Forum:A Query on Vandals

Forums: Index > Village Dump > A Query on Vandals

Note: This topic has been unedited for 4254 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over.

I'm sure this subject has been broached before at some point, but unlike the vandals who are keen on digging into forum articles coated with three inches of dust, I am a mite bit lazy and would rather create an entirely new article than waste too many calories clicking the mouse and moving my eyes to read through pages of words (the logic here is starting to evade me as typing this is surely using more energy, luckily I can play the in-denial card here which almost always trumps the truth card (as a game designer, I am suddenly wanting to make a card game now (by the way, I seriously hate it when people use parentheses within parentheses))).

Onto the point; why can't forum topics be automatically semi-protected after a certain amount of time so nitwits can't fish them back to the surface three years later? I'm sure there is a good reason, or they would be already, so I just want to know what that reason is.
◄► Tephra ◄► 01:43, April 27, 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that the directory is sorted by time of last edit, and that includes the attack of the last two days. I have mail into Wikia on whether these edits and reverts could be expunged from the history. A month ago I experimented and found no easy way either to totally preclude edits or to auto-block users who attempt them. See also my talk page, Sec. 37. By the way, I am on record as wishing that UnNews articles also expired after a couple weeks and became blocked from editing. Spıke Ѧ 02:02 27-Apr-13

I have tried protecting forum topics before, but protecting the forums bumps them up to the top of the list. If it is an old forum that a vandal bumped to the top of the list then I will protect it, otherwise, I cannot go back to old forums and protect them without bumping them, unfortunately. -- Simsilikesims(♀GUN) Talk here. 02:15, April 27, 2013 (UTC)

Could we have a special archive forum where topics older than, say a month, could be automatically moved and semi-protected? Then, while they might be new to the archive forum, nobody would care, and if they got bumped within the archive forum, well, nobody would care.
◄► Tephra ◄► 03:43, April 27, 2013 (UTC)

I refreshed my knowledge of the process this morning. When a Forum closes, it is not because anything changes on the page; Uncyclopedia, based on a time computation, displays a box at the top of the page and makes the Edit button go away. It is unknown at the time of the edit that the above will occur when Uncyclopedia goes on to render the Forum page on anyone's browser. I could install a grue to look for a magic string of text deposited on the page to declare it locked and, on that basis, either inhibit edits, ban users who tried to edit it, or ban Anons who tried to edit it. But the grue cannot know how by itself how long the page has gone without editing. Someone would have to make an edit to slam each Forum shut.

Ideally, someone with a record of impartiality should maintain a Village Dump Front Page as we do up the UnNews Front Page, even organizing Forum threads by subject matter for convenience. But it doesn't seem to be the best use of our current resources. Spıke Ѧ 21:32 27-Apr-13

I've just bumped an old forum so now it appears at the top of the list, to be fair having to scroll a little because some asshat has bumped something from a few years up the list isn't really that major a chore. The vandal is banned, and people are still here commenting on other more important matters. The only person wasting time is the idiot vandal. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

I respectfully disagree. The result of this vandalism is a continuing problem. This site was recently described on a Wikipedia talk page as "abandoned," and some of our users are motivated not by the love of writing pretty pages but by social interaction, which is terminated when the Forum of interest to them disappears--even when you and I know to look for it on Page 3 or 4 of the index. The nav-bar doesn't make it clear to everyone that there even is more than one page of threads. Spıke Ѧ 14:53 29-Apr-13

I didn't say that the continuing vandalism wasn't a problem, but following some arsewipe's trip around the archives, subsequent banning and reversal of anything they've done, we seem to bump the actual important topics back to the top anyway. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)