In thinking about the recent Hasbara Fellowships situation, it reminds me of previous situations where we've made summary blocks, like the US Congress IPs. I'm wondering if we could use another tool in our toolbox: the ability to ban people from articles only, while letting them contribute normally to article talk and other pages. Here's why:
Wikipedia is becoming a bigger and bigger target for people with strong points of view. A lot of these are people with conflicts of interest, and another big segment is those engaged in political battles. Turned loose on the encyclopedia, they could (and would) substantially harm our NPOV goal.
Right now, we have two options to deal with them. One is to trust that our system is robust enough to keep POVs roughly balanced. The other is to just ban people outright from participation, temporarily or permanently. For these strong POV types, I don't see either one of those as a great solution.
Even when we can distill POV contributions into NPOV articles, POV pushers are wearying. Blocking them can help, but it gives them an incentive to pop up elsewhere, leading to sock-puppet hunts and a lot of admin whack-a-mole. More importantly, it deprives us of their help in providing references and in spotting POV distortion from others.
Would it be worth creating a new, more limited kind of block, where they are just forbidden to touch main-space article pages? If they were complete jerks, we could still use a normal block, of course. But creating the softer option of semi-protection worked well, and I'm thinking a softer kind of block would be a similar step forward.
William
On 8/1/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Would it be worth creating a new, more limited kind of block, where they are just forbidden to touch main-space article pages? If they were complete jerks, we could still use a normal block, of course. But creating the softer option of semi-protection worked well, and I'm thinking a softer kind of block would be a similar step forward.
This is one of the older ideas that's been drifting around WP for years. Trouble is, we don't have the developers to work on this problem. This isn't like policy; we can't be bold and write it. Oh, technically we can, except most of us lack the technical prowess to do it, and those who have it are already working on MediaWiki.
FWIW, though, (which may not be very much), I completely support this idea. It's a real necessity.
Johnleemk
On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 00:51:21 +0800, "John Lee" johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
This is one of the older ideas that's been drifting around WP for years. Trouble is, we don't have the developers to work on this problem. This isn't like policy; we can't be bold and write it. Oh, technically we can, except most of us lack the technical prowess to do it, and those who have it are already working on MediaWiki.
Can anyone point to a discussion on Bugzilla, I'd like to know what the technical problem is. Superficially the autoconfirm code would seem to me to do much the same job, so I'd be interested to see why it's hard to, as it were, manually un-autoconfirm specified addresses and accounts.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Can anyone point to a discussion on Bugzilla, I'd like to know what the technical problem is. Superficially the autoconfirm code would seem to me to do much the same job, so I'd be interested to see why it's hard to, as it were, manually un-autoconfirm specified addresses and accounts.
I did try -- without luck -- to find this in Bugzilla before posting on the mailing list. If somebody does find an entry, let me know. If not, I'll start one by and by.
William
On 7/31/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
This is one of the older ideas that's been drifting around WP for years. Trouble is, we don't have the developers to work on this problem. This isn't like policy; we can't be bold and write it. Oh, technically we can, except most of us lack the technical prowess to do it, and those who have it are already working on MediaWiki.
FWIW, though, (which may not be very much), I completely support this idea. It's a real necessity.
Ehhh. That would not be a technically challenging feature, just like blocking of upload only. But it's not a good idea.
We block accounts and IPs that are unable or are unwilling to control themselves and behave in a productive manner.
If someone is enough of a harm to justify a technical block from "X" then they really should be blocked completely. We are not so short on people that we should be accepting harmful folks and trying to limit them technically to the spaces where they will only do the least harm. ... Harmful users should be blocked.
On commons I setup a kludgy form of upload only blocking, the justification being that most commons users don't spend enough time on commons to see talk page notes plus it may not be obvious what language the user speaks, so getting someone's attention and communicating can be much harder there. Even there the upload blocking is pretty much never used. If the kludgy upload-only blocking solution on commons was found to be useful in practice we'd have an argument there for full support in MediaWiki, but it isn't so we do not have a good argument for it.
I really expect the same would be true for other forms of fancy blocking for enwiki.
On 7/31/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/31/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
This is one of the older ideas that's been drifting around WP for years. Trouble is, we don't have the developers to work on this problem. This isn't like policy; we can't be bold and write it. Oh, technically we can, except most of us lack the technical prowess to do it, and those who have it are already working on MediaWiki.
FWIW, though, (which may not be very much), I completely support this idea. It's a real necessity.
Ehhh. That would not be a technically challenging feature, just like blocking of upload only. But it's not a good idea.
We block accounts and IPs that are unable or are unwilling to control themselves and behave in a productive manner.
If someone is enough of a harm to justify a technical block from "X" then they really should be blocked completely. We are not so short on people that we should be accepting harmful folks and trying to limit them technically to the spaces where they will only do the least harm. ... Harmful users should be blocked.
On commons I setup a kludgy form of upload only blocking, the justification being that most commons users don't spend enough time on commons to see talk page notes plus it may not be obvious what language the user speaks, so getting someone's attention and communicating can be much harder there. Even there the upload blocking is pretty much never used. If the kludgy upload-only blocking solution on commons was found to be useful in practice we'd have an argument there for full support in MediaWiki, but it isn't so we do not have a good argument for it.
I really expect the same would be true for other forms of fancy blocking for enwiki.
I don't know... there are people who have valid points, who are just chronically unable to keep from making improper article edits if they have edit permission.
There have been a number of Arbcom "can't edit the article but can edit the talk page" rulings over the years.
