> From: "james duffy" jtdirl@hotmail.com
> A problem is exists with one IP user who continually tried to add in a > couple of paragraphs to [[Israel]] > ... > I am going to gather my friends for a whole range of contributions if > you keep forcing your POV. don't delete facts. > ... > Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?
Sigh. I have a *very* bad feeling about this - the same kind of bad feeling I had the day Cantor and Siegel sent their first spam, and wouldn't stop when asked to.
As the Wikipedia becomes more and more widely known, you're just going to have a higher and higher probability of including in that group some of the many humans who are losers. And, as the aftermath of Cantor and Siegel proved, that effect gets worse, not better, as the community grows.
I'm not happy about this. I got the same feeling from the Wikipedia that I had in the early days of the Internet, this wonderful group of people who all had a positive attitude. And we all know where that went...
Look, don't get me wrong, I hope I'm misguided here, or being pessimistic, or something. Maybe the Wikipedia community will be able to withstand the losers.
But maybe it won't; and maybe there's a reason the world doesn't have many large, working anarchies - because they don't work.
So, much as it saddens me (which is no doubt not a fraction as bad as it saddens those of you who've been around a lot longer), you might have to think about introducing *even more* controls in the Wikipedia than the few you have already - and maybe a fair number of them.
Don't be afraid to add mechanisms to keep the losers under control - because if you don't, they will destroy the good stuff you *are* trying to create.
If so, I beg of you to take some lessons from the Internet, where we e.g. tried too long to keep email open - with the results that you're all seeing today in your inboxes. How I wish we'd added more teeth, back when.
Imagine the worst - because it will surely happen. (And realize that some of the people you're dealing with see nothing wrong with deliberately killing kids - against which trashing some electrons is very small beer indeed.)
So, with that background, here are some practical suggestions.
First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just going to turn into a constant edit war.
Now you need to think: how will the vandals respond to that? If I were him, and I were determined to harm the Wikipedia for perceived hostility towards Palestinians (and there's a lot of anger boiling around there), I'd probably start to vandalize random pages.
Blocking IP addresses will work for a while to stop that, but if it doesn't maybe you'll have to disallow all edits from non-logged-in users, and maybe even go to a system were a new user is watched for a while to make sure they aren't a vandal.
But my overall message is "think about the worst case and try and plan for it". Sadly, I expect it will probably come to pass. But if you think about it, and discuss it, way up-front, when you have the time and leisure to do so in a calm and leisurely way, that will be best. Trying to fix it in the heat of the moment will produce VfD-notice-debate^9.
I hope this email didn't depress you all too badly. The Wikipedia is a really cool thing, and I am quite it will succeed in really making an impact. (I wouldn't be working so hard on it if I didn't think so! I'm too ancient to have this much energy without good cause! :-)
But you do need to protect yourselves.
Noel
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, J. Noel Chiappa wrote: [snip]
First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just going to turn into a constant edit war.
What's your opinion on some of the suggestions at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_pages_considered_harmful ?
ie, a system whereby anyone can edit protected pages all they like, but changes to the generally presented 'current' version are deferred until the page is left to sit for a time. No limitation on _who's_ doing the editing.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Just for reference, does having a lot of "protected" pages bog anything down? And what about different degrees of protected pages? "Controversial" pages? Wherin anon edits are limited?
Maybe also that one guys notion of limiting edits (interms of various quantities) for specific users ..... ? might not be such a bad idea after all, in a limited context. -S-
--- Brion Vibber vibber@aludra.usc.edu wrote:
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, J. Noel Chiappa wrote: [snip]
First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just
have to permanently be
protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of
intermediate level of
protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a)
has an account, b) has
it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level
of accepted edits. But
allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in,
to edit them is just
going to turn into a constant edit war.
What's your opinion on some of the suggestions at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_pages_considered_harmful
?
ie, a system whereby anyone can edit protected pages all they like, but changes to the generally presented 'current' version are deferred until the page is left to sit for a time. No limitation on _who's_ doing the editing.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
Look, don't get me wrong, I hope I'm misguided here, or being pessimistic, or something. Maybe the Wikipedia community will be able to withstand the losers.
We've survived worse than this before. This isn't the first time, either, that someone has threatened to bring in their friends.
One of the big secrets of Wikipedia is that it isn't really an anarchy, it just looks that way. There are rules, and we do enforce them. Fortunately, the rules are so mild and reasonable that most people can passionately buy into them, because it only takes a little bit of experience to see that NPOV actually works to get something done that would otherwise be a partisan bashing party.
First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just going to turn into a constant edit war.
This is actually a pretty good idea. I'm always in favor of finding ways to turn our blunt instruments into 'softer' tools. What I like about your proposal here is that it *is* soft. It could be used only for certain pages marked as 'controversial', and that only *after* they've become targetted for some kind of mass attack, or if an ongoing flame war has lasted for months with no hope of resolution.
Blocking IP addresses will work for a while to stop that, but if it doesn't maybe you'll have to disallow all edits from non-logged-in users, and maybe even go to a system were a new user is watched for a while to make sure they aren't a vandal.
I'm opposed to that, for as long as we can possibly stand it.
Here's what I think: openness has done something astounding here, and I think your parallel to the Internet as a whole is a solid one. But we have to be really vigilant about not letting our fear of vandalism turn into a lockdown or a turn towards closedness. It really is true that 99.5% of all people aren't jerks.
But, at the same time, I've always said that my goal, my dream, is a free encyclopedia. The 'experiment in anarchy' is secondary at best. So as soon as vandals start to gain the upper hand, we'll do whatever has to be done.
--Jimbo
J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
As the Wikipedia becomes more and more widely known, you're just going to have a higher and higher probability of including in that group some of the many humans who are losers. And, as the aftermath of Cantor and Siegel proved, that effect gets worse, not better, as the community grows.
Rejoice because your pessimism is unfounded in fact; I've seen over the past year and a half that the percentage of bad edits has not increased (although the volume has, of course) and, IMO, has in fact decreased. This is simply due to the fact that for every jerk there are many scores of good people (perhaps hundreds) and therefore increasing the number of people reading and contributing to Wikipedia only makes it better, not worse.
I had a similar pessimistic opinion, BTW, back when I could review an entire days edits in two hours (there were only 600-800 edits a day back then!).
But Wikipedia has scaled really well to my total astonishment.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)