Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal

For August 31, 2007 no consensus conclusion, see this


Principles

  1. Within foundation issues, the community must respect the fact that anons and newbies must be able to edit articles
  2. Within the protection policy, the community must respect that admins can block editing of these users for a time in cases of vandalism, libel, link-spamming, and edit wars

Proposal (initiated June 17, 2007)

According to a post to the en-wp mailing list back in January 2007, It is now possible for wikis to require a certain number of edits, as well as a certain registration time period, for users to become auto-confirmed. While there was some discussion on the list, it was limited and dissolved into jokes about top posting vs bottom posting and nothing ever came out of it. There are certain situations that could benefit because of this new level of auto=confirmed (Brock Lesnar being the prime example). In some cases, a serial vandal will vandalize and the page gets semi-protected. The vandal registers several accounts (sleeper accounts), waits 4 days, and attacks the page (in some cases with 1-6 or more at a time as with Quebec).

It is therefore proposed that an edit count be added so that users must have a minimum amount of twenty edits and the traditional 4 days before becoming auto-confirmed (and being able to edit semi-protected pages, make moves, etc). This should strike a reasonable balance to prevent obvious vandals while not discouraging novice users.