Reinstating the Password

Summary:

what it sez on the tin

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Reinstating the Password

RJB_R 05 Mar 2017 15:33

Returning from the application to the password would be a good move, I think. Currently, processing apps takes an inordinate amount of time compared to its importance to the site. If we get another spate of trolling wherein they make a ton of accounts and roll them out one by one to make the wiki into a temporary shooting gallery, we can just temporarily put the app back in until things settle down. Probably a month or less would be sufficient, depending on the nature of the trolling of course.

Admins, Mods, Operational and Junior staff are welcome to comment and give input in this thread, but Admins please make sure to be specific and clear on whether or not you support this as your votes are the ones that will count.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: Reinstating the Password

Silberescher 05 Mar 2017 15:38

I support returning the password system. The current application structure is nothing but the password system except admins have to come by and manually approve each instance of the password. 99% of the time it's a bottleneck that serves no purpose except to add wait time to new users joining the site.

EDIT: After reading the points that others here have made and thinking on them, I withdraw my previous vote and lean against instead. It was a bottleneck when we only had a few active admins handling every responsibility admins have, but now that the numbers have increased, we should have enough hands on deck to keep apps flowing smoothly.

That means that the inconvenience to users should be minor enough to be worth preventing the sitewide issues that affect all users and kick up whenever sockpuppet waves come in.

Last edited on 07 Mar 2017 06:25 by Silberescher Show more

Re: Reinstating the Password

AdminBright 05 Mar 2017 15:42

Sure, I've got no issues.

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Admin, SCP Wiki

Re: Reinstating the Password

SoullessSingularity 05 Mar 2017 16:02

I accept this with extreme hesitancy, in that I would also want the password to change fairly regularly, be placed in different areas, etc. on the order of once a week or less. It is extremely easy to abuse, and upon abuse we will need to change the "join our site" document to reflect clearly to any incoming applicants that "if we currently have a text box, please type the password in and we'll approve you in time".

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Living the dream, or dreaming the life?

Re: Reinstating the Password

RJB_R 05 Mar 2017 16:08

I definitely agree with frequent changing of the password. If it could be automated, perhaps we could create a pool of passwords and have jarvis auto-edit the join page like the tale pages and such.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: Reinstating the Password

SoullessSingularity 05 Mar 2017 16:13

I am also extremely caution about over-reliance on jarvis for anything. No offense to anqxyr, but he is our sole point of failure for which we do not have redundancies if life takes him from our cold, constantly-demanding grasps. If we lose him, we will lose much more than him. And I want to minimize that loss, unless we have someone else around with equal to anqxyr's chops who is unlikely to leave at the same time he is leaving.

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Living the dream, or dreaming the life?

Re: Reinstating the Password

RJB_R 05 Mar 2017 16:14

That's a good point. Manually then, we shouldn't expect to be able to do it every day, but weekly would be doable, should we choose to go down this route. There could still be stuff like a password pool and such to facilitate that regularly scheduled updating.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: Reinstating the Password

anqxyr 05 Mar 2017 16:35

This came up before, and I'm going to repeat what I said the last time. Having jarvis edit the join page is trivial and not an issue. Having jarvis edit the password in the admin panel so that the thing jarv just eddited into the join page would validate as correct, that would require jarvis to have admin access to the site. I'm extremely against that, for reasons of security and healthy paranoia. As such, the whole thing cannot be automated.

Re: Reinstating the Password

DrEverettMann 05 Mar 2017 16:14

I mean, we can try this again, but everytime we do, we end up having to go back after some troll or other goes on a spree and keeps re-joining.

Re: Reinstating the Password

Doctor Cimmerian 05 Mar 2017 17:00

This may work out better with more admins available to change it back temporarily during events where trolls try to game the system. If we can't make this work now then it's never going to work.

Last edited on 05 Mar 2017 17:00 by Doctor Cimmerian Show more

Re: Reinstating the Password

Dr Solo 05 Mar 2017 17:13

Agreed. Worth giving it a shot with the deluge of new adminfolk, and if it doesn't work out then it's probably not ever going to.

Re: Reinstating the Password

(account deleted) 05 Mar 2017 18:12

Thirding this. Make it a redemption run.

Re: Reinstating the Password

WrongJohnSilver 05 Mar 2017 18:27

Feel free to reinstate the password now.

I was thinking, would it be possible to stick a timer on new apps? "Congrats, you're a member of the site, you're free to read now, and you can post freely in 24 hours!"

That would keep the ease of automation while preventing the troll account deluge.

Re: Reinstating the Password

ProcyonLotor 05 Mar 2017 20:51

Eh, no matter how much time apps took, they couldn't have taken anywhere near the amount of time that was spent cleaning up after the increased flood of users, and the disproportionately larger amount of user problems with no noticeable increase in worthwhile content being submitted to the site.

Voting against.

Re: Reinstating the Password

Decibelles 05 Mar 2017 21:12

I was for this before, still for this now, on the condition that the passcode is changed every week.

Re: Reinstating the Password

Quikngruvn 05 Mar 2017 21:28

I have no strong objections to going back to insta-join. As a reading comprehension test, roughly 10% of apps fail (that is, they do not include the (or any) password) under the current process.

Gonna point out another facet of manual apps: screening out inappropriate usernames. They're a much less common reason for being declined, less than 1% of all apps, but I guess that rate could conceivably rise if the process were automated. Either way, inappropriate usernames would only be actionable after the users have joined the site. I reckon our options are regularly scanning the New Members list, or waiting till someone with an inappropriate username posts or comments, and then either way the user gets a PM or revoked or—

Hm. I guess we'd still have "revocation"; it would just be mechanically the same as a ban of however many days (which would have to be manually removed when the ban period is up).

I was thinking, would it be possible to stick a timer on new apps?

If there's a way to do it in the site administration widget thing, I didn't see it.

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