I like this. We should use it.
My vocabulary is stunted tonight. Who stole my brain?:-)
John
----- Original Message ----- From: Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com Date: Saturday, February 14, 2004 10:13 pm Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anonymous proxies (was Re: Desysop Morwen)
Sunir Shah has suggested a method for making it blindingly obvious that a user is about to edit anonymously. Specifically, if the user is logged out, a username/password box is shown on the edit page. I made a mockup of this for demostration purposes, at:
http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~tstarling/EditPage_with_login.html
-- Tim Starling
From: Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com Date: Saturday, February 14, 2004 10:13 pm Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anonymous proxies (was Re: Desysop Morwen)
Sunir Shah has suggested a method for making it blindingly obvious that a user is about to edit anonymously. Specifically, if the user
is
logged out, a username/password box is shown on the edit page. I made a mockup of this for demostration purposes, at:
http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~tstarling/EditPage_with_login.html
I think it should look like this (propery fomatted):
In order to edit Wikipedia pages you need to log in. If you don't have an account you are very welcome to create one. It is free, immediate, and you don't need to give any personal information.
-- then boxes for creating a username and password just like -- on the account creation page. After the form is filled in, return -- the user automatically to the edit page.
This would deter more casual vandalism than any suggestion I have seen and be of trivial consequence for genuine users. Is there really a good reason we don't do this?
Zero.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
zero 0000 wrote:
I think it should look like this (propery fomatted):
In order to edit Wikipedia pages you need to log in. If you don't have an account you are very welcome to create one. It is free, immediate, and you don't need to give any personal information.
-- then boxes for creating a username and password just like -- on the account creation page. After the form is filled in,return -- the user automatically to the edit page.
This would deter more casual vandalism than any suggestion I have seen and be of trivial consequence for genuine users. Is there really a good reason we don't do this?
Yes, there are two reasons. Firstly, it's not a trivial consequence for some genuine users. Many people make casual corrections without logging in, and the deterrent effect against this would be the same as for casual vandalism. Some Wikipedians report having started with this kind of casual contribution, and say they would never have become active if there were barriers to entry.
There is also an inexplicable association in some peoples' minds between being logged out and being "anonymous", and such people see the requirement to log in as a threat to anonymity.
The second reason is that vandalism is easier to spot when it comes from users who are logged out.
-- Tim Starling
--- Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
zero 0000 wrote:
I think it should look like this (propery fomatted):
In order to edit Wikipedia pages you need to log in. If you don't have an account you are very welcome to create one. This would deter more casual vandalism than any suggestion I have seen and be of trivial consequence for genuine users. Is there really a good reason we don't do this?
Tim, Thanks for your reply. However, I don't find your arguments convincing.
Yes, there are two reasons. Firstly, it's not a trivial consequence for some genuine users. Many people make casual corrections without logging in, and the deterrent effect against this would be the same as for casual vandalism.
This suggests that casual vandals have the same degree of motivation as people wanting to make casual corrections. Is that true?
Some Wikipedians report having started with this kind of casual contribution, and say they would never have become active if there were barriers to entry.
The barrier would be reduced to almost nothing if an account creation option was provided in the edit process.
There is also an inexplicable association in some peoples' minds between being logged out and being "anonymous", and such people see the requirement to log in as a threat to anonymity.
This is very strange. I would think that a greater number of people realise that the opposite is true. One of the reasons I first adopted a username was in order to become more anonymous!
The second reason is that vandalism is easier to spot when it comes from users who are logged out.
Yes, I'm sure that is true, but how can this be weighed against the overall reduction in vandalism that would result? Which of the two tendencies would be the greatest? I predict (admittedly on little basis) that casual vandalism will overall drop by several times, moreover that most of the residual casual vandalism will still be easy to spot because the vandals will create usernames like aaaa and qwert, and also because of junk edit summaries.
Zero.
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On Sun, 15 Feb 2004, zero 0000 wrote:
--- Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
zero 0000 wrote:
I think it should look like this (propery fomatted):
In order to edit Wikipedia pages you need to log in. If you don't have an account you are very welcome to create one. This would deter more casual vandalism than any suggestion I have seen and be of trivial consequence for genuine users. Is there really a good reason we don't do this?
Tim, Thanks for your reply. However, I don't find your arguments convincing.
Yes, there are two reasons. Firstly, it's not a trivial consequence for some genuine users. Many people make casual corrections without logging in, and the deterrent effect against this would be the same as for casual vandalism.
This suggests that casual vandals have the same degree of motivation as people wanting to make casual corrections. Is that true?
Some Wikipedians report having started with this kind of casual contribution, and say they would never have become active if there were barriers to entry.
The barrier would be reduced to almost nothing if an account creation option was provided in the edit process.
Again, I would like to suggest that the interface be changed so if a non-logged-in user makes an edit, they must review their alterations first; logged-in users can directly save their changes. I feel that this is a reasonable restriction that would deter multiple acts of vandalism on one hand, while encouraging first-time users to create accounts & join the community.
[snip]
The second reason is that vandalism is easier to spot when it comes from users who are logged out.
Yes, I'm sure that is true, but how can this be weighed against the overall reduction in vandalism that would result? Which of the two tendencies would be the greatest? I predict (admittedly on little basis) that casual vandalism will overall drop by several times, moreover that most of the residual casual vandalism will still be easy to spot because the vandals will create usernames like aaaa and qwert, and also because of junk edit summaries.
We could still spot serial vandalism by the fact the vandals would not add comments to explain their changes, & the link to their home page would show as a dead link.
If I may address the subject line of this thread, how about this suggestion: should we block anonymizing servers, could we make an offer to potential contributors with legitamite reasons for anonymity that any sysop would be happy to act a proxy & make the edits/add the material desired?
Geoff