[WikiEN-l] Missed Opportunities to have avoided the Durova Case

[David Goodman]

The clue is when a new user who looks like a returner making use of
previously acquired operating knowledge starts making dubiously
productive edits, and doesnt respond to a question about whether and
under what ID he has previously edited. Nobody does that with honest
intentions.

On 11/27/07, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > Do you have any idea how many people will look like returners over the
> > course of the years? As WP becomes an institution and people dip into it
> > every now and then and then choose to settle down to an account once they
> > already know their way around? This sort of paranoia is so detached from the
> > reality of how most of us, especially the casual editors who keep this place
> > growing, operate, that its laughable. You're designing the responses of a
> > top 5 websites around your fears of a dozen people so inept they were kicked
> > off Wikipedia. And most of us uninvolved in the debates earlier this year
> > neither understand nor share this level of concern.
>
> This is a valid point. The vast majority of banned users would self-destruct
> well before they ever got anywhere near adminship. We don't need to worry too
> much about this. Especially given the likelyhood of false positives. I myself
> started editing as an IP about a month before registering an account, and I
> know someone else who registered an account after already having edited as an
> IP for about 2 months. Someone who looked at her edits might very well decide
> it was some sort of returning user. The damage that this sort of attitude can
> do if not approached carefully is much higher than the benefit.
>
> Now, there are a variety of other techniques that can be used to find banned
> users and taken together with those they are often effective. However, we
> shouldn't simply use evidence prior experience with Wikipedia as a good reason
> to assume someone is a banned returning user.
>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.