Max,
Thank you. These ideals of which you speak are similar to those of argumentation. In the
ideals of argumentation, reason should prevail. In this way, it doesn’t matter who makes
an utterance, what matters is the utterance, its veracity, logical soundness, and so
forth. The ideals of collaboration in argumentation are for reason to prevail, for the
quality of the discussion, in software engineering, for the quality of the software, and
in Wikipedia, for the quality of the encyclopedia article.
I will collect together all of the points raised over the weekend and respond to them
early next week in a lengthy letter. Also, I think that after some discussion, we should
have material for a Wikipedia article, Account Verification on Wikipedia which I would
link to from a new section of Account Verification.
I think that we can untangle MediaWiki and Wikipedia. If it becomes possible for MediaWiki
projects to utilize OpenID Connect to link accounts, as I am describing, then we would be
able to say that every MediaWiki software user including Wikipedia could choose to
activate and configure such MediaWiki features and the matter would be one of discussing
whether the Wikipedia project should use the MediaWiki software features. I think that
there are two points, whether MediaWiki could/should provide account verification features
for its users and whether Wikipedia should make use of such features.
Best regards,
Adam
________________________________
From: Wikitech-l <wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Max Semenik
<maxsem.wiki(a)gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, May 4, 2018 10:37:36 PM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki and OpenID Connect
Have you tried discussing this with the community? Let me tell you what
their reaction will be: "we don't care who you are, we care what are your
sources". Everywhere online, exposing your real life identity means a
possibility of real life problems: stalking, harassment, attempts to get
someone you have a content dispute with fired. And I'm not even theorizing:
all the above things have happened on Wikipedia, multiple times. Social
networks want to have people's confirmed identities so that they could sell
them to the highest bidder. We at Wikimedia are different - we want to know
as little about our users as possible, and a bit less than that.
On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 7:14 PM, Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
Chad,
I’m working on a new Wikipedia article, Account Verification (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Account_verification).
Account verification can enhance the quality of online services,
mitigating sockpuppetry, bots, trolls, spam, vandalism, fake news,
disinformation and election interference.
Account verification was initially a feature for public figures and
accounts of public interest, individuals in music, acting, fashion,
government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business and
other key interest areas. Account verification was introduced to Twitter in
June 2009, Google+ in August 2011, Facebook in February 2012, Instagram in
December 2014, and Pinterest in June 2015.
In July 2016, Twitter announced that, beyond public figures, any
individual could apply for account verification. In March 2018, during a
live-stream on Periscope, Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter,
discussed the idea of allowing any individual to get a verified account (
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/twitter-verified-
account-open-everyone-1202722587/).
In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, announced
that purchasers of political or issue-based advertisements would be
required to verify their identities and locations. He also indicated that
Facebook would require individuals who manage large pages to be verified (
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104784125525891).
These events of March and April of 2018 occurred just recently. These
issues are both important and contemporary.
I’m looking at administrative functions such as page protection and
considering scenarios where one or more administrators would determine that
a page requires a verified account to edit. “Verified users” would be
another column in the table, Interaction of Wikipedia user groups and page
protection levels, at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Protection_policy#Overview_of_types_of_protection .
I would like to respond to your question both quickly and thoroughly. This
is part one (quickly) and I will work on part two (thoroughly) over the
weekend and respond early next week.
Best regards,
Adam
From: Chad<mailto:innocentkiller@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, May 4, 2018 9:03 PM
To: Wikimedia developers<mailto:wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki and OpenID Connect
On Fri, May 4, 2018, 1:21 PM Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
With such features, we can envision allowing
groups of users or admins to
determine that certain articles require a verified account to edit.
Why would this be desirable?
-Chad
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--
Best regards,
Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]])
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