Christopher and Kelly,
I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on the hook legally.
But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 11/30/05, Brian brian0918@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x....
Talk amongst yourselves. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Andrew Lih wrote:
I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on the hook legally. But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community operations of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to bother starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand specialist subjects.
I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either. There is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but mostly composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that, because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.
I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not flavour of the month.
- d.
We should look again at allowing anonymous edits, This seems to have been the root of the problem.
Blogs and webforums have more rigorous requirements to leave remarks than we do. I acknowledge that most anonymous editors contribute in good faith but many do not. Further, the cost of cleaning up after the ones who do not detracts from the main work of writing the encyclopedia. I am not calling for credentialism but registering as a user.
It also means that many users are blocked for 24 hours as a result of sharing an IP with a vandal. I had to change my ISP last year because of vandalism from someone else. We also have had rogue registered users but at least we have procedures to deal with those.
Further, the anonymous nature of the edits means that many edits are unfairly discounted because people can't be sure of the value of the edits. As a volunteer of the help desk, I am aware of at least two professors who have tried to edit but have had their edits removed. That may have been fair enough in one case but the point remains. A point made by Professor X carries much more weight than a point made by IP 123.xx.
A similar problem occurs with copyvios. On a couple of occasions, people have uploaded material from their personal webpages which have been speedy deleted as copyvios. If they were identified, there would have been a greater chance that their right would have been recognised.
We need to do a cost/benefit analysis showing what we gain from allowing anonymous edits compared to the losses of cleaning up vandalism from anonymous edits.
Regards
Keith Old
Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster
On 11/30/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Andrew Lih wrote:
I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on the hook legally. But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community operations of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to bother starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand specialist subjects.
I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either. There is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but mostly composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that, because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.
I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not flavour of the month.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The root of the problem is that using our software and site a person is able to do harm to another anonymously. This harm is then "innocently" spread by Google and our mirrors.
It is rather time consuming and difficult to actually identify an editor. Much more difficult then say validating a credit card (which, if the money arrives, is good).
Perhaps we should run two versions: a public version which could be googled and mirrored and a semi-private version which could not be googled or mirrored. The public version would be cited and fact- checked; the semi-private version a work in progress.
To implement this, google would be blocked from the main site and no distribution would be made of its contents. The public version would be built from scratch with all information fact checked.
This would also prevent using our site for googlebombing which is a major motive with some exploitive users.
Fred
On Nov 30, 2005, at 2:03 AM, Keith Old wrote:
We should look again at allowing anonymous edits, This seems to have been the root of the problem.
Blogs and webforums have more rigorous requirements to leave remarks than we do. I acknowledge that most anonymous editors contribute in good faith but many do not. Further, the cost of cleaning up after the ones who do not detracts from the main work of writing the encyclopedia. I am not calling for credentialism but registering as a user.
It also means that many users are blocked for 24 hours as a result of sharing an IP with a vandal. I had to change my ISP last year because of vandalism from someone else. We also have had rogue registered users but at least we have procedures to deal with those.
Further, the anonymous nature of the edits means that many edits are unfairly discounted because people can't be sure of the value of the edits. As a volunteer of the help desk, I am aware of at least two professors who have tried to edit but have had their edits removed. That may have been fair enough in one case but the point remains. A point made by Professor X carries much more weight than a point made by IP 123.xx.
A similar problem occurs with copyvios. On a couple of occasions, people have uploaded material from their personal webpages which have been speedy deleted as copyvios. If they were identified, there would have been a greater chance that their right would have been recognised.
We need to do a cost/benefit analysis showing what we gain from allowing anonymous edits compared to the losses of cleaning up vandalism from anonymous edits.
Regards
Keith Old
Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster
On 11/30/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Andrew Lih wrote:
I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on the hook legally. But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late- alpha or early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community operations of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to bother starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand specialist subjects.
I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either. There is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but mostly composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that, because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.
I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not flavour of the month.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 11/30/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
The root of the problem is that using our software and site a person is able to do harm to another anonymously. This harm is then "innocently" spread by Google and our mirrors ... Perhaps we should run two versions: a public version which could be googled and mirrored and a semi-private version which could not be googled or mirrored.
