[Wikipedia-l] [Note: Obscene language on Tsunami Article]

[Arwel Parry]

It's depressing to see how many times the Indian Ocean earthquake 
article has been vandalised and reverted. I think Jimbo's proposal is 
pretty good, but with the slow speed of the servers recently maybe 10 
minutes isn't long enough.

I have previously defended the right of anyone to edit Wikipedia, but 
I'm afraid I'm increasingly coming to the view that anonymous users 
should be prevented from editing articles, or at least from editing 
anything linked to the main page. I would like to propose that we 
institute a policy of imposing immediate 24 hour bans, without prior 
warning, on any anon user that vandalises an "extremely popular" page as 
defined by Jimbo, or a page linked to the main page.

--Arwel (User:Arwel Parry)


In message <20050107150258.GT22568 at wikia.com>, "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" 
<jwales at wikia.com> writes
>I am anonymizing this complaint, but I wanted to point it out to
>people and to point out that complaints of this type are increasingly
>common.  As we get more and more popular, vandalism of popular
>articles, though corrected very very quickly, is also seen by more and
>more people.
>
>My technical proposal to deal with this (and I did not invent this
>idea, I don't know who did, but it has been floating around) is a new
>form of page semi-protection for extremely popular/important articles.
>
>Basically, pages in this case will have a published form and a working
>form.  The working form automatically becomes the published form
>whenever one of two conditions is satisfied:
>
>1.  X minutes has passed with no new edits
>2.  A sysop forces publication immediately
>
>'X' can be left variable, but for most cases I think 10 minutes would
>suffice.  We might experiment with longer pauses for articles in cases
>other than "popular + vandalism", for example as a new approach to
>dealing with traditional edit wars in at least some cases.
>
>For the user interface, when an article is in such a state, it looks
>totally normal at the usual url.  But instead of 'edit this page' you
>see 'live version'.  Click on that, and you're at the live version,
>warts and all, and you can operate normally from there.
>
>I think this solution is softer than our current solution, which is
>just to protect the article.  George W. Bush was protected for 8 days
>during the height of the election season because pranksters kept
>putting goatse.cx images, etc., on the article.
>
>This option would give us 10 minutes to deal with vandalism, and would
>give us the opportunity to keep working on the article as well.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>p.s.  In case someone thinks the 'sysop forces publication
>immediately' is somehow unfair, note that it is necessary to prevent a
>denial of service attack once a bit of vandalism *does* slip through,
>which is inevitable.  That is, if someone managed to get vandalism on
>an important page, they could prevent others from removing it by
>simply repeatedly touching the page within the 10 minute window.
>
>The 'sysop force' means that responsible people can get a sensible
>version back live.  We can make clear that sysops are only supposed to
>do this in the case of vandalism, not just because they don't like the
>way the article is written.
>
>
>
>
>----- Forwarded message from heather hudak <heatherhudak at yahoo.com> -----
>
>From: heather hudak <heatherhudak at yahoo.com>
>Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 06:52:46 -0800 (PST)
>To: jwales at wikia.com
>Subject: Note: Obscene language on Tsunami Article
>
>Hi Jimmy,
>
>I often visit Wikipedia for info. I find it reasonably
>credible and it has a large amount of information.
>This morning, I was looking for a quick bite about
>Tsunamis. I was greeted by the used of the word
>"f*ckers" etc., numerous times throughout the text all
>the way to end of the article. It seems someone is
>playing a bit of a nasty gag on your site. It also
>takes away from the credibility Wikipedia has
>achieved. The following is the link at which I found
>this information:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake
>
>This is disturbing to find at any site, about any
>topic, but expecially a topic that encompasses so much
>devastation.
>
>While I am a young, reasonable business woman, I am
>not necessarily offended by this, I just think it is
>highly inappropriate and will likely deter me from
>trusting Wikipedia information in the future. I use
>the site very frequently (daily), and I can't imagine
>that will continue. Prior to this, I was unaware that
>Wikipedia received submissions from outside sources.
>This situation encouraged me to learn more and trust
>less. I hope you will look into ways to prevent this
>sort of obscene language from penetrating the
>information on your web site.
>
>Sincerely,
>Heather Hudak
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
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>
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>

-- 
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/