Currently renames that move a page across namespaces are treated exactly the same as regular renames, being allowed in the general case by the move user right. It would be more flexible if these were instead given a move-crossnamespace user right (or similarly named), allowing wikis to decide more easily whether and by whom they will allow these types of pagemoves to be performed. In particular, while I note that T12351 was closed as declined, I will counter the closing comment with the fact that cross-namespace moves are an extreme rarity for many wikis, and they may therefore wish to prevent regular users from performing these moves to limit their use in vandalism, or otherwise limit the moves in one way or another. In addition, I would argue that there is a subgroup of cross-namespace moves, such as between articlespace and template space, that seldom makes sense and therefore might be worth blanket-restricting to admins or similar (though that would probably be a separate bug report).
Description
Related Objects
- Mentioned In
- T26817: Add 'blockunconfirmed' userright to allow for blocking of IPS and unconfirmed users
T128328: Split the block permission into several permissions
T226926: Investigate separate user right for creating pages with custom content models - Mentioned Here
- T12351: Prevent cross-namespace moves from non-admins
Event Timeline
I would say so, yes. There is still no functionality that allows sites to restrict cross-namespace renames at their discretion. However, if you're asking specifically in the context of WMF wikis, I can't say anything, since the original motivation for me filing this task was to benefit non-WMF wikis.
Given the (potentially controversial) addition, tagging Platform Engineering as a feature request for review before beginning to work on this, so that work isn't wasted
@Dinoguy1000 I think it should be discussed with the Wikimedia community before we make this kind of change. Perhaps a global RFC on meta-wiki?
@Masumrezarock100 As I said in T201495#5391945, the motivation for this feature request was to benefit non-WMF wikis. If anyone else is interested in pursuing consensus to enable this on a WMF wiki, I wish them the best of luck, but it was never my intention to do so myself. I imagine that by default, the right would be assigned to the same user groups as the current move right is, so by default the addition of this right shouldn't produce any functional change on WMF wikis.
@Dinoguy1000, thank you for the feature request, and @DannyS712, thank you for bringing this to the attention of Platform Engineering. Since we generally try not to add too many built-in user rights, we would say that a good first step for this would be for you to add this as an extension. If it gets wide adoption and is deemed to be generally useful, it could be considered for core.
@CCicalese_WMF, thanks for the review, and the game plan. @DannyS712, are you interested in developing the extension? Unfortunately I don't have the ability to do so myself, and I don't think I know anyone who would have the knowledge, time, and inclination to do so for me (though I could be wrong there).
Nope - don't know how to write an extension, and don't have the infrastructure to test one; sorry