Dear Wikipedians, I've wanted to write this letter for a long time, but has delayed it deeming the upkeep of Wikipedia principles more important than my comfort. But the principles become broken anyway, and my comfort is as well gone; therefore I'll tell you what troubles me below. It is not a secret that Wikipedia is at occasions the scene of massive content wars between the supporters of various positions. This is natural and expectable, the resolution coming at the end of each such war being an improvement to the original article. However, there's one content war that is unique, in several ways. It concerns the Arab-Israeli, and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts. During the recent months, Wikipedia has been the target of almost daily twiddling, in sum amounting to vandalism, from different supporters of the Arab position on the internet, most often editing the page anonymously. I do not oppose them stating their views; however, their style of modifying bits here and there, copy & pasting copyrighted articles, linking to pages of explicitly propagandist nature, coupled with the fact that they do not have a clue of what NPOV and Wikipedia in general is all about, creates a serious problem. On the other side of this equation, however, there's me. There aren't too many people who are aware of the complex history of the region on Wikipedia; out of them, there are fewer less who are ready to share they knowledge (by risking to pace on the mine-field of political discussions). Although I do not claim to be deeply knowledgeable, it is often only up to me to include the Israeli perspective in these articles. This is not to say that I don't get any help from you - I often do, and I'm deeply grateful for it. But unfortunately, I am one man, yet what I face is a whole horde of anonymous trolls. Just removing random changes and fixing "omissions" takes all the time I can spare for Wikipedia; considering the growing popularity of the site, I have to admit that my outlook on further contribution grows grimmer; needless to say that this disappoints me, as I have a deep sympathy to the Wikipedia effort, and politics (in forms relevant to this discussion) are far from being on the list of my favorite topics. The basic premise of the Wiki concept is that in an open environment, an article which can be edited by many participants, enjoys peer cooperation, and as a result becomes better. I feel that this premise cannot work in this case, as the troll cut-ins are random, and they certainly are not interested in improving the article. The situation is too heated-up to allow normal cooperation. I should make it clear that in such an environment, my own ability to write good-quality content (that is belonging to a NPOV, researched, carefully-worded) is impaired. It is not just my personal comfort that suffers; trolling does hurt Wikipedia by creating biased content, which could, if uninterrupted, in the long run jeopardize Wikipedia's reputation as a source representative and respective of different perspectives, and showing understanding to various positions, not just one. My request for you, then, is to block some of the most contested articles (the list can be discussed elsewhere) from being edited by anonymous ("IP-only") users. Logged-in users will have access; whoever wishes to include his points, will be able to do it in the traditional Wiki fashion - by debate and cooperation. It seems to me as the optimal way of promoting the peaceful conclusion of this content war - by disarmament, and minimal impairing of Wiki rights. If you have any other proposals - I'll be glad to know them. I do not know which course we shall ultimately take, but I am confident that it is in our power to bring about a proper, comprehensive solution for this situation. With deepest respect, Uri Yanover