Writing this idea off by saying "its the wiki way" is somewhat of a cop out. If every discussion was settled with that argument, then there wouldn't even be the option of protecting pages. Just because someone *shouldn't* do something, doesn't mean they won't. I'm betting there are enough trolls out there to prove that a protection system is needed. If not now, I'm sure it'll come when a forum system is in place.

I'm not saying that the security should be turned on from the very start, but I do think it should at least be included so that it can be turned on if need be.

Another good reason for a good security system for talk pages is because this software is used by a lot of other people than just the wikipedia sites, and I've heard from quite a bit of them that they wish the software had this type of feature.

Ryan Lane Naval Oceanographic Office

-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@wikimedia.org [SMTP:wikitech-l-bounces@wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 11:05 AM To: Wikimedia developers Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] French wikipedians requesting to install Wikifor um extension on French Wikipedia

Lane, Ryan wrote:

...

I personally don't understand the reasoning to want to edit other

people's

...

posts. Can you give an example of a good reason to edit someone's post? Truthfully, I think its more of a detriment than a benefit to be able to edit someone's posts. I can think of a ton of bad reasons to edit

another

...

persons post, but very very few good reasons.

It's the wiki way. Having the ability to edit what other people write gives rise to a culture of co-operation rather than confrontation.

We don't have a strong culture of refactoring, but it is traditional in a wiki to refactor discussions, which means, for someone to come through and take a large discussion and neutrally summarize what it was all about. Everything is in the edit history, and of course people can refactor the refactoring.

Basically, having a system open where people *can* do something bad, but don't, gives rise to a spirit of helpful togetherness. Building barriers out of fear of bad behavior gives rise to a spirit of mistrust.

...

It would be MUCH better to have a system where the user making the post allowed/disallowed people to edit their posts. If I'm signing my posts, I don't want someone to edit it to change my opinion to side with theirs. For instance, if this email were a part of a thread in a forum, you could change it to make it look like I side with your argument, and most people wouldn't notice.

We don't really have any problems with people doing stuff like that. It would be a massive social faux pas to edit someone's post to change your opinion. Just because it is *possible* doesn't mean that it's a *problem*.

It's like saying we need a law to prevent people from going into elevators together, because if we don't, people might stab each other. Well, yeah, they might, but we're better of in a positive social environment than a too-cautious social environment.

This is similar to a discussion we had about protecting user pages, and there was very universal agreement that with only rare exceptions (heroic vandal fighters like RickK for example, whose user page would be a constant mess, and even there of course I would encourage him to try to keep it unprotected if he can) user pages should be unprotected.

--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l