[WikiEN-l] Dealing with juvenile vandalism

[darthvader1219 at gmail.com]

On 3/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I may not have explained it well. Would this help:
>
> 7.55: World sees "Mary is smart." Editors see "Mary is smart."
> 8:00: World sees "Mary is smart." Editors see "Mary is a poopoo."
> 8:05: World sees "Mary has an IQ of 130." Editors see "Mary has an IQ of 130."
> 8:15: World sees "Mary has an IQ of 130." Editors see "Mary has an IQ of 130."
>
> So you see, at 8:05, a registered editor sees the anon change, and
> fixes it. Since the editor is registered, their change goes live
> straight away.
>
> Steve

This sounds like a good idea in theory, but I rather think the
implementation will be problematic. From what I understand of what you
said, registered users will be able to see all edits immediately, and
have all their edits applied immediately, while anons can not see the
edits made by any other anon for fifteen minutes. If this is the case,
it could be pretty jarring for an anon to go to the edit screen only
to find out that three people have edited it but haven't had their
edits made live yet, and will only make anonymous editing (which from
what I understand constitutes the majority of the editing that takes
place) of any highly trafficked article more annoying and stressful
and could reduce the amount of editing that takes place altogether. It
would (considering the speed at which any blatant vandalism is
reverted) only moderately improve how the encyclopedia looks for the
majority of readers at the expense of a rather large amount of
inconvenience for the majority of editors, and from my point of view
it is simply not worth the negative effects.

--Dycedarg