This user is obviously a nut-job, but this is something we should atleast consider. I remember a while back when a vandalbot started attacking ANI, which effectively shut it down for a long period of time. This was before semi-protection, so today that specific threat could be easily dealt with, but what if he had attacked random articles instead?
It's a fact that there are botnet-operators out there with tens of thousands of computers, and they demand money from websites in exchange for them not being DDoSed. This is not even rare, it's fairly common in this brand new world.
What if one of these people wrote a script and installed it on all of their bots so that they register an account and then randomly attack and vandalise articles? I mean, there could be literally thousands of edits flowing in every minute. Not only would this probably make the servers screech to a grinding halt, it would cause huge damage to the content of the site.
In such an event, what would we do? Semi-protect the entire encyclopedia? Lock the database and quickly install a version control thing, like the germans? Is there anything else? Let's face it, wikipedia is a high-profile target, we need to consider such things.
--Oskar
On 10/11/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
[[User:Instant Karma]] recently made a posting to [[User Talk:Jimbo Wales]] titled "The End Is Nigh", making a series of demands of Wikipedia (such as the removal of most sex-related material, the addition of an attempt to keep minors out of whatever remains in that area, and the removal of most pop-cultural stuff including reducing mention of Star Trek to a single article). It concluded with a threat of unspecified retribution of a "Doomsday Machine" nature which would allegedly result in the destruction of Wikipedia. Just thought you ought to know that we're allegedly all doomed now... :-)
-- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
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