User:Cenarium/Template PC RFC

This RFC aims to determine consensus on the use of pending changes in template and module namespaces. This RFC suggests the use of two levels of pending changes protection: the usual pending changes protection (PC1) that restricts non-autoconfirmed users, and a higher pending changes level (PC3) that restricts non-template editors. Consensus is assessed independently for those two levels, both can be used, or only one of them.

PC1 is suggested for use on medium risk simple templates, while PC3 is suggested for use on medium-to-high risk simple or complex templates or modules, excluding high risk templates or modules.

Statement of the issue

Template vandalism is a long-standing and persistent problem on Wikipedia, made more serious and harder to fix when involving CSS or images.

Diffs (admin-only)
Special:Diff/695555481 Special:Diff/728096185 Special:Diff/742681118 Special:Diff/744182977

Recent reports
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive936#Hillary_Clinton Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive936#Weird_YouTube_redirect.2C_source_cannot_be_found_in_page Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive936#Something_very_strange_at_Donald_Trump Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#.22Nasty_woman.22_article_in_The_Federalist_-_another_template_hack.3F

News articles
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/13/politics/hillary-clinton-wikipedia-hacked/ http://theslot.jezebel.com/hillary-and-bill-clintons-wikipedia-pages-subject-to-ex-1787755920

Past attempts to address the issue

Several attempts have been made to address this issue:

• Edit filters (e.g. 139 (hist · log), 453 (hist · log), 598 (hist · log), 600 (hist · log), 422 (hist · log))
• Liberal use of template protection (e.g. all templates transcluded in Hilary Clinton are protected)

All have failed to address the issue adequately:

• Edit filters fail to catch these edits due to reaching the condition limit, a software-enforced performance limitation. There's nothing we can do about it, except disabling filters essential for other purposes.
• A widespread use of template protection goes against our open editing principles. And despite a relaxation of the definition of high risk template in practice, this fails to deter vandals.

In addition, with regard to images specifically, while we have MediaWiki:Bad image list at our disposal to prevent "shock" images from being displayed on irrelevant pages, such "shock" images are added on Commons at such a rhythm that we can't preemptively list them.

Implementation notes

Currently, there is a major technical limitation, see phab:T61102. Pending changes are always transcluded on pages that are not themselves under pending changes protection, which makes pending changes protection on templates almost of no use in our case. We therefore need this bug fixed before implementation.

If either autoconfirmed-level or extendedconfirmed-level pending changes protection gain consensus, a site request for enabling pending changes on templates would be filed, subject to the condition that it should not be enacted before the bug gets fixed.

Autoconfirmed-level pending changes protection (PC1)

Should we allow use of this pending changes protection level in template namespace, subject to the following criteria?

Criteria for use

• Any of the following is satisfied:
  1. it meets the regular criteria or
  2. it is transcluded in a large number of pages or
  3. it is frequently substituted or
  4. it is transcluded in pages that are known or highly suspected targets of template vandalism,
• and none of the following is satisfied:
  1. it is a high risk template, and therefore meets the criteria for template protection or full protection
  2. it is a complex template, where breaking changes or visual appearance changes are difficult to identify for the non-initiated.

Criteria for review

• Same as general criteria, except that edits must not be accepted when they are breaking changes or significantly affect the template's visual appearance, and no consensus exists for the edits.
• In addition, a notice will be displayed to reviewers when reviewing templates, reminding them of those criteria.

Templateeditor-level pending changes protection (PC3)

Technical note: at this level, only template editors have their edits automatically reviewed, and only template editors can review edits.

Should we allow use of this pending changes protection level in template and module namespaces, subject to the following criteria?

Criteria for use

• Any of the following is satisfied:
  1. it meets the regular criteria or
  2. it is transcluded in a large number of pages or
  3. it is frequently substituted or
  4. it is transcluded in pages that are known or highly suspected targets of template vandalism,
• and none of the following is satisfied:
  1. it is high risk, and therefore meets the criteria for template protection or full protection.
• In addition, if PC1 is used as well, PC1 must be demonstrably inadequate as a protection measure (for example due to the template being too complex, or vandalism by autoconfirmed users).

Criteria for review

• Same as general criteria, except that edits must not be accepted when they are breaking changes or significantly affect the template's visual appearance, and no consensus exists for the edits.
• In addition, a notice will be displayed to reviewers when reviewing templates, reminding them of those criteria.