Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:16 UTC
Patch to follow adds a user to "newuser" or "olduser" automatically, if logged in; depends upon User->isNewbie(). Also replaces the junk in Special:Move with proper user rights detection, as an example of how this might be useful - presently, you can't allow new users to move using $wgGroupRights, due to hard-coding in. Oh, and it fixes a comment, too. :)
Created attachment 1165 [details] Patch as described above
Forgot to mention that it's against User.php (for the group bit), SpecialMovepage.php (for the rights detection) and DefaultSettings.php (to add backwards-compatible prevention of moving by new users, by default).
Avar raised a valid point; this chucks up yet another medium-large SQL query for every hit. Performance wise, I'd say not brilliant. Might just abandon it unless I can think of a better way.
I think this feature would give us a clean way to define rights of "new" vs. "old" users. What is actually missing is a decent and efficient way to determine if a user is "new". For this purpose, I would suggest to record the date of creation and date of first edit with every user account. Possibly plus an edit counter (or even an edit counter per namespace, as avar suggested). IMHO, this bug should stay open but be blocked by a separate feature request for the edit tracking as described above.
The original basis for this request has been dealt with following the introduction of the autoconfirmed group.