A technical enforcement for that might be nice.
A generalized ACL mechanism in Mediawiki, now... *drool*...
(yes, I know. I know PHP. I might have to develop it myself.)
I don't know... there are people who have valid points, who are just chronically unable to keep from making improper article edits if they have edit permission.
There have been a number of Arbcom "can't edit the article but can edit the talk page" rulings over the years.
A technical enforcement for that might be nice.
A generalized ACL mechanism in Mediawiki, now... *drool*...
(yes, I know. I know PHP. I might have to develop it myself.)
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
The more I see these people, "who make valid points, but are chronically unable to keep from making improper article edits" the more I see that they don't really have any valid points. And after watching a botany entrenched editor with "valid points" who can't restrain herself from "making improper article edits," now using sock puppets, and ranting about crap on her talk page (which no one bothers responding to), after being banned, the less doubtful I am that there are editors who have "valid points" but can't stay away from "improper edits," and I don't trust their "valid points" as far as I can throw them.
KP
We block accounts and IPs that are unable or are unwilling to control themselves and behave in a productive manner.
If someone is enough of a harm to justify a technical block from "X" then they really should be blocked completely. We are not so short on people that we should be accepting harmful folks and trying to limit them technically to the spaces where they will only do the least harm. ... Harmful users should be blocked.
We enforce bans with blocks, why not enforce topic bans with topic blocks? Also, our advice regarding conflicts of interest is to edit the talk page instead, why not enforce that with code?
I might take a look at the relevant parts of the code and see if I can implement something along those lines.
On 7/31/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I might take a look at the relevant parts of the code and see if I can implement something along those lines.
I think this is already pretty doable, userrights, and setting up namespace permissions with 1.10 $wgNamespaceProtection settings.
I agree though, if they can't behave themselves why not block them completely? It sounds like you're talking about maybe PR people, or people that are exclusive POV pushers outside the normal wikipedia culture. If that's the case I think it would be very confusing for them and probably lead to resentment, creating a type of second class editor.
As for people who are not allowed to edit something per arbcom, technical restrictions there I don't think are required. If someone isn't going to follow what they say they probably won't want to work on Wikipedia anyway.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
cohesion wrote:
I agree though, if they can't behave themselves why not block them completely? It sounds like you're talking about maybe PR people, or people that are exclusive POV pushers outside the normal wikipedia culture. If that's the case I think it would be very confusing for them and probably lead to resentment, creating a type of second class editor.
I agree it creates a second class of editor -- at least for the duration of the block -- but I hope that it would create less resentment rather than more. I imagine that happening in two ways.
First, some people blocked for COI or POV issues really do have something useful to say. Take the time we blocked some of the US Congress IPs because a handful of staffers misbehaved. Although the block may have kept out more puffery, and it was certainly useful in sending a signal, we kept a lot of people from even commenting on articles, articles where they had expert knowledge. That has to be frustrating.
Second, people often just want to have their say. Blocking people to prevent harm to articles is already frustrating to people. But I think they'll put up with that better if we indicate that we're still willing to listen to them, at least as long as they play nice.
My hope is that this will decrease tension on both sides. I think it's relatively easy to put up with some yutz on a talk page. The real strife comes when they start messing with articles. A mainspace-only ban would let us stop the main harm while still letting people participate in the community.
William
On 7/31/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Second, people often just want to have their say. Blocking people to prevent harm to articles is already frustrating to people. But I think they'll put up with that better if we indicate that we're still willing to listen to them, at least as long as they play nice.
Hmm, you may be right :) frustrating for them either way, I suppose, although partial may be better. I don't deal with blocks much so... I guess I'm ambivalent about it :)
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 7/31/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
cohesion wrote:
I agree though, if they can't behave themselves why not block them completely? It sounds like you're talking about maybe PR people, or people that are exclusive POV pushers outside the normal wikipedia culture. If that's the case I think it would be very confusing for them and probably lead to resentment, creating a type of second class editor.
I agree it creates a second class of editor -- at least for the duration of the block -- but I hope that it would create less resentment rather than more. I imagine that happening in two ways.
First, some people blocked for COI or POV issues really do have something useful to say. Take the time we blocked some of the US Congress IPs because a handful of staffers misbehaved. Although the block may have kept out more puffery, and it was certainly useful in sending a signal, we kept a lot of people from even commenting on articles, articles where they had expert knowledge. That has to be frustrating.
Second, people often just want to have their say. Blocking people to prevent harm to articles is already frustrating to people. But I think they'll put up with that better if we indicate that we're still willing to listen to them, at least as long as they play nice.
My hope is that this will decrease tension on both sides. I think it's relatively easy to put up with some yutz on a talk page. The real strife comes when they start messing with articles. A mainspace-only ban would let us stop the main harm while still letting people participate in the community.
William
-- William Pietri william@scissor.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
You do make a reasonable case for doing this, although I still think there will be few reasonable people put in this position of main space blocks.
KP
On 7/31/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Would it be worth creating a new, more limited kind of block, where they are just forbidden to touch main-space article pages?
I think the opposite type of block would be equally useful, if not more so. I'm not going to go into specific detail on this, but you probably know what I mean.
—C.W.
On 8/1/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/31/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Would it be worth creating a new, more limited kind of block, where they are just forbidden to touch main-space article pages?
I think the opposite type of block would be equally useful, if not more so. I'm not going to go into specific detail on this, but you probably know what I mean.
—C.W.
What about blocks for specific pages and for specific namespaces? Wouldn't that be better?
Johnleemk