Wikipedia to Restrict Creation of Articles

cine writes "News.com reports that starting Monday Wikipedia will restrict the creation of new articles to members. Anonymous users will only be able to edit existing articles. This move comes after a controversial week for the free online encyclopedia" From the article: "Wales said the Seigenthaler article not only escaped the notice of this corps of watchdogs, but it also became a kind of needle in a haystack: The page remained unchanged for so long because it wasn't linked to from any other Wikipedia articles, depriving it of traffic that might have led to closer scrutiny."

Comments

That's Okay

[bclark]

I was never the first to post an article anyway.

Is there a difference?

[Mecdemort]

When it is so easy to create an account on wikipedia, how does this really affect anything? Banning anonymous article creation isn't suddenly going to make all articles interlinked, nor will it stop people from making pointless articles.

Re:Is there a difference?

[pomo monster]

"Anonymous" Wikipedia accounts are actually less anonymous than registered users. As an anonymous user, your IP is visible for tracking across the site and tracing to your physical location; but you have the ability to create as many username sockpuppets as you want.

As a formerly prolific contributor, I never really understood how registration was helpful for anything but tracking people who want to be tracked.

Re:Is there a difference?

[R.Mo_Robert]

Dial-up users (and, yes, there still are some) generally don't have a static IP, so it's not like the IP address is all that identifying. Even on broadband, if people wanted to, I'm sure they could go through some sort of proxy if they really wanted to.

That being said, unfortunately, I really don't think this new policy will help things, either.

Re:Is there a difference?

[chris_mahan]

No email requirement.

You can see the entire edit history of a logged-in account.

Re:Is there a difference?

[sbaker]

Since anonymous users can still edit articles, it is perfectly possible to log in using a legitimate account, create a new page with minimal content then log out and put whatever crap you want into it using an anonymous account.

Perhaps a better approach is to somehow disallow access to disconnected pages. When the last link to the page goes away, the article is put into hibernation until someone again links to it.

Re:Is there a difference?

[Woldry]

I work in a library. We provide free Internet access to literally thousands of patrons every week. Under state law, what you do in the library is confidential, so we do not keep any record of your Internet usage. Should an anonymous Wikipedia account be traced to a library IP, there is no possible way to determine who was using a particular library computer at a particular time on a particular day.

It might narrow you down to a particular physical community, or at least to being within driving distance of a particular community. But otherwise it sounds pretty darn anonymous to me.

Re:Is there a difference?

[Professor_UNIX]

Actually, don't do that... I'd probably get agents knocking at my door for suggesting it.

/puts on tinfoil hat.

Re:Is there a difference?

[jabuzz]

The point is no records are kept. It does not matter how much the Secret Service jump up and down and shout, there is no record for them to find. The best they can hope for is that a CCTV camera is pointed at the library entrance and a member of staff can give a reliable description of who used a particular computer at a particular time. They might be able to track you down from that but it would be a tall order. They might also be able to employ DNA and fingerprint evidence to narrow it down a bit as well, but with such a contaminated "scene of crime" and a bit of a disguise you can throw them off the track.

Re:Is there a difference?

[XPulga]

In Brazil (and most likely in other countries too) an IP address and a timestamp of an event coming from it (DoS attack, break-in attempt, fraud ou whatever) is enough to identify the user. If something unlawful is performed on the net, the authorities have the right to obtain the user's identity from the ISP. ISPs are required to be able to identify users based on IP/timestamp. Most ISPs disencourage IP-sharing (one user buys fat-pipe link, provides access to friends/neighbours via NAT) and even if that is the case, the subscription owner is legally responsible for whatever crimes their NAT'ed friends commit online.

Re:Is there a difference?

[Woldry]

Not all libraries have security tapes. My library added them only five years ago, and only because of rampant physical vandalism by teens. Even so, we don't have any cameras trained on the Internet terminals (aside from a brief time a few years back during a child pornography investigation by the local police department). You might be able to match up the time of occurrence with the appearance of individuals on the tapes showing the entrances, parking lots, restroom doors, or other areas of the library. But that wouldn't provide direct evidence that person X used computer Y, only that person X was in the library during the span of time when computer Y was used to commit crime Z.

Now I'm hungry for alphabet soup, for some reason ...

I guess it had to happen...

[FlyByPC]

It's a shame that creation of articles can't be (officially) anonymous anymore, but I do see the benefit in requiring registration to start a new article. Most common topics already have an article by now -- and it's easy enough to register to start new ones.

I hope they still allow anonymous edits and posts.

Re:I guess it had to happen...

[pomo monster]

How about making the IP addresses visible for every edit, not just for (supposedly) anonymous contributions? As things stand, a registered user is less traceable than an unregistered user, simply because the latter leaves a trail with his or her IP address publicly visible, while the former may have many other aliases. Thus it's a little misleading to call unregistered contributors "anonymous," since registered usernames actually provide greater anonymity both for mischief and for good.

