Problems with the Wiki

[GommeInc]

I use the Wiki quite a lot actually. It's useful to lookup the origins of furniture and how they came about. I'd quite happily write content if I knew anything more about the furniture.
@GommeInc; are you able to rollback all changes from a user's IP? I can imagine it's very simple in code terms (unless the content links to multiple tables). Issues like these would be resolved easily if Wiki's had that feature.

You can rollback the changes a person has made on a single page by going to Special:RecentChanges and hitting rollback next to each edit and it will do it instantly. It's best to use the middle-mouse button rather than to left click, as it will only tell you the edits have been reverted. It's a simple tool you can give to standard editors once they've made enough edits or contributed significantly to the wiki. It's mostly used as a reward for continued good behaviour and as an incentive to contribute.

I think admins can completely revert a user's edits. It's not uncommon to have loads of admins on a wiki as the admin level user rights cannot do that much harm to a wiki, especially if you have a few active bureaucrats available who obviously will need to either be the creator of the wiki and a few very trusted individuals.

[xxMATTGxx]

Hire more people, it's what every other Wiki does. Users can self-moderate a Wiki with ease if you promote the right people - it's what the system was designed for. The image could have been removed (if there were enough admins) and/or edits reverted with a single push of a button, yet judging by the comments no such system was being properly utilised and as per usual took a bit too long to deal with. The only thing we have to be thankful for is that the Wiki seems to only be used by a very limited number of people.

The lockdown is incredibly pointless too. With the right way of using a Wiki any further edits could be resolved by "rollbackers", admins etc dealing with it. All you need to do is link the IP with a user on the forum and that's it, you don't need to lockdown a site which would do more harm than good - it stops the majority of good editors from doing what they enjoy.

EDIT: Why on earth are you not using the rollback system? There are no rollbackers in the Wiki and they're considered one of the simplest forms of promotion that can be seen as an incentive and reward for hard work editing a Wiki

http://habboxwiki.com/Special:ListUsers

We was all doing manual reverts on the stuff we could see that was created or changed. At time I was trying to find a way to do ALL the changes from that specific user reverted like I would have thought was possible but my knowledge on the Wiki is low compared to what I know about vBulletin and on other software. I was going to ask someone who knew a lot more about it (Chippiewill) but turned out he’s been away recently so I was unable to get his assistance on the matter. A lot of the changes were reverted back manually and we also did a database roll back due to another error we came across which then did all the reverts anyway as they didn’t damage it at 3am that morning.

The IPs of the attacking users were cross-referenced to the forum as that is what we always do – No matches. The IP’s were banned. Now changing your IP isn't rocket science and anyone can easily do that – Hence why a lockdown was put in place until we got everything sorted. We then allowed specific user groups on the wiki to be able to edit the content, create pages and so on. This all just a temp. measure until I can speak to Will who has already said he is looking into making changes. Then I will also speak to him about how to do specific tasks so we know how to deal with this more effectively in the future.

Don’t even know why we are all still debating about this – We already know the concerns and already raised a number of questions to stop it from repeating. Might be a surprise to some people but I’m not a full on idiot.

[scottish]

didn't you say the guys done it loads before, so surely you'd have better measures/more knowledgeable people in place to deal with it?

[xxMATTGxx]

didn't you say the guys done it loads before, so surely you'd have better measures/more knowledgeable people in place to deal with it?

I didn't say that personally.

[lawrawrrr]

Matts pretty much taken the words out of my mouth there, great reply.

As for the "hire more people" comment... we're trying! Apps have been open for over a year - at least - and there are simply very few people who are knowledgable on it. That's why we rely on certain individuals, who, understandably, aren't always available.

But we fixed it almost straight away - I removed the image and manually rolled back a LOT of edits, using the middle button thing someone just mentioned. It's only after then we started looking into alternatives as a safeguard for the future.

I'd be happy to give certain trusted users editor privileges in the mean time, but you'll have to go through Chris and Matt because I'm not near a computer for a few days.


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[GommeInc]

Matts pretty much taken the words out of my mouth there, great reply.

As for the "hire more people" comment... we're trying! Apps have been open for over a year - at least - and there are simply very few people who are knowledgable on it. That's why we rely on certain individuals, who, understandably, aren't always available.

