How do you tell if users interact? Cross user talk page edits? If you go by edits or edits to talk, what is the difference between people in a clique and people that disagree all the time from the program's standpoint.
For identifying non-vandalized versions, cliques don't seem to pose much of a threat. The only way for that to be a problem is for people to edit stack, similar to the issue of users not using preview and making a ton of edits in a row. This could game the system sometimes, but it is also very obvious behavior when the same 2-3 new (otherwise thy would have probably been blocked by now) people pile on 8 edits after each other. Not only will it stand out, but all it would do is influence the "most trusted"/"likely unvandalized" stable version or the trust for the current revision in their favor...until someone just reverts it anyway. It's too much work for too little plus likely getting caught in the process.
The system will not be bullet proof. Admins have gone rouge before. Even for FlaggedRevs, "editor"/"surveyor" status may be abused by a very small number of people. By default it checks for email, a userpage, 150 edits spread out well, account age. Still, some people could get through and then troll. The thing is though, that it is just not worth, as they would have the rights removed and possibly be blocked immediately. And after what? Sighting some vandalism, which would just get reverted and fixed in a few minutes. To do it again would require another IP and another account back at square one again. That's just not worth it for a troll. We get vandals from people testing and joking around as well as people that just whip new accounts out their ass every minutes because it is so easy. FlaggedRevs makes it not worth it. Likewise, trying to game Article Trust does seem to very "worth it" much either.
Think of how long login didn't have captchas for such a large site. That's because nobody cared to sit there guessing around or writing bots then. If things are too hard to game, people won't care. The "rewards" of gaming this system is even way less than hacking an account. It's a bit better with FlaggedRevs because you commit to having done reviews, so reviewing vandalism goes straight against you. But still, tweaking junk edits 15 times or having the same two editors cluster 8 tiny edits after each other accomplishes little, is noticeable, and IMO, not really worth it. Also, we don't have to use AT or FR exclusively, and some combination of both (quality > sighted > autotrust > current) could avoid the multiple edit gaming issue altogether.
-Aaron Schulz
> Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:49:30 +0100
> From: john.erling.blad@jeb.no
> To: wikiquality-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikiquality-l] Wikipedia colored according to trust
>
> I think that kind of weighting is correct as long as it is symmetrical
> (ie. do-undo -pairs weights approx the same). Clique-building is
> interesting although when you are able to analyze which ones interacts.
> Then you can punish people when their friends do bad edits. Its not as
> bad as it sounds, the reasoning is that often someone writes the article
> under guidance of some other. You don't want to punish only one user in
> such situations but both.
> John E
>
> Luca de Alfaro skrev:
> > I am not sure I am replying to the correct point, but, the system
> > weighs an author feedback as a function of the reputation of the author.
> > Reputation is "linear" in the sense that new feedback is simply added
> > to the reputation.
> > A user of reputation r gives weight log(1 + r) to hiers feedback.
> > We use this logarithmic scaling to prevent long-time editors from
> > forming a clique that is essentially impervious to feedback from the
> > rest of the community (will this kind of comments get me skinned? :-)
> >
> > Luca
> >
> > On Dec 21, 2007 11:41 AM, John Erling Blad <john.erling.blad@jeb.no
> > <mailto:john.erling.blad@jeb.no>> wrote:
> >
> > It is wise to make a note about the fact that such systems make it
> > possible to deduce earlier in the mean that someone is a vandal or
> > not,
> > but it can't replace a good reader that responds to an error. This
> > creates the rather annoying situation where a response from a casual
> > reader should be weighted more than non-beginners, but this makes the
> > system suceptible to users wanting to skew its metrics on specific
> > users.
> >
> > John E
> >
> > Aaron Schulz skrev:
> > > Right. Also, we need to be clear what we want this to do. It will
> > > never be great at determining fact-checked material. What it is good
> > > at is spotting the more dubious stuff, like possible vandalism.
> > This
> > > makes the possibility of having "most trusted" stable version as
> > > discussed earlier. Small changes not only can be big in meaning, but
> > > they still attest to the trust.
> > >
> > > If I read a sentence to change some minor thing, I still read
> > it. If a
> > > wrongly says "he identifies himself as bisexual" or "born in 1885"
> > > rather than 1985 in a page when I edit, I am going to revert if I
> > > catch it. Even if just making some grammar/syntax cleanup. So each
> > > time people look at stuff if still attest to the page a little bit,
> > > from a vandalism perspective.
> > >
> > > The algorithms can be made more strict to catch more general dubious
> > > info better, but it is not that bad at that already, and the
> > stricter
> > > it gets, the more it gets under inclusive as to what is considered
> > > unlikely to be vandalized.
> > >
> > > -Aaron Schulz
> > >
> > >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > > Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:34:47 -0800
> > > From: luca@dealfaro.org <mailto:luca@dealfaro.org>
> > > To: wikiquality-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > <mailto:wikiquality-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> > > Subject: Re: [Wikiquality-l] Wikipedia colored according to
> > trust
> > >
> > > If you want to pick out the malicious changes, you need to flag
> > > also small changes.
> > >
> > > "Sen. Hillary Clinton did *not* vote in favor of war in Iraq"
> > >
> > > "John Doe, born in *1947*"
> > >
> > > The ** indicates changes.
> > >
> > > I can very well make a system that is insensitive to small
> > > changes, but then the system would also be insensitive to many
> > > kinds of malicious tampering, and one of my goals was to make it
> > > hard for anyone to change without leaving at laest a minimal
> > trace.
> > >
> > > So it's a matter of goals, really.
> > >
> > > Luca
> > >
> > > On Dec 21, 2007 10:01 AM, Jonathan Leybovich
> > <jleybov@gmail.com <mailto:jleybov@gmail.com>
> > > <mailto: jleybov@gmail.com <mailto:jleybov@gmail.com>>> wrote:
> > >
> > > One thing that stood out for me in the small sample of
> > articles I
> > > examined was the flagging of innocuous changes by casual
> > users to
> > > correct spelling, grammar, etc. Thus a "nice-to-have"
> > would be a
> > > "smoothing" algorithm that ignores inconsequential changes
> > > such as
> > > spelling corrections, etc. or the reordering of
> > > semantically-contained
> > > units of text (for example, reordering the line items in a
> > > list w/o
> > > changing the content of any particular line item, etc.,
> > or the
> > > reordering of paragraphs and perhaps even sentences.) I
> > think
> > > this
> > > would cover 90% or more of changes that are immaterial
> > to an
> > > article's
> > > credibility.
> > >
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