[Wikipedia-l] Article validation: allow IP ratings for the raw data phase

[Jimmy Wales]

David Gerard wrote:
> I suggest that we allow ratings by anonymous users (IP numbers), at least
> in 1.5.
> 
> Reasons for this:
> 
> * we've always worked by leaving things as open as possible and only
>   restricting as needed;
> 
> * we're explicitly not using the data for anything important yet, so if ten
>   thousand rating spammers put [[Image:Autofellatio.jpg]] top marks for
>   everything, it won't actually affect anything;
> 
> * the raw data will be of great interest to people, and as wide as possible
>   is good. (I can see the academics studying Wikipedia slavering for the
>   ratings data tarball ;-)

I agree completely.  There are many many interesting things which might
be gleaned from this data.  I think the absolutely key point to all of
this is that *we are not doing anything with the data at all* (and this
should be emphasized at every point possible).

This is a research project, an exploration of whether such a tool might
be useful to us in quality control, and we really want to avoid making a
game of it.  Perhaps the data from anons will be useless nonsense,
perhaps it will be noisy but highly informative about articles where we
don't have enough community members to give feedback, perhaps it will be
astoundingly good in every possible way.  :-)  We won't know unless we
collect it.

And if spammers write scripts to do what David suggests here, then we
may consider this a small victory.  Distracting spammers into wasting
time in a wholly useless and harmless activity is surely a service to
humanity.

--Jimbo