I think appending the IP address in parentheses to each username would go a long way towards fixing the balance, like so:

(cur) (last) -- 2:40 PM, Monday, December 5, 2005 -- pomo monster (127.42.29.101) -- minor edits

Not a problem.

[FireballX301]

But wasn't the Siegenthaler issue about an edit of his article, not creation?

In any case it's not that hard to register, and it's not hard to lie about your personal details. Nor is it hard to do this by proxy. So not quite a free-speech issue since prior to this your IP was published anyway. Thumbs up for a decent resolution.

Re:Not a problem.

[SycoCowz]

The issue was present in the original article as it was first written. At least that's what he and Jimmy Wales agreed to today on CNN.

Establish some standards

[Okita]

In the interest of accountability, shouldn't it have been this way in the first place? Then again, I'm a crazy person who thinks real sources (not just websites) need to be cited in a Wikipedia article for it to have real credibility.

Re:Establish some standards

[Loconut1389]

imho, i think something like the trust system should be used to gain credibility points. I'd be happy to see an assurer or something in order to post or even edit articles, because I'm willing to sacrifice a minimal amount of time to make a better site.

Re:Establish some standards

[Woldry]

Define "real sources".

As a reference librarian, I have no illusions about the reliability of Wikipedia. But unlike an awful lot of non-librarians, I also have no illusions about the reliability of the standard reference tools, either. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, World Almanac, and the OED have problems, too -- fewer, I'll readily grant you, but also far, far slower to come to light and be corrected.

How do you vet the "real sources"? What criteria do you use to decide that they are reliable? What criteria do you use to decide that what you think is an error in Wikipedia is indeed an error?

Ultimately, with Wikipedia as with the rest of the information world, you have only one guide to trust: your own judgment.

Does this really solve the problem?

[Mori Chu]

So a hostile anonymous coward can no longer create an entry. Fine. But isn't the real mischief to be made by modifying a pre-existing entry anyway? The article itself talks about a blogging "pioneer" who deleted references to early bloggers from a Wikipedia story. He could still have done that despite this change.

Re:Does this really solve the problem?

[Behlal]

Actually, there were two cases mentioned. One was that an article was created with factually incorrect information that was inadequately checked after publication. The second was that an article was changed and this has led to problems. It is the former that has caused the change.

If I've read the article correctly, Wikipedia does a far better job of tracking changes than it does new articles. The second problem was noticed very quickly, reported and presumably corrected (after much comment on slashdot). The first problem stemmed from the fact that the article went unlinked and unedited for so long. All changes on Wikipedia appear to be tracked and checked by a number of people, so the article would have either been edited for correctness by a user or verified for correctness on each change. Because it got through the preliminary check (presumably by one person -- multiple people can register interest in an article after creation and will see changes, but I assume only one person verfies it initially).

The reason for the change is to increase the level of accountability. If an anonymous user changes an article and in some way "messes it up", someone checks that and can either undo it or correct it again. However, if an anonymous user creates a new article and somehow it gets through preliminary checks, then the incorrect information could be up for a long time (because there may be poor linkage) and there is no way for Wikipedia to track who made that anonymous article (remember, many people are on dynamic IPs that change regularly, so an IP is only valid for a short period). I assume that by registering, a valid email is required and therefore there is a semblance of control.

Template:High-traffic

[pomo monster]

This article has recently been linked from a high-traffic Internet site. All prior and subsequent edits are noted in the page history.

This, to me, is the clearest sign yet of Wikipedia's untenability. Isn't the project predicated on the belief that more eyeballs make an article better, not worse?

Perhaps the problem is that high-traffic pages attract all the vandals and trolls. But even so, according to Wikipedian doctrine, any suspect edits on a high-traffic page should be discovered and corrected quickly enough to be of negligible impact. Why, then, the need for Template:High-traffic?

If anything, Wikipedia should include a Template:Low-traffic to warn that fewer eyeballs make an article less reliable. That there exists only Template:High-traffic as a minor concession to reality suggests myopia at best, and a willful doublethink at worst.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[bwd]

Wikipedia is realizing that the theory of "many eyes" completely breaks down in an atmosphere lacking in authority. Nothing stops people from acting irresponsibly, and now they are forced to take some action or lose what credibility and cache they have left.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Axe]

Isn't the project predicated on the belief that more eyeballs make an article better, not worse?

What we see is an example that this belief is nothing more then wishful thinking.

In the area of expert knowledge "elitism", (or, rather, professionalism) is a good thing. The fact is, there are less people who actually know about something, then those who think they know something.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Arandir]

Isn't the project predicated on the belief that more eyeballs make an article better, not worse?

