Ed Poor wrote:
Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on so-called soft security.
I agree. Here's my solution:
(1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing. (Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)
(2) Unambiguously authorize sysops to take immediate, unilateral action against egregious abusers (with clear definitions of "egregious abuse").
(3) Use mediation/arbitration as both an appeals process for users who feel that have been wrongfully banned, and as a method of dealing with disputes and allegations of abuse that don't meet the standard of "egregious abuse."
Finally, I think we should think seriously about the "democracy" part of "WikiDemocracy." Democracy is a system of governance. It is not anarchy. There are rules and rulers. It's a better system generally than dictatorship, but it isn't simply laissez-faire.
I've been doing a bit of experimentation lately with using wikis to facilitate decision-making within some nonprofit organizations in which I am active. In that context, I've come to the conclusion that wikis should be used primarily for facilitation of the process rather than for decision-making per se. For example, I sit on a committee that makes decisions about lending policy and loans to low-income communities in Nicaragua. We're going to try to use a wiki as an way to formulate and revise proposals, but once a proposal has been formulated, we'll still need to the committee to vote up or down on it in the tradition one person-one vote manner.
As a practical matter, Wikipedia doesn't have a way of enabling voting by the entire community of Wikipedians, but there are a couple of reasonable approximations that we could attempt:
(1) Have Jimbo appoint a governing committee. This would inevitably be a non-representative subset of the entire community, but having Jimbo as our benevolent dictator is also non-representative. The advantage of a governing committee is that it could be SOMEWHAT more representative of the entire committee than just Jimbo by himself, and it could also take some of the work off his shoulders.
(2) Establish a voting system, through which a large subset of the entire Wikipedia community is authorized to vote. Obviously we'll need some way to exclude spam-voting by anonymous abusers, but if we gave a vote to everyone who has supplied a unique and verified email address, that would be a close enough approximation to universal enfranchisement for practical purposes.
(3) Use the voting system to create a "parliament" of elected representatives, whose members are charged with setting policies on behalf of the entire community.
(4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries," through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
--Sheldon Rampton
On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
I agree. Here's my solution:
(1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing. (Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)
Bad idea, the ease of making contributions is one of our major "pull" factors. Also some people don't have a non-yahoo/hotmail account.
Limiting number of contribution doesn't really seem to have any advantages, after all if a user goes on a vandalism spree they could easily use multiple accounts. And having all of their "contributions" under one account allow for us to block them more easily.
(2) Unambiguously authorize sysops to take immediate, unilateral action against egregious abusers (with clear definitions of "egregious abuse").
I don't oppose this in principle, but I think we have too many admins who don't use admin powers, and I'd hesitate to increase the power of inactive admins.
Incidently on the "registration" issue, I think we should collect more information on major contributors (>1000 major edits) in case we ever need to get in touch with them after they leave wikipedia.
Imran
Well, that lets me out. Do I hear the sound of applause?
RickK
Sheldon Rampton sheldon.rampton@verizon.net wrote: Ed Poor wrote:
Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on so-called soft security.
I agree. Here's my solution:
(1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing. (Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search - Find what you�re looking for faster.
User:Bird and all of his massive sock puppets and anonymous addresses is making a massive attack on Wikipedia. We need to contact ISPs and get this person banned from every ISP he is posting from. A nice message to User:Bcorr: ""You are a dangerous cult asshole Bcorr who tries to use force to prevent free speech. I hope you choke in your own vomit. I have eternity and a day to confront pukes like you.""
RickK
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search - Find what you�re looking for faster.
Sheldon Rampton wrote
Ed Poor wrote:
Wikipedia has grown so large that it is no longer possible to rely on so-called soft security.
I agree. Here's my solution:
(1) Require people to register, providing a verifiable email address that is not yahoo or hotmail, as a precondition for contributing. (Alternately, restrict the NUMBER of contributions that a non-registered individual can contribute within a 24-hour period.)
No, that's giving up the good fight.
(2) Unambiguously authorize sysops to take immediate, unilateral action against egregious abusers (with clear definitions of "egregious abuse").
I think this probably comes, as WP climbs from 1000th website on Alexa to 500th. Is it going to be based on case law and precedent? On an easily-formulated set of principles? On a directive from above that sysops try to enforce? On giving discretion to a super-sysop group? These anyway seem to be the _burning_ WikiDemocracy issues.
<snip rest>
Charles
Sheldon Rampton a écrit:
(1) Have Jimbo appoint a governing committee. This would inevitably be a non-representative subset of the entire community, but having Jimbo as our benevolent dictator is also non-representative. The advantage of a governing committee is that it could be SOMEWHAT more representative of the entire committee than just Jimbo by himself, and it could also take some of the work off his shoulders.
For a healthy place, no cumulation of "power" should exist. An arbitrator should not be in the government. Nor a "honorary developer" (the one sysops, desysoping people). Separation of power is best.
(2) Establish a voting system, through which a large subset of the entire Wikipedia community is authorized to vote. Obviously we'll need some way to exclude spam-voting by anonymous abusers, but if we gave a vote to everyone who has supplied a unique and verified email address, that would be a close enough approximation to universal enfranchisement for practical purposes.
Each time we voted, it was clear enough that the little noise that could be brought by vandals was cancelled by all the good contributors.
(3) Use the voting system to create a "parliament" of elected representatives, whose members are charged with setting policies on behalf of the entire community.
I disagree with this.
(4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries," through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
--Sheldon Rampton
Better. I also like the idea to do the same with arbitrators (like a jury)...and with sysops :-)
This is not good because a great deal of experience is necessary to do arbitration well. We need to eventually get to the place where serious things are treated seriously and mere annoyances rather lightly. It takes quite a while to get to where the difference is observable.
Fred
From: Anthere anthere8@yahoo.com Reply-To: anthere8@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:17:39 +0100 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Transition to WikiDemocracy
(4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries," through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
--Sheldon Rampton
Better. I also like the idea to do the same with arbitrators (like a jury)...and with sysops :-)
You did not understand me. I do not suggest that every one takes the role of an arbitrator in turn. I suggest that the pool of arbitrator is larger, and that people in *that* pool take turns.
Similarly, I honestly believe that there would be some benefit if some sysops found themselves not sysops from time in time.
Fred Bauder a écrit:
This is not good because a great deal of experience is necessary to do arbitration well. We need to eventually get to the place where serious things are treated seriously and mere annoyances rather lightly. It takes quite a while to get to where the difference is observable.
Fred
From: Anthere anthere8@yahoo.com Reply-To: anthere8@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:17:39 +0100 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Transition to WikiDemocracy
(4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries," through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
--Sheldon Rampton
Better. I also like the idea to do the same with arbitrators (like a jury)...and with sysops :-)