Fred has raised an important point here. I'd like to see our talk pages not be googled or mirrored, if that's possible. I'm dealing with a situation at the moment where two registered users are out to cause harm to a semi-notable, real-life person. They inserted insulting material about him into an article, he kept deleting it, ended up being blocked for 3RR, complained to Jimbo, and after much back-and-forth, the material was removed. Now, the users who inserted it are discussing the situation and how terrible this person is on the article talk page. I think they're doing it deliberately to get the information out there, but they're not violating policy, so there's nothing I can do to stop them. With the whole site being picked up by google, whether something's in an article that's monitored for unsourced material or on a talk page that isn't, actually makes no difference in terms of how far the material ends up getting spread.
Sarah
On 11/30/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
We should look again at allowing anonymous edits, This seems to have been the root of the problem.
Blogs and webforums have more rigorous requirements to leave remarks than we do. I acknowledge that most anonymous editors contribute in good faith but many do not. Further, the cost of cleaning up after the ones who do not detracts from the main work of writing the encyclopedia. I am not calling for credentialism but registering as a user.
It also means that many users are blocked for 24 hours as a result of sharing an IP with a vandal. I had to change my ISP last year because of vandalism from someone else. We also have had rogue registered users but at least we have procedures to deal with those.
Further, the anonymous nature of the edits means that many edits are unfairly discounted because people can't be sure of the value of the edits. As a volunteer of the help desk, I am aware of at least two professors who have tried to edit but have had their edits removed. That may have been fair enough in one case but the point remains. A point made by Professor X carries much more weight than a point made by IP 123.xx.
A similar problem occurs with copyvios. On a couple of occasions, people have uploaded material from their personal webpages which have been speedy deleted as copyvios. If they were identified, there would have been a greater chance that their right would have been recognised.
We need to do a cost/benefit analysis showing what we gain from allowing anonymous edits compared to the losses of cleaning up vandalism from anonymous edits.
Regards
Keith Old
Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster
I wholeheartedly agree. I think allowing anonymous edits causes more problems than it solves. Registering is easy, and should not be a big deterrent to anyone for any reason I can think of. While I'm sure there are benefits, as Keith said they have to be seriously weighed against the disadvantages.
-- User:Wesley
sockmonk@gmail.com wrote:
I wholeheartedly agree. I think allowing anonymous edits causes more problems than it solves. Registering is easy, and should not be a big deterrent to anyone for any reason I can think of. While I'm sure there are benefits, as Keith said they have to be seriously weighed against the disadvantages.
-- User:Wesley
How many times have we had this debate? It's been shown time and time again that anonymous edits tend to bring more good than bad (except possibly on [[Special:Newpages]]) and that there are tonnes of valid reasons not to register and remain anonymous. Golly, if people are this immediatist (do anything at any cost to make sure our encyclopedia remains clean *now*) these days, I wonder what am I (I consider myself a moderate immediatist).
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On 11/30/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
It also means that many users are blocked for 24 hours as a result of sharing an IP with a vandal. I had to change my ISP last year because of vandalism from someone else. We also have had rogue registered users but at least we have procedures to deal with those.
But there *should* be an "easy" technical solution to this, as this is the same issue as the "tor question". If user accounts could be manually given a "don't block even if they have the same IP as a vandal unless this specific username is blocked", then we'd be set. Perhaps it could automatically click in after 100 edits or something like that, but even if it was set by hand on request, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
This, along with the "allow blocking of anonymous edits from specific problem IPs" issue is something that would really, really, really be great if it were ever implemented...
FF
On 30 Nov 2005, at 08:33, David Gerard wrote:
There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community operations of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to bother starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand specialist subjects.
Its a real pity that people think that stuff will be deleted. Generally I dont think it is the case. I have had to defend articles I wrote from AfD, but there has not been a problem (the hardest ones in some ways are incomplete attempts to be comprehensive; I had a couple of articles from [[Category:French wine AOCs]] up for AfD; while on their own they might not all be that interesting, having all 500 odd will be really useful. The best solution is to just write lots of stuff. And I sometimes write stuff thats quite obscure eg [[Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association]]. Defending things has a place.
