--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu> wrote:
But that reminds me: do the non[[en:]] Wikipedias
have pages analogous to
[[Wikipedia:Administrators]]?
If not, where will the banning message point to on
them?
I would suggest that any Wikipedia that uses banning
at all
should have methods like those that I proposed
to allow banned users to contact administrators.
Hum, yeees.
Thoughts on tc, Toby, and Giskart (among others)
comments on vandalism (reference : pure nasty
vandalism : bots, porn images and so on...not "hard to
integrate" participants)
Vandalism does not only occur on the english
wikipedia, but also on the international ones, even
if, fortunately, attacks are infinitly less frequent
and less destructive in terms of volume.
Having far less participants, non-english wikipedias
do not "work" 'round the clock. There are periods of
time when nobody is watching, and nobody can react to
an attack. To speak of the case I know, there is very
often noone between 2am and 5am, and sometimes noone
between 9am to 12am on the fr:wiki. Or when somebody
is around, it's often a newcomer.
If any vandalism was to occur from an anonymous ip, we
are only 3 sysops to be able to ban it anyway.
Last monday at the end of the afternoon, a loggued-in
unknown user replaced the fr:homepage with a porn
picture (not as bad as the goatse, but still not one
that is appropriate for kids to see amha). Another
anonymous ip later replaced the picture by a single
line basically stating 'this is an encyclopedia,
please
don't do that' (hence, he was obviously not one of the
old hands, otherwise, he would have reverted the whole
page). I came around 20 mn later, and clean all. This
was fortunately a very minor vandalism (in terms of
page).
Athymik has been pointing out to us about a month ago
how damaging a bot running (loggued, behind proxy,
several ip addresses) could be.
Projection : if a bot run on the fr:wiki between 2am
to 5am and changes 2 pages per minute, the total
number of pages which could be vandalized is 360
(ain't I mastering calculus pretty well ?). I.e., more
than 10% of total pages right now.
Vandalism issues should not be treated language
separated. That is a global issue. Any knife cut in
one wiki as consequences on all wikis. Should the
international homepages be replaced by a goatse image
3 hours per week, my belief is that the english
wikipedia image would one day suffer from it -
Global public image issue, no ?
I support system that could automatically detect a
potential problem.
It is very likely that
- one user/ip saving every minute for more than 10 mn
is a potential problem
- any edit replacing more than xxxx characters by x
characters (except redirect...) is a potential problem
- any edit replacing more than xxxx characters by an
image that was downloaded less than tt minutes before
is a potential problem
But, then, what good would it do, if an automatic
system detect a potential problem but has no human to
warn ?
Some time ago, I raised the point of multi-wiki
vandalism (jumping through links). It was
interpretated as a personal whinning over consequences
interlangage links could have on minor wikis...Bah,
no. Really no. I am too happy with the links !
I had the front-idea in mind that a vandal on one
wiki, could also damage another wiki, so it could be
interesting somehow that a common system of reporting
existed, where maybe some connections could be made
between one vandal here and one vandal there. For
quicker and more effective reactivity.
With the back-idea that vandalism was a global issue,
and had to be considered including all wikis. I mean :
detection, human warning (in case of automatic
detection), human action to stop vandalism, human
action to revert vandalism.
If an international wiki is plagued by gore images
every week or so, thus damaging the image of the whole
project, if en.wikipedians has to come to help to
clean up 360 pages in a row, the issue is not local,
it's global.
I'd like not to hear "but, vandalism on international
wikis is a rare occurence". Yep, just as petrol ships
crushing on french, spanish and portuguese coasts are
a rare occurence. About every couple of years. Rare,
but damaging, no ? I see everywhere references to the
exxon waldez. Well, our last disaster was in 1999, the
Erika was an *absolutely* similar boat to the
Prestige. Same age, some construction type, same
content, same "pavillon de complaisance". Are we gonna
do nothing just because it is a rare occurence ?
In the past two months, we noticed there were people
coming through links, not because they were nominally
invited, but followed google. If they come, vandals
will come. Anticipation, prevention...
I like the idea of automatic detection. I'd like it to
be coupled with a system of automatic reaction (not
banning, rather slowing down save for example).
But, mostly, it should have an ACTIVE system of
COMMUNITY warning. Maybe, different levels of warning.
Maybe automatic emails to a list or to a board. Maybe
an automatic signal to bilingual people. Something.
Peace
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