Forum:Well, I see we hit an important milestone...

Forums: Index &rarr; Wiki Talk


 * Think we should ask the Orain guys to remove anonymous editing? Personally, I'd like to allow anonymous editors. Any damage the malicious ones do can be reverted, and the ones editing in good faith shouldn't be punished if you ask me. Besides, I have had some anons show up on Wikia, and if their edits are good, I don't mind their presence at all. GethN7 (talk) 02:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm expecting the toadies and sycophants from TVT to make their way here with deliberate intent to vandalize once they learn we exist. Should we make it easy for them?  -- Looney Toons (talk) 03:04, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That is a good point. I'll discuss it with Vorticity. GethN7 (talk) 03:07, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Apologies in advance for the bump/necro (unless this doesn't count as a necro), but I was wondering: I know that there are also people out there who have a hatred of TVT and the concept of troping sites in general, and I'm sure that some would love nothing more than to vandalize random pages to make a point. I've seen vandalizing edits to that extent over on TVT's Wikipedia page (at one point one vandal had the article redirect to Wikipedia's article on "Pedophilia", though that was quickly reverted).  If the disabling of anonymous editing doesn't dissuade them then it'd be a good idea to ban such accounts.  If anyone else has any other suggestions, then please post them.  I'm willinng to listen, as always.  Thank you. -- Tennessean (talk) 20:15, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The update is that we're planning on disabling anonymous editing as soon as our server admins get back to town. That addresses the top concern that people had.  It might slow the community growth a little, but at least with everyone being named we'll have a good way to talk to each other and build a community.  Vandalism is a ban-worthy offense, of course, since it violates ToS #1.  But in most cases, I'll try to reply with a "oh hai, I see what you did there and reverted it" message -- if they persist and have no redeeming value, it's time for a ban.  Vorticity (talk) 20:41, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that answer. Another concern of mine, however, is hacking.  I remember that TVT got hacked and DDoSed a few times, but that site's security wasn't all that good to begin with.  My hope is that ATT is much more secure, and that even if the security does get defeated somehow we can still recover relatively quickly.  At least, I would hope so, anyway. -- Tennessean (talk) 01:17, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
 * We're much better off on that score. MediaWiki has far few site security holes than PmWiki and the Orain staff can lock the database/server to shunt off any potential DDoS. GethN7 (talk) 01:21, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The good news: Mediawiki is actively developed by a wide range of people, rather than one or two like TV Tropes. I'm a software dev, and most of what I've doing at $work has to do with website security, so I'm aware of the issues at the very least.  We're at least partially protected DoS attacks because our servers are cached with cloudfront (which annoys me as I try to add new features, but it's totally worth it).  The bad news: Mediawiki still uses MD5 to hash salted passwords, which is at the range of "barely adequate" for today's GPUs.  So I'd recommend that you don't reuse your password here (which you shouldn't do anyway :/ ).  I'm eagerly awaiting the time when the server staff at Orain get Extension:SecurePasswords running with bcrypt. Vorticity (talk) 06:28, 6 January 2014 (UTC)