On 11/2/05, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l> wrote:
For these reasons, I would personally be in favour of blocking access, or at least editing, to all anonymizing services.
I would say that more important than trying to identify each user's IP and disallowing anonymity -- which strikes me as the wrong way to go -- would be asking users (presumed anonymous) to verify their goodwill and interest in the projects by working in a sandboxed area, or submitting time-delayed changes, until they had demonstrated a reasonable threshhold of good faith; at which point they could vandalize and be quickly blocked, having spent much more time getting to that point than the vandal-fighters did blocking them.
Anonymity serves useful purposes; we should try to preserve those while promoting the productive development of the projects.
To be mergist about these ideas... one could offer users both options. 1) edit under a privacy policy which disallows anonymity, or 2) edit anonymously, first passing through a sandbox stage to demonstrate that you are not a bot and are acting in good faith.
- SJ +
The amount of intervention required to do as you suggest - check all time delayed entries for vandalism, create a system to over come edit conflicts which develop during the time delay (more "magic solutions"), create and implement a policy covering "reasonable threshold of good faith", managing anon user privileges who meet that threshold - would cost more than the current vandal fighting does. The point is to reduce the existing cost significantly.
The proposed model allows for anonymity except when an IP is investigated for wrong doing, and would probably reduce time cost to sites by preventing anonymized IPs from editing maliciously. By implementing a system which requires monitoring, decision-making, and user privilege management you would create an onerous time task for smaller projects and likely create opportunities for conflict which are unnecessary.
Amgine
On 11/3/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
On 11/2/05, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net http://saewyc.net http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l> wrote:
For these reasons, I would personally be in favour of blocking access, or at least editing, to all anonymizing services.
I would say that more important than trying to identify each user's IP and disallowing anonymity -- which strikes me as the wrong way to go -- would be asking users (presumed anonymous) to verify their goodwill and interest in the projects by working in a sandboxed area, or submitting time-delayed changes, until they had demonstrated a reasonable threshhold of good faith; at which point they could vandalize and be quickly blocked, having spent much more time getting to that point than the vandal-fighters did blocking them.
Anonymity serves useful purposes; we should try to preserve those while promoting the productive development of the projects.
To be mergist about these ideas... one could offer users both options. 1) edit under a privacy policy which disallows anonymity, or 2) edit anonymously, first passing through a sandbox stage to demonstrate that you are not a bot and are acting in good faith.
- SJ +
The amount of intervention required to do as you suggest - check all time delayed entries for vandalism, create a system to over come edit conflicts which develop during the time delay (more "magic solutions"), create and implement a policy covering "reasonable threshold of good faith", managing anon user privileges who meet that threshold - would cost more than the current vandal fighting does. The point is to reduce the existing cost significantly.
I agree with this completely. It's just as easy to revert an edit as it is to approve one, so I don't see any sense in delaying entries. Yes, it means the version of the page presented to the public won't be as likely to be vandalized, but I think the difficulty in programming such a fork would outweigh the benefits. Some sort of "reviewed version" of the entire encyclopedia would be nice, but if you figure out how to do that might as well review *all* edits, not just ones coming through anonymizing proxies. That said, there is nearly complete agreement that there should be a certain class of user/IP address combinations that should be able to edit even when the IP address is blocked. I think something like an anonymizing proxy would be a perfect type of IP block for that situation. It makes no sense for longstanding users (even admins!) to be blocked from editing simply because they're accessing the system through a proxy.
The proposed model allows for anonymity except when an IP is investigated
for wrong doing, and would probably reduce time cost to sites by preventing anonymized IPs from editing maliciously. By implementing a system which requires monitoring, decision-making, and user privilege management you would create an onerous time task for smaller projects and likely create opportunities for conflict which are unnecessary.
Amgine
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