But we fixed it almost straight away - I removed the image and manually rolled back a LOT of edits, using the middle button thing someone just mentioned. It's only after then we started looking into alternatives as a safeguard for the future.

I'd be happy to give certain trusted users editor privileges in the mean time, but you'll have to go through Chris and Matt because I'm not near a computer for a few days.


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You don't have people "apply" to work on a wiki... This is my point that you don't seem to know how to use one! They're meant to be open, it's the whole point of the Wiki platform. Anyone should be able to edit the Wiki, not people who "applied" for it. You simply promote them to have rollback privileges and go from there! But for some reason you've disabled it and have some weird application system which never works. A promotion system is far more effective.

User edits a lot > You either have a promotion page OR offer them a promotion to "rollbacker" > they continue doing good work > promote them to admin / they apply through an open promotion page > they become admin

And so forth. You're meant to treat the promotion process like a job application.

[lawrawrrr]

You don't have people "apply" to work on a wiki... This is my point that you don't seem to know how to use one! They're meant to be open, it's the whole point of the Wiki platform. Anyone should be able to edit the Wiki, not people who "applied" for it. You simply promote them to have rollback privileges and go from there! But for some reason you've disabled it and have some weird application system which never works. A promotion system is far more effective.

User edits a lot > You either have a promotion page OR offer them a promotion to "rollbacker" > they continue doing good work > promote them to admin / they apply through an open promotion page > they become admin

And so forth. You're meant to treat the promotion process like a job application.

People who do a lot of edits do get offered positions - all content staff have privileges to roll back, as well as other permissions that normal "editors" won't have.


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[GommeInc]

People who do a lot of edits do get offered positions - all content staff have privileges to roll back, as well as other permissions that normal "editors" won't have.


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You don't give people who edit wikis "positions" as such. You just give normal users rollback abilities and go from there. Is the Wiki not being treated independently from Habbox? Because that might be the problem and would explain why it seems to be a Habbox Wiki rather than a general Habbo Wiki, hence barely any interest outside the Habbox ecosystem.

[nvrspk4]

Gomme seems like they already implemented something similar to your suggestion from the getgo - from earlier in the thread seems like all AGMs didn't have access to reverse changes and as a result of this they and some managers got the privileges. Though I guess not specifically for the rollback feature.

But I think Gomme's initial point is a good one -trying to build a user-centric base instead of needing to hire a formal staff to maintain it. If you give 100 users (example) who are known forum members (and thus have a clear disincentive to not screw around - a forum ban for deliberate vandalism), you have pretty wide-ranging protection as any one of them can hop on and revert issues. Nobody's going to risk a ban on the forum just to put silly content up on the Wiki.

Furthermore, I dunno if this is possible but as a method for further protecting the Wiki - require that to be validated by an admin for editing privileges users have a forum account for at least 3 months or 250 posts (I obviously threw those numbers out there randomly, it's really just a non-zero commitment that proves some investment.)

If you think that a substantial contribution comes from non-forum members or new members, make edits available to the public but require that all edits by individuals below the threshold be approved by an admin. After x number of valid edits, users could be upgraded into the edit-capable group even if they don't have the requisite forum credentials.

Anyway I think he has a point that you could use normal users to have a large enough crowd that vandalism isn't worth the effort. Even if it's hard to get users amped up about the Wiki, if you can make it a status game (which people love, see post count and rep reductions) it could have an effect. Especially if there were Wiki admin/rollbacker awards But even if the community doesn't latch onto the Wiki, if you give Gomme (just an example of a well-known member, he may not appreciate my volunteering him ) and 20 other well known Habbox members rollback capability, even though he may not edit the wiki ever, when something like this happens a member can ping him and I'm sure he'll have the decency to remove the animal-in-blender image via rollback. Of course this is all predicated on Gomme's argument that the various levels of privileges have little to no ability to cause lasting damage even if one of them goes "rogue" which seems pretty plausible given the extensive versioning that comes with Wikis. Just a different way of looking at the problem

I figure its worth putting in here since the old conversation seems to be much concluded...but can start a new thread on it if you want

[Zak]

If someone had access to the database everything could be picked out using MySQL queries