[WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Fwd: Wired: Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text

[Nathan Russell]

I think there's a real risk here, to be even more blunt.

Calling it a trust system risks someone looking at a piece of text and
saying "oh, look, this is trusted, so i can
-rely on this as advice before doing something dangerous/in making a
medical decision/etc"
-use this as my sole source in writing my college paper"
-take for granted the claim this text makes that a living person
cheated on his spouse (or worse possibilities"
-assume this means WP as a group/the foundation itself makes the claim
that *I* cheated on someone"
... and then, when the claim proves to be false, become angry and go
after the Foundation?  Not necessarily legally, though....  I fear
that if they make an assumption "this text is highlighted as high
trust, so it can be trusted", and are told that this is the meaning on
a help page, we could be liable.

Nathan

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 6:36 AM, FT2<ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think there's a terminology issue.
>
> We cannot refer to this as a "trust" system, however "Wikitrust" brands it.
> We just can't. It misleads too many, and implies too much.
>
> Call it a "text tracing system" or "a gadget to highlight text origins"
> instead. It's a lot less glamorous, sounds alot less dramatic, doesn't get
> the dollars - but it's got zero capability of misleading.
>
> FT2
>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 8:37 PM, James Alexander <jamesofur at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> How would the blame maps work with people editing around vandalism? For
>> example someone either blanks the page or does extensive vandalism to it
>> (especially over the course of a couple days or a couple users). I would
>> imagine it would be fairly easy if the bad contributions just got
>> rolledback
>> but would the old blamemaps still be reinstated if someone went in and
>> manually copy/pasted the old version (or something very close) in or would
>> the system count it as a new contribution?
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:12 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > 2009/8/31 David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com>:
>> >
>> > > I am a little concerned that we are adopting a metric into our
>> > > interface without adequate testing.
>> >
>> >
>> > It appears we're not and Wired completely jumped the gun. There is no
>> > timeframe for release of this thing even as an optional extra.
>> >
>> >
>> > - d.
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > WikiEN-l mailing list
>> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> James Alexander
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jamesofur
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>