> I recently recieved this message from a user:
> "I'm a regular wikipedia user although i don't have an
> account here. I think this site is great and it really helps
> me with my college work. But I recently heard of these people
> that were talking about wikipedia that they were all
> programming a hack for it. So after a little while I found it
> was a spider to hunt down all the pages links and change them
> to shocks site links or something along those lines. I didn't
> know who to tell so I just thought I'd tell an administrator
> as they might know who to tell or what to do. Just giving an
> advanced warning so you might be able to do something to
> protect this wonderful resourse. Apparently they permenantly
> change their ip address using some thing (a bit beyond me).
> Something like that. I just didn't know what to do. I hope I
> didn't embaress myself here. Thanks for your time."
>
> Brett
I'd like to suggest a standard where admins can block any account on
"suspicion of being a bot". This would be an assumption of guilt pending
proof of innocence, so let's talk about it.
Ordinarily, we assume good faith. But if, AFTER making that initial
assumption (and leaving the door open for anyone - human or bot) to come
in and edit - if we become suspicious, we ought to be able to "stop them
for questioning".
Here's how it might work.
1. Admin gets suspicious of a pattern of edits.
2. (optional step, try to engage user in any number of ways, e.g.,
article talk pages, edit summaries in reverts, etc.)
3. Block account
4. At this point, user / bot can only post to their / its user talk
page.
5. Post a message on the user talk page which (in your opinion) only a
human being could respond to.
6. If they refuse / fail to answer, the presumption stands.
Drawbacks:
A. User might be shy about interacting. For example, just wants to
correct spelling - but not talk to other Wikipedians. Maybe they're
embarassed that their English isn't perfect, or they have Asperger's or
are autistic.
B. Evil admin might abuse this policy (gaming the system) to challenge
someone that they KNOW is a legitimate user.
Advantages:
C. Shoot first, ask questions later - saves time in an emergency
D. No real harm done to legitimate user: they say the bold "You have
messages" notice and can click on the link; and simply say, "Jeez,
relax, I'm not a bot."
Uncle Ed
Please spend a moment to look over the proposal for an internal article
rating system. I must stress that this would be an informal thing, more akin
to a friendly competition than anything else.
I think it could serve an excellent purpose of highlighting good articles
and thanking those involved in its creation, mixing in a little peer review
as well.
~~~~ Violet/Riga
Hi,
I would like to propose that the Wikipedia blocking
policy was violated.
In summary, this is the situation.
I posted once to Bektashi::Talk to discuss why
freestylefrappe removed a certain section from the
article. This was due to the Bektashi page being on
the list of pages requiring moderation, and I wanted
to add to the discussion.
freestylefrappe sent me a msg to the following effect
on my talk page:
I suspect you are a sockpuppet of Aldirma's. However,
in the offchance that you are not, if you go back and
look at the different versions of the page you'll
notice that he is trying to paste in the entire
Bektashi jokes page. Assuming good faith, happy
editing. freestylefrappe 04:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I responded to his msg to the following effect on his
talk page:
I suspect you start all your messages with offensive
accusations like "I suspect you're a sock puppet of
so-and-so." That being said, no, I'm not a sock-puppet
of Aldiramal or whatever his name is. If he is
copypasting verbatim, then it violates copy-right and
is not in line with this being an encyclopedia
article. However, inclusion of a jokes section with
paragraph explaining the role of jokes, and including
one joke, would seem fair. Happy editing to you
too.Wilgamesh
After this short exchange, Wikipedia indicated that I
was "blocked for personal attacks" by freestylefrappe.
Relevant IP info given below.
Any ideas? I suggest that freestylefrappe didn't like
the fact that I pointed out his message implicating
users being sock-puppets is HIGHLY OFFENSIVE, as
reputability is the only thing sustaining most users'
viability on wikipedia, and in a annoyance, moved to
block me.
I would enjoy a discussion.
best,
Wilgamesh
Your IP address is 128.103.96.115. Please include this
address, along with your username, in any queries you make.
__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com
In a message dated 11/2/2005 1:51:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com writes:
It can offend, in the same way that Mark Twain's use of
'nigger' in his otherwise anti-slavery novel [[Huckleberry Finn]]
offends.
WTF?
Hardly. *chuckling at the hyperbole*
Puh-LEEZE. Let's not get carried away.
