Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Hey, The main page of the wiki looks like it's been vandalized, I was going to fix it but for some reason it logs me out when I try to go back to the main page (probably my stupid computer, but who knows). Could someone adress this?

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Yeah, I fixed it.

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<link rel="signature" type="text/hilarious" href="/signature.txt" />

well theres more vandleism now and its stateing something possibly offensive to someone

You sure? I'm not seeing any...

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<link rel="signature" type="text/hilarious" href="/signature.txt" />

its gone now

Hey Philip, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that editing the main page was disabled to all non-mods of the Wiki.

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Templates. You can't edit the main page directly, but you can edit the templates that appear on the main page (Or at least, that's how it used to be. May have changed, I rarely spend time at the wiki nowadays)

Yeah, the vandal edited the "What's New" and Featured Article templates, which are included on the Main Page.

Protecting the Main Page itself saves against the majority of automated spam attacks, leaving just those few disgruntled people attacking us in particular who find the templates...

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<link rel="signature" type="text/hilarious" href="/signature.txt" />

i can't see it either, or in history.
when was it?

That's because he didn't vandalize the main page, he vandalized a template on the main page, as said before.

Yeah, what JuJu said, look in http://hrwiki.org/index.php/Template:wh ... on=history

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ohhhhh...
i see it now.

I have a question, though. Why are the templates available for the non-mod or (maybe) unregistered users to edit? I'm pretty sure that an experienced vandal could realize where the templates are and ruin them. Basically, doesn't having the templates open to editing from users without authority defeat the purpose of blocking the main page? I understand that users should be free to add updates and such when they find them, but maybe there should be a special page for those well-minded users to alert mods of those changes.

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It's a question of balance - if the main page is unprotected, then there are a lot of vandalbots that simply search for wikis and spam them (not targeted at us in particular) which will clobber the main page with spammed links. The main page itself doesn't need to be changed particularly often, so protecting it doesn't harm much, and massively cuts down on vandalism.

However, templates like Template:whatsnew do need to be updated often. And very few automated vandals will try to vandalise templates used on the main page. Certainly, individuals can easily damage the main page, but as it's of a much smaller scale than automated spambots, there's less reason to protect it and more reason not to... so they're left open.

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<link rel="signature" type="text/hilarious" href="/signature.txt" />

It's a wiki. 1) It's not possible to "ruin" something on a wiki. It takes less time to revert vandalism than it does to perpetrate it. 2) Your suggestion defeats the purpose of having a wiki in the first place.

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OK, I suppose you're right. Come to think of it, I think I just told all the vandals to put metaphorical beans up their metaphorical noses. I'm kinda inexperienced with wikis, so thanks for not calling me too much of an idiot.

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Metaphorical bean up someones metaphorical nose? Sounds Fanmetaphortastic. And IJ has a point. Correcting it would take less time than screwing it up would. It just wouldn't be worth the effort.

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