[WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

[Ian Woollard]

On 09/10/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Which brings us back to Fleshlight. It was the subject of a subtle edit war
> between the company that manufactures it, and a similar company which wanted
> to  have an external link on the Fleshlight page.

I think that this is one of the big advantages of German-style ideas
like [[Wikipedia:Timed article change stabilisation mechanism]].

It makes it much more expensive to link farm (since they have to make
~50 good edits before changes appear, which costs *time* and hence
(for a company) *money*). They *need* the edits to quickly appear;
because they often get reverted quite quickly, adding a time delay
puts a spanner in the works for them.

Fundamentally, these kinds of ideas primarily add *visibility* about
the editors identities; it gives incentives not to be anonymous, not
to vandalise, and not to link farm, but as soon as editors register
accounts, then the wikipedia has a way of tracking and gaining
visibility of the editors character; without in any way necessarily
giving away their true identity. And these schemes do it without
preventing anonymous editors from making useful contributions.

> Danny

-- 
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.