No, it's predicated on the belief that an infinite number of trolls will eventually produce an objective authoritative reference work.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Spad]

It's just a standard "This page has just been linked from Slashdot, if all you can see is an ASCII rendition of Goatse, then you'll be wanting to check the article history for the original content. We'll be rectifying it shortly" disclaimer.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Jeremi]

It's no the "high traffic" part that causes the problem, it's the "recent" part. i.e. if the page is being Slashdotted, that means that it's likely in a very dynamic/volatile state, and so when you view the page, there may be errors introduced into the page (e.g. within the last 5 seconds) that nobody has had time to correct yet.

After the page has had time to settle down, the extra eyeballs will (on average) have improved it. But if the page is still in the process of being edited fifty different ways by fifty different people, then it's not surprising that it may be inconsistent/incorrect. Hence the warning message.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Valar]

Well, the problem is that there is an increase in the number of people seeing the article, relative to the number of people who usually maintain it ("the wikipedia community"). Under normal conditions, the incentive to deface an entry are somewhat lower, and vandalism can be reversed by people in the know. In cases of high traffic, hundreds of people who don't know about a topic will see the article before the maintainers check on it. I know, in theory, that anybody could fix an incident of vandalism, but if you are reading an article, trying to learn something, you are unequiped to even recognize a subtle error. Even if you do spot something wrong with the article, if you are unfamiliar with the editing facilities of wikipedia, you'd be unlikely to fix it.

In the case of a lower traffic article, there is low incentive to deface the entry and a high ratio of people with an honest interest in the material maintaining the entry.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[saskboy]

The high traffic warning is to new eyes, and to old eyes, for different reasons. It lets experienced Wiki users know that things might have ben changed with malice, and it lets new people know that things can be changed.

It's not saying that more eyes are bad, it just means that more eyes means more vandals as well as fixers too.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Rufus211]

This is a variant on the Slashdotted tag. The old tag was along the lines of "this articles has recently been featured on slashdot, be on the lookout for trolls". Quite a few people didn't like the specifity of the old tag so the new tag is a generalization of it.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[mr_walrus]

"We'll be rectifying it shortly"

we'll be rectalfying it shortly :)

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you've not done RC patrol or vandalism watch on a high traffic article. The trolls can in the short run overwhelm people trying to keep the article clean. But the notice alerts good users to the situation and can push the issue in the favor of people trying to improve the article. There is of course controversy and some people think the template is dumb.

The problem is that if 25% of the visitors to a high traffic article are determined trolls they can screw up the article a certain % of the time, and the normal wiki many eyeballs improvement can break down, because it takes more time than normal for people to figure out what the good information is.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[crimson_alligator]

I agree completely.

Also, in the area of writing, elitism is a good thing. Expert knowledge of a topic does not mean an expert ability to write on the topic.

What wikipedia needs is a system for editing its content for style and grammar. The writing is generally awful: awkward sentences stitched together from the contributions of multiple different authors, thousands of malapropisms, blatant misuse of jargon, etc.

Wikipedia is OK for what it is, but reading it is painful. If I want a quick survey of hair metal bands, or an explanation of a piece of technology, it's a decent place to take a look. But it is not, in my opinion, a great source of knowledge. It is extremely flawed in both content and style.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[Kelson]

The fact is, there are less people who actually know about something, then those who think they know something.

And there's the challenge of the Internet. If everyone knew what they didn't know as well as what they knew, we wouldn't have so many people spouting off nonsense online.

Or, to put it more intelligibly, if everyone could draw a line between what they do and don't know, and not get the two mixed up. (Of course, one hopes that over time this line would shift as one gained experience, but that might be asking too much.)

Re:Template:High-traffic

[vertinox]

In the area of expert knowledge "elitism", (or, rather, professionalism) is a good thing. The fact is, there are less people who actually know about something, then those who think they know something.

But what if all the professionals were incompetant to begin with? Or rather... Who is to say you are an expert? PHD does not make one an expert by default. Especially when we are talking about all the thousands of odd topic wiki articles about pop culture and non-scientific/non-historic articles. (you know like Star Trek)

If you want real professional articles then go get them from their sources or buy a scientific journal. If you want general or common knowledge then wiki it.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[k98sven]

Or rather... Who is to say you are an expert? PHD does not make one an expert by default.

I'd say that yes it does. Earning a PhD in a subject means that you have spent years studying that subject, and that that research has been scrutinized by a supervisor and outside parties who have studied that subject even longer.

If a PhD does not entitle you to 'expert' status in a particular subject, then nothing does.

Especially when we are talking about all the thousands of odd topic wiki articles about pop culture and non-scientific/non-historic articles.

