Peter Jaros wrote:
One problem with bringing up a person's pre-Wikipedia history is that a reformed troll is likely to be, shall we say, tact-impaired. Such a person is *more* likely to be falsely accused of trolling (remembering that trolling includes intent). On the other hand, this history can greatly help arbitrators to decide how to deal with a user. Many people are simply bad at garnering sympathy for their point; it's a skill not everyone has. Simply accusing such people of trolling is likely to make matters worse and make the arbitrators' job harder.
The difference between being a troll or "tact-impaired" is minor enough that for most practical purposes it isn't worth considering.
Personally, I think Wikipedia should try to move away from deterrence strategies like bans, IP blocks and arbitration committees, and toward a reputation-management system like they have at Slashdot or Kuro5hin or eBay. A reputation-management system combines rewards with punishments. What's missing from Wikipedia's system is any kind of reward for GOOD behavior. Suppose, for example, we had a system where other users could rate our contributions, and the more positive your cumulative rating, the less scrutiny your edits are likely to receive from vandal-watchers. If we had that sort of system, we could focus monitoring for vandalism on people with low ratings. This would also give users an incentive to keep their ratings high so they wouldn't get hassled by others. Perhaps there could be other incentives as well, e.g., a high rating automatically makes you a sysop.
I think it would also be a good idea to set some kind of limit on the number of contributions accepted per day from each anonymous IP number -- a fairly small number, such as 5. Five contributions is enough for someone to get a feel for how Wikipedia works. After that, the software should tell them to register if they want to make further contributions. This way the Wikipedia would remain inviting to newbies but would add encouragement to enter the reputation-tracking system. It wouldn't entirely stop anonymous vandalism, but it would make it more difficult and would probably eliminate most of it.
--Sheldon Rampton