Sheldon's suggestions:
(1) Flexibility on the part of the administrator
(Jimbo). If there
are no vandals currently active, the current laissez-faire system
works fine. When there's a pest afoot, however, Jimbo should be able
to temporarily turn on additional security features, such as giving
sysops added powers.
Any solution that depends on Jimbo being present is IMHO flawed. Jimbo is
usually logged off on the weekends, for example.
(2) The ability to temporarily restrict contributions
from
non-registered users.
We already have that - IP blocking. We never had a vandal that could
switch IPs faster than we could block them. What would be nice is wildcard
support at least for the fourth octet.
(3) The ability to create some kind of registration
barrier that will
make it harder for vandals to get back in the door immediately by
simply registering under a new name.
See my suggestion on wikitech to allow sysops to ban signed in users who
have made no contributions older than n days. We should also have account
creation per IP throttling.
A real ermegency measure would be to only allow users listed on "Most
active Wikipedians" to make edits when emergency mode has been switched
on.
We could allow any sysop to turn on this emergency mode. If it is turned
on, a message would be prominently displayed on every page. If a sysop
abuses this privilege, he is promptly banned.
(4) The ability to push a button that will instantly
send one million
megavolts coursing through the body of Ed Poor. (Just joking.)
No teasing, please ..
Regards,
Erik