So, there were some questions about using the real names functionality added for Wikimedia 1.3. They seem to have been rolled out for Wiktionary and other projects without a lot of problem.
I know this sounds lazy, but do I need to take the time to set up a boolean variable to hide this field on the login and preferences pages? Or will we roll out with the field default-on, and not able to be disabled by admins? (Users can always leave the field blank if they wish, of course.)
~ESP
Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org wrote:
So, there were some questions about using the real names functionality added for Wikimedia 1.3. They seem to have been rolled out for Wiktionary and other projects without a lot of problem.
The problems with this aren't likely to be seen in the first few days of it going live, and particularly not on wikis that suffer far less vandalism that the larger Wikipedias. The issue of irreversible vandalism has still not been addressed. This feature allows any user to claim the name of someone else and to insert that into the meta data of any article they edit, or have edited in the past. See http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Angela&action=dublincor... for example, which claims
dc:creatorEvan Prodromou</dc:creator>
It claims this because I set my real name to be "Evan Prodromou".
No one but a developer can revert this. You are listed as the most recent editor of that page and you can't do anything about it.
I could have done this even if I had been blocked from editing, meaning that not only is the vandalism unrevertable, but also the vandal doing this is unblockable.
Until this is made reversible in the same way normal edits are, I think this feature has a high chance of being misused, particularly on the larger wikis where retaliatory vandalism against sysops is common.
Angela.
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"A" == Angela sloog77@yahoo.co.uk writes:
A> Until this is made reversible in the same way normal edits are, A> I think this feature has a high chance of being misused, A> particularly on the larger wikis where retaliatory vandalism A> against sysops is common.
My first response is: perhaps there's retaliatory vandalism because sysops let themselves be trolled so easily. I find it hard to believe that grown men and women could let themselves be baited by this brand of kindergarten tactic.
My second response is: there are a couple of things we can do about it. Obviously, real names aren't unique, but user names _are_. We can handle this on the RDF side by making sure that not just names but also user names are listed in the RDF. This is a little hairy in the simple Dublin Core metadata schema we have, but the Qualified Dublin Core schema does allow for multiple data points on a single contributor.
In contributor credit blocks, we can link to the user page, like this:
<a href="/wiki/User:Angela">Evan Prodromou</a>
My last response is: since there are objections, I'll try to do the legwork to disable real names globally in 1.3. It does sadden me that there's such a troll-driven culture of fear on Wikimedia projects that something as simple as adding a real name can be cause for alarm.
~ESP
Evan Prodromou a écrit:
My last response is: since there are objections, I'll try to do the legwork to disable real names globally in 1.3. It does sadden me that there's such a troll-driven culture of fear on Wikimedia projects that something as simple as adding a real name can be cause for alarm.
Fear of trolls is not the reason why I am unfavorable to this.
Anthere-
My last response is: since there are objections, I'll try to do the legwork to disable real names globally in 1.3. It does sadden me that there's such a troll-driven culture of fear on Wikimedia projects that something as simple as adding a real name can be cause for alarm.
Fear of trolls is not the reason why I am unfavorable to this.
I agree with Anthere on this one. The real names feature simply adds unnecessary complexity. It's difficult enough to convey the difference between usernames and nicknames without an additional layer.
What we should instead work towards is easy changing of usernames. This requires a database redesign (planned anyway) and rethinking signatures (which we may also want to do to implement things like comment replies). Essentially, we need to use the user ID instead of the username whenever possible, and resolve it dynamically.
For example, a talk page thread could look like this:
== Chess ==
!52@408@200105151455< Dr. Floyd?>
!44@409@408@200105151456< Yes?>
!52@410@409@200105151457< Would you like to play a game of chess?
I play very well.>
Here, every line of dialogue begins with a sequence which contains a user ID (52, 44), a comment ID (408-410), an optional parent comment ID, and a timestamp. This allows us to dynamically render it like this:
Posted by: HAL 9000 on May 15, 2001, 14:55 UTC
Dr. Floyd? [reply] [edit]
Editing full talk pages would only be done for refactoring and archiving, where you don't need to see the user name anyway (the "Edit this page" on talk pages should probably be moved to somewhere less prominent and replaced with "Post a comment"). Section editing would be replaced on talk pages with comment editing.
It would be possible to mess up the page by editing comment IDs etc., but that's inevitable when you have thread-like features combined with full- page editing.
Regards,
Erik
"EM" == Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de writes:
EM> I agree with Anthere on this one. The real names feature EM> simply adds unnecessary complexity.
I think that's wrong. I think that having a real name as a field attached to a unique user ID string has a pretty strong precedent in computer systems. Unix accounts, email, chat systems, etc., have a unique string for user ID plus an optional place to put a full, non-unique name.
EM> It's difficult enough to convey the difference between EM> usernames and nicknames without an additional layer.
If it's difficult to convey that, there's a conceptual disconnect with nicknames.
I'd be very happy to remove the nickname field from MediaWiki.
Of the two -- real name or nickname -- the first is far more important than the second.
EM> What we should instead work towards is easy changing of EM> usernames.
That's significantly harder, and I'd say pretty unnecessary.
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_names
~ESP
I do not understand well what this roll-out thing mean. I do know that I would strongly prefer that this is not added to Wikimedia projects for a bunch of reasons I already outlined. I know not what other people think :-)
Evan Prodromou a écrit:
So, there were some questions about using the real names functionality added for Wikimedia 1.3. They seem to have been rolled out for Wiktionary and other projects without a lot of problem.
I know this sounds lazy, but do I need to take the time to set up a boolean variable to hide this field on the login and preferences pages? Or will we roll out with the field default-on, and not able to be disabled by admins? (Users can always leave the field blank if they wish, of course.)
~ESP
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