cookfire wrote:
When reading the eG's message, I was also wondering what is so special about Japanese copyright law that it makes building up a free dictionary harder than in other languages. I must say that I do understand the problem with vandalism. Since the summer the English Wiktionary gets a lot of vandalism and spamvertising too. The months before that the problem was far less. The French, Dutch and Spanish Wiktionaries are relatively calm as far as vandalism is concerned, but maybe the Japanese Wiktionary attracts Chinese spammers as well. What I see as a solution is to create a broad base of sysops, so obvious vandalism and spamvertising can be killed on the spot (and thus only wastes the time of one person). Of course the trick is to find dependable people who are able and want to consacrate a lot of time to the project. It takes a bit of time for them to show up, but they do exist.
The English Wiktionary with more than 56,000 articles should expect more attention from spamdals than a project with only 2,000 articles. A complete shutdown just doesn't seem like a constructive solution to the problems. They may, as you suggest, need more sysops, but my guess is that the problem is deeper than that. It could be an overly rigid attitude toward rules.
Ec