[Wikimedia-l] Please, let's save the Wikipedia - from itself

[Fred Bauder]

> Well that is because you are not forced to register your real name and
> address before starting an account in the Wikis. Of course you can still
> use a pseudonym while working, but the org. would know who the users are.
> While diminish the will to mob, abuse, and vandalise tremendously when
> your true identity is known.
>
> I personally have always noticed that it is much better to use ones real
> name. I notice that aggressive people are less willing to attack someone
> whose name they know. It is even better if you show your face. People are
> much less willing to attack someone who they feel they know. The persons
> who still attack are often mentally instable and easy to track and report
> to the police.
>
> Regards,
> lars Gardenius

Ok, here's someone who seems to share some of your ideas:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:John_Vandenberg/WMF_BoT_candidature_notes#Quality

"There are many members of 'our community' who have 10,000+ edits and are
maliciously controlling negative content about other people, and doing it
anonymously. There are regular complaints being made on the talk pages,
to OTRS, and in social media about these editors. The problem is made
worse by our culture of protecting anonymity, resulting in an assumption
that 'outing' anyone is a bannable offense, even if they are one of these
problem editors. I predict that Wikipedia will increasingly become
ridiculed for its current position of allowing anonymous edits to
biographies of living people unless we can build better systems of
identifying and preventing these problem editors. We need to innovate. We
need to warn existing and future problem editors that malicious editing
from an anonymous accounts is not safe, and the media is starting to
undertake real investigative journalism of Wikipedia editors where they
see problems.

The most important step in fixing the cultural problem is to introduce
the ability for Wikipedia accounts to be voluntarily linked to identities
in other systems, such as twitter, facebook, identica, etc. This could be
included in the account creation process, provided that it is optional
and the risks are clearly explained. With this in place, new accounts can
declare up front that they are not trying to hide their identity, and do
not mind their identity and COI being discussed publicly.

The next strategic measure that should be taken is the introduction of a
complaint system designed for average Internet users with no wiki editing
skills, and that complaint management system needs to support resolution
and escalation of complaints (i.e. 'mark resolved', with 'mark
unresolved' that ensures the complaint can't be 'resolved' again by the
same person who marked it resolved the first time; an escalate function
that feeds into a mediation process; rather than overusing the 'block' an
account functionality,..."

>From one of the arbitrators who ran for the board.

Fred