit Alex Bakharev (talk) 10:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  9. Support. Zginder 2008-05-15T19:40Z (UTC)
  10. oppose for now Alex makes a good suggestion above. Furthermore, since we seem to be almost certainly switching to 7/20 at this point it would be good to see how that goes before we do this. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  11. Oppose for now - There isn't even agreement on whether the second group (for page moves) would be a variant of autoconfirm ("autopromote") or would be given only to more trusted editors ("Surveyors", for example), as part of a set of rights. It's far, far better to modify autoconfirm requirements (as seems to be the consensus, above), and then in a month or two, make a specific proposal about editing semi-protected pages or whatever other rights are to be split off, with a set of alternatives ("keep as is", an autoconfirm variant, bundled in with another type of right; for autoconfirmed variants, there are in turn multiple options). But this discussion, now, just adds much too much complexity to the proposal/poll above; it's not going to irretrievably harm the project if some new editors are temporarily discouraged because barriers are temporarily - for a couple of months - set too high. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:56, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  12. Support per the reasoning above, assuming it is technically possible. There's no necessary reason why the two should be linked, and it seems to me that the ability to move pages is a considerably greater privilige than the ability to edit semi-protected ones - the latter should be much easier to obtain. Terraxos (talk) 01:44, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  13. Oppose for no reason other than the added complexity, a lot of access levels already so let's not add more. GDonato (talk) 09:55, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  14. Strong oppose: As said above, I don't see the need to make it complex. - Rjd0060 (talk) 18:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.