On Jul 8, 2006, at 4:01 PM, mboverload wrote:
I am utterly shocked by your reply.
I'm sorry, but I'm also unsurprised.
The only way to stop dubious edits by anon users is to not allow them to edit.
Again, you don't clarify whether you mean: 1) Wikipedia editors who do not associate their editing with their legal name, or 2) Wikipedia editors editing without logging in.
Further, "stop" is not entirely clear - edits are atomic transactions - either they have not yet happened, or they have already happened - it's not possible to "stop" them.
It is possible to prevent a given user account and/or IP address from making future edits, for specified lengths of time. This does not directly translate to the ability to stop actual *people* from making future edits.
In nearly all cases, we can make it harder for people to make future edits, and we can remove all traces of past edits they have made, but we can't entirely prevent them from making any edits. There are too many public computers out there. So, your statement is a non-starter - we can't do that. However, luckily, as I said, we have a large number of measures to make it *harder* for a given person to make future edits, and/or to cause their past edits to be more or less hidden, and most people who make bad edits can be successfully persuaded, by means of these measures, to give up on making future edits, at least for a while. That's the nature of Wikipedia (and the world at large).
I don't think that should be done.
Well, since it's impossible, I suppose it's good you don't think we should do it.
Newspapers don't care about how fast it was reverted, it's always in the edit history.
Not always. It can be removed from public view by deletion, and removed from the view of those with the sysop flag by use of the Oversight feature. But, most of the time, we don't do either of those things.
Jesus christ.
Well, we do have an article (or 5) on [[Jesus Christ|Him]], but I'm not sure of the relevance.
I stated the obvious
I hope readers of this thread will note that, contrary to being "obvious", what you stated is not even "possible".
and you jump on me for being a troll.
I viewed you as acting like one; it was not meant as a comment on your person, merely on your posts to this list. Nevertheless, on reflection, you do seem to be posting in good faith; I am less certain of my view at this point.
That's pretty hurtful.
As I said above, I'm sorry, but unsurprised.
Jesse Weinstein