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 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.
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 10:48 AM To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org; Wikimedia developers Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] French wikipedians requesting to install Wikiforum extension on French Wikipedia
I was prepared to say that I'm against the idea until I tried it.
For me the key is: I can edit other people's posts. This keeps it a wiki, and this has very important social implications.
I would be opposed to much use of talk pages that allow for discussions that don't let other people edit.
It is very important as a matter of mutual trust that we *can* edit comments, even if we almost *never* do, as a matter of custom.
Public restaurants might be much safer if every table was in a different room with a locked door. That way, no one could hit each other. But it's good for society that we sit at restuarants peacefully together. Sure, people *could* hit each other, but they *don't*. (Usually :-))
I like it.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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
"Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com writes:
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.
That's how things ought to work for article text. "Signed" posts on talk pages are different. At least, if you edit someone's post on a talk page, make sure to remove the signature (this --~~~~ marker resp. its expansion).
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.
Yes, in general it works this way. Unfortunately, that's not the truth if people "rename" or "join" articles; this basically often means to delete an article and its edit history. Recently I tracked down such a case on the German WP:
1/ In January 2003 [[de:Konrad Witz]] was created - by me, accidentally.
2/ During the next two years some 10 edits took place without enhancing it remarkable.
3/ In February 2005 an IP user created a badly written article (babelfish?) with the name [[de:Conrad Witz]]; it is longer and offers more "facts".
4/ Some days later a WP admin moved away the old "Konrad Witz" article with the intend to rename [[de:Conrad Witz]] to [[de:Konrad Witz]]. ATM, "Konrad Witz" sit in the "trash" area waiting deletion.
5/ Some copied a sentence from the old article and basically written in 2003 to the new one - without a proper checkin message; now it looks as if this sentence was written in 2005.
Looking at the current edit history of [[de:Konrad Witz]] you will believe, info on "Konrad Witz" was missing in the German WP up til February 2005. Similar "accidents" happen all the time and as time goes by, edit histories lie more and more.
I will publish this message as [[en:User:Keichwa/Everything Is In the Edit History]]
On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 at 10:56 +0000, 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?
It's usefull to add line feed inside a mail to answer a specific question. In wiki this can be used to obfuscate thread but it's more often correctly used.
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 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 have history to catch such behavior, w/o history I'll agree with you. Also what about vandalism, spam etc. A feature to disable edit of comments means than some sort of user (sysop ?) must be able to edit/remove other comments, not a good idea to give more work to sysops. It'll also raise the problem of giving more power to sysops, seeing some flame war about sysops power I doubt allowing only them to edit comments will be welcome.
Philippe Elie
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