On 03/10/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
Either one is easy for a determined hoaxer to circumvent. If the only requirement is an external link, ISBN, ref, etc., the hoaxer can just insert such a link.
There's no technical measure that can circumvent a social problem on Wikipedia without ridiculous collateral damage.
With a wiki, any idiot can edit your site. Think of battling hoaxers, vandals, etc. as an arms race between the bad idiots and the good idiots.
We can't stop the bad idiots being bad before they've done so without stopping the good idiots from being good. So a technical approach that will work is one that lets the good idiots find and deal with bad content more efficiently with minimised collateral damage.
(This is the principle that means we use vandal-detection bots rather than greatly limiting what people are allowed to type.)
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