--- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
I know that I, myself, have passed up contributing to
wikis because they
required me to log in - not even email-confirmed, just a username and
password. I was just passing through and didn't want to bother jumping
through any hoops. We get plenty of anonymous edits on Wikipedia and very
few of them are vandals, so I'd be wary of anything that cuts those off.
I agree completely. What we need are more and better tools to cooperatively
review edits and fix bad ones (such as a working RC patrol feature and some
type of trust network). Giving admins more authority to use the tools they
already have would also help, but is something that needs to be done with a
good deal of thought and with built-in safeguards against abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Trust_network
However, I also want to mention that wiki is a means to an end and that our
goal is the creation of a product - the world's biggest and best encyclopedia.
Some people have lost sight of that and think our main goal is the creation and
nurturing of the community that creates that product when that is just a
secondary goal we need to fulfill in order to attain the first.
So if and when some aspects of wiki (itself a set of tools and a philosophy),
get in the way of our primary goal, then we need to think of ways to minimize
any damage that may cause. Only *if* that fails would we consider dropping some
aspects of our open wiki model. I don't think we are at that point yet but I
imagine that sad day may come and we need to know when it has arrived.
Otherwise we risk loosing sight of our main mission.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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