Nobody said a PhD made you an expert in every subject. It makes you an expert in the subject you got your PhD in. However, in the sciences, there is a lot of overlap, so that someone who has a PhD in structural biochemistry can also be considered an expert on biochemistry in general, a good authority on chemistry, and well-versed in physics. But if a PhD in biochemistry says something about physics which a physics PhD disagrees with, you'd be better off listening to the latter.

If you want real professional articles then go get them from their sources or buy a scientific journal. If you want general or common knowledge then wiki it.

Wikipedia's stated goal is to create an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. Meaning most of that is expert knowledge. And the people looking at Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) don't want 'common knowledge'. They want facts.

It's "common knowledge" that eating too much sugar causes diabetes. (Try going out and asking some people in the street.) It's also completely false. (Try going out and asking some medical doctors). Popular myth or lesser-known fact? I think most our out for the latter.

Re:Template:High-traffic

[nine-times]

If a PhD does not entitle you to 'expert' status in a particular subject, then nothing does.

You might be right... that nothing *entitles* you to the status of 'expert'. Think about, and tell me one objective factor that you've ever been able to note, before meeting someone, and feel confident that they aren't completely stupid. I'll tell you this: a PHD doesn't fit that bill for me.

I think the only thing that suggests that you should be considered 'not stupid' is for you to not-be stupid. The only thing that I might say entitles you to the status of 'expert' is that you've demonstrated your expertise.

Stop anonymous contributors adding external links

[adnonsense]

IMHO (as an anti-linkspam vigilante on one Wikipedia language version) it's high time anonymous users are prevented from edits which contain external links, as the chances are these will be to spammy sites.

Problem with efficiency...

[Captain Perspicuous]

Creating an account takes before creating an article adds about 5 seconds for a user. I can't see how this will help prevent this scenario again. However, I could imagine that this idea ("Best approach?") would help a lot.

Creeping elitism

[redelm]

I do not mean to cricise the decision, merely point out that as projects become more popular and mature, the entrance criteria can and should be tightened. The value of an individual contribution is a much lower fraction of the total.

The real question is how to manage this tightening. To quick shuts off valuable contribution, too slowly risks splintering chaos.

Re:Creeping elitism

[CaptainCarrot]

How on earth is it elitism of any kind to ask a potential article contributor to spend an extra 15 seconds to take the steps that will make him accountable for what he writes? Of course, not even that matters to someone who's purely a troll and doesn't much care about his standing in the community. After all, if he's banned he can just create another account as long as he has a dynamic IP address. As a barrier to entry, this is so low as to be virtually nonexistent.

Did you read page two?

[goldseries]

The second story is interesting too. On page two they talk about Adam Curry deleting references to other people's work on pod casting and bogging. He deleted Kevin Marks's accomplishments and largely credited himself more. A way to weed out conflict of interest is needed for wikipedia. Over all the author of the article makes wikipedia look bad and almost malicious. Why can't people accept this as an information source?

Re:Did you read page two?

[binaryDigit]

On page two they talk about Adam Curry deleting references to other people's work on pod casting and bogging. He deleted Kevin Marks's accomplishments and largely credited himself more. A way to weed out conflict of interest is needed for wikipedia.

Actually that's the simplified version. If what Curry says is correct, and he simply edited because what was written didn't jive with what he remembered the facts to be, then we have a stickier issue. I think a medium like wikipedia is great for more authoritative content (the meaning of words, the speed of light) but is more problematic at "historical" or perceptual "facts". Maybe Curry is being absolutely honest, he really didn't remember those things and he edited accordingly. What do you do when two "rememberances" differ? What do you do when they differ in some significant form and both parties stick to their guns?

Perhaps a better approach is to not take a "winner takes all" approach to what's written and to somehow factor in uncertainty directly into wikipedia. This would be the most honest approach, acknowledge that there is a fudge factor involved. Mark edits as being "non reviewed" until postively reviewed by some number of people. Allow for differing viewpoints directly in the article itself.

I think that until they do something like the above, any future with wikipedia is not a positive one (regardless of how well the site itself does, it'll either pollute us with a bunch of crap, or it will fail, either solution is not good).

Re:Did you read page two?

[B1ackDragon]

A way to weed out conflict of interest is needed for wikipedia.

You know what I like a lot about slashdot (and message boards/forums in general)? No one can delete content, they can only add. That way, I can go through and read the differing opinions and decide for _myself_ which one is correct.

I'm not saying this would be a workable solution for a wikipedia type project. However, it is much nicer knowing I am hearing the differing sides of a story, rather than just being fed the "correct" version, which of course is determined by some small group of people. Makes me nervious (even when the content is printed on paper.)

Please excuse any spelling errors, I am feeling particularly lazy tonight.

Great!

[AsmCoder8088]

Now that they have reached close to a million articles, they think they don't need any help getting 10 million+. Seriously, it is a