I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either. There is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but mostly composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that, because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.
I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not flavour of the month.
I actually think that its too early to think about the mythical 1.0. There is far too much missing. We should put a beta notice in, its very fashoinable (friendster, gmail, flickr etc).
Justinc
Justin Cormack wrote:
On 30 Nov 2005, at 08:33, David Gerard wrote:
There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community operations of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to bother starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand specialist subjects.
Its a real pity that people think that stuff will be deleted. Generally I dont think it is the case.
It probably isn't, but the perception is that it is. How to fight that? There's too many easily accessible examples of this happening.
I have had to defend articles I wrote from AfD, but there has not been a problem
The problem is often even knowing it's been nominated for deletion. The AFD regulars consider notifying the authors too much like work or something.
- d.
I am responding to nobody in particular, because there's such a wide variety of hysteria to respond to that I can barely choose.
The objection that Seigenthaler is having to Wikipedia is not even to the process or to the speed at which we fix vandalism. It is not to our current quality, it is not to anything fixable.
The fundamental objection that Seigenthaler has is that we allow people to post freely. His objection is to the belief that we ought not carefully monitor our users and that we ought avoid turning them in to the legal authorities in a dispute. His assumption that the article was posted by a vandal is dodgy at best - I would be shocked if he were not the subject of some conspiracy theory or another, and if whoever posted the article were anything more than a particularly stupid POV pusher. If Wikipedia were to in any way assist with turning a mere stupid POV pusher in to legal authorities, I know my support for the site would drop off swiftly.
The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness. That opens us to stupidity, and we have an obligation to deal with the stupidity. And if Seigenthaler wanted to criticize us for our failings in reverting this stupidity and to the process that let it sit there for 153 days, he'd be right. But to criticize us for being open and free in the first place is not a problem we can or should fix. And to my mind, it is a problem that puts Seigenthaler so far outside of any of the core beliefs of this project that the point is only narrowly worth debating.
A final comment - we have been adamant and active about finding ways for our Chinese contributors to participate even as their government tries to shut them down. On what possible grounds can we even consider acquiescing to an argument that amounts to "It should be easier to sue if I don't like my Wikipedia article." Think of what would have happened in the Bogdanov Affair, or with John Byrne, or with dozens of other cases if what Seigenthaler were calling for were to come true.
-Phil
On 11/30/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
The objection that Seigenthaler is having to Wikipedia is not even to the process or to the speed at which we fix vandalism. It is not to our current quality, it is not to anything fixable.
The fundamental objection that Seigenthaler has is that we allow people to post freely. His objection is to the belief that we ought not carefully monitor our users and that we ought avoid turning them in to the legal authorities in a dispute. His assumption that the article was posted by a vandal is dodgy at best - I would be shocked if he were not the subject of some conspiracy theory or another, and if whoever posted the article were anything more than a particularly stupid POV pusher. If Wikipedia were to in any way assist with turning a mere stupid POV pusher in to legal authorities, I know my support for the site would drop off swiftly.
That's exactly the problem with his article; I was wondering if someone had posted this already. He's not objecting primarily to the bad info (which could be deleted as soon as he noticed it, at the very least), but to the fact that he couldn't find out who posted it.
This is a problem with the internet in general. If it was posted on a geocities site he'd have *exactly the same problem* except that it'd actually take him *much longer* and probably be *much harder* to remove the incorrect information.
The only reason he thinks we should have different standards in this respect than geocities is because we are a "big deal," I imagine. Which is the "peaked too early" problem, but also might just be a phantom in the end -- I suspect Wikipedia does, or will, occupy a unique position between don't-even-trust-it (geocities) and oh-yeah-it's-almost-entirely-reliable (EB). Which isn't so bad. I don't see any other way around it, though I know Jimbo would rather we aspire for the latter category (but hey, I'm willing to try!).
FF