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.
I think it is a *very* bad idea. It will add another level to the Wikipedia hiearchy. I'd rather have the sporadic vandals and flame wars than let that happen. In my utopia every anon should be treated exactly the same as Jimbo Wales. Let's just accept the fact that there will always be vandals. They haven't fucked up WP yet so why worry? It's like those patriot laws... :-)
BL
Björn Lindqvist wrote:
I think it is a *very* bad idea. It will add another level to the Wikipedia hiearchy. I'd rather have the sporadic vandals and flame wars than let that happen. In my utopia every anon should be treated exactly the same as Jimbo Wales. Let's just accept the fact that there will always be vandals. They haven't fucked up WP yet so why worry? It's like those patriot laws... :-)
Well, I see what you're saying.
As a response, I will just say that what I liked about his proposal was that it introduced a tool that is 'softer' than the tool that we're using now, page protection. Right now, when things get particularly bad on a page, all we can do is protect it for awhile, and when that happens *no one* can edit.
We'd like to refine everything that we do to the point that we keep limitations on editing to a minimum.
So, yeah, I see what you're saying, but I also see what I was saying. ;-)
--Jimbo
I'd love to wait until there's been a convention on the new way to handle bans, but sadly there's someone that I need to nominate for banning.
Jimbo, what's the stopgap way for nominating people for banning? Private email to you or the "old fashioned" ban page?
----- Dante Alighieri dalighieri@digitalgrapefruit.com
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of great moral crisis." -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
Dante Alighieri wrote:
Jimbo, what's the stopgap way for nominating people for banning? Private email to you or the "old fashioned" ban page?
I think that the best thing to do is to write to me about someone being a problem, long before a ban is actually justified, so that I can hopefully intervene helpfully in such a fashion that no one is embarassed or outraged at what they perceive to be a false public accusation, etc.
Of course, this will not always work.
At the same time, "sunshine" is important, and when it comes time, I think that frank, open, and honest discussion on the mailing list is indispensible.
I think it has become abundantly clear over time that public attacks and counter-attacks generate a lot more heat than light. The notion that by calling someone a 'troll' or 'vandal' on a /ban page or in the comments field while reverting edits is going to reform them doesn't have a very good track record of actually working.
Banning usually works, but with some notable failures. Auto-reverting, by which I mean me declaring an 'open season' on someone, well, the jury is still out on that one.
But one thing that I'd like to see a lot more of is peer pressure to "leave a clean paper trail" for me. What I mean by that is that the best thing you can do to a problem user is be scrupulously kind and helpful, letting them hang themselves with their own hostility, rather than leaving me with a huge freaking mass of claims and counter-claims that I have to either sort through or not, as time permits.
There's an ulterior motive on my part, of course. If two parties who hate each other have a competition between themselves to be excessively kind and courteous to the other, just to leave me with no doubt as who who is the problem user, it turns out that no one is being a problem user, and we actually get work done rather than fighting each other.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
But one thing that I'd like to see a lot more of is peer pressure to "leave a clean paper trail" for me.
That's the one thing that's missing in most of these disputes.
There's an ulterior motive on my part, of course.
Sounds like you want your job to be easier! :-D
If two parties who hate each other have a competition between themselves to be excessively kind and courteous to the other, just to leave me with no doubt as who who is the problem user,
Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth): They all believe that when they go to heaven they will be playing harps. L'il Abner: Shmoos Star Trek: Tribbles :-)
Ec