[WikiEN-l] "the experiment" - did it work?

[Erik Moeller]

On 6/21/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> My sense is that the number of articles created by unknown people is
> about the same, but that they now sign up for an account first.  This is
> not helpful, because whereas before we had the rough indicator of "ip
> number equals newbie" (imperfect), we now have less of an indicator.

In addition, a pseudonym is more anonymous than an IP address. Before,
it was possible to tell that user X came from school network Y. Now
you have to do a CheckUser to get the user's IP. The Seigenthaler
vandal was identified because he was an unregistered user.

GerardM also has some great ideas how we can build better
authentication into our software, so that, for instance, we know that
certain IP addresses are untrusted, and instead of blocking them
entirely, we allow users who are authenticated _within_ a school or
university to use that authentication in Wikipedia.

> What I would prefer to see, in the long run, is a replacement of locking
> and controls by flagging and visibility.  This is core to what I think
> works: not gatekeeping, but accountability.

Absolutely. My long-term vision of a replacement for both protection
and semi-protection is "quality protection", where the version you see
is the last reviewed one, but the article remains fully editable.
Following this strategy, we can make Wikipedia ever more openly
editable, continuing the path we have already taken.

Erik