Anonymous is anonymous. It means what it says.
"Nigger" is a whole nutha futha.
deeceevoice
I ran across this interesting idea last night, and thought it deserved
mentioning to a wider audience: [[Wikipedia:Bounty board]]
Basically, users offer to donate $X to the foundation in return for
someone doing Y - for example, take [[Médecins Sans Frontières]] to FA
status, and you get the warm glow of knowing the foundation is $20
better off.
Not sure how good a motivation this will turn out to be in the long
run, but it does sound like an idea worth trying; $35 seems to have
been "won" so far, and as no-one but the Foundation profits there
doesn't seem to be any legal pitfalls waiting to happen.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Fastfission wrote:
> It's actually not easy to verify that. It's easier to just point to a
> published resource by a reputable press, which is a lot harder to
> fake. We reach outside the internet for our verification, in the end,
> because we know that the internet is unreliable. It's an interesting
> model of digital epistemology, is it not?
Yes, I know. Math is like French or German, though -- one often has to be
able to speak, before one is even able to "check the literature", so in many
cases, offering someone non-internet verification amounts to "Here's a
textbook...go home, read chapters 4-7 until you understand them, then come
back and see that the results at the end of chapter 7 justify the argument."
The real "verification" is in the understanding of chapters 4-7. Now, if
someone isn't willing to take the time to learn chapters 4-7, (which may
itself require previous years of training even to consider tackling), then
the person could conceivably say, "That's not a reference, just an appeal to
authority." In fact, this is precisely the response of the typical crank
(as opposed to the knowledgeable but mistaken person, which has been myself
on more than one occasion).
Of course, I'm sure other subjects are not so simple, either...imagine
chemistry, archaeology, law, e.g.! If I asked for a reference for something
in law, I wouldn't be surprised to hear, "Here's a law textbook...go home,
read pages 200-400 until you understand them, and then see that the statutes
on page 385-395 apply." Even in areas like history or lit crit, the same
could apply (ever try to verify that Derrida or Habermas made a certain
claim on page 352 of such-and-such?) My point is that "verification" always
requires some amount of prior intangible expertise, and not all references
to the literature will be "checkable" by everyone.
> Of course, in general. But when there are real disputes, where the
> answer is not self-evident to most editors (such as the use of "there"
> vs. "their"),
That's not self-evident?! What are they teaching in schools today? :-)
darin
Magnus Manske wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:
>> Magnus Manske wrote:
>>> P.S.: I think I actually found a *real* bug; it seems anyone can change
>>> the list of topics. I'll have to restrict that to sysops.
>> I'd expect on Wikipedia that'd be a steward-level thing. Remember that
>> after the testing phase, it's unlikely to change very often if at all,
>> and then only with the consent of the wiki's community.
>As the selection of topics/ranges is a per-wikipedia thing, wouldn't
>that be more suitable for a buerocrat?
Someone rare and high-up, anyway ;-) Certainly not every admin.
- d.
The Accreditation policy below requires someone to be a writer for
several articles on Wikinews. It doesn't quite fit for any person who
wants an accreditation for a press badge as a photographer. The reason
behind my wondering over press badges is that I live in Southern California,
a place where there is opporunity to meet a celebrity. I have no doubt,
the same applies to anyone living in other parts of the world when it comes
to sports figures and the like. The thing is that a photograph of a famous
person on the English Wikipedia is usually a press or licensed photograph
from a professional photographer... unless the copyright has previously
expired on the photograph or they are a public figure of government, which
of course means their photograph we get is public domain. But how do deal
with trying to get a photograph of a television star without having any of
the copyright restrictions? The only answers I can think of is to ask the
publication to copyleft it, or take a picture of your own.
--
Jason Y. Lee
AKA AllyUnion
> Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:14:37 -0600
> From: Nathan Reed <nathanreed(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <fadaa0570511011214j31ba07fbp4d695e0c4d0856ef(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> en.Wikinews has a process for "accrediting" Wikinewsies, though there
> has been some debate concerning our authority to accredit anyone and
> our authority to issue badges using the Wikinews logo.
>
> See the following:
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy
>
> -N.
>
Skyring (Peter Mackay) has promised to play well with the other kids,
so I'm letting him back on wikien-l, though he's still moderated for
now. His arbcom ban on en: itself is still in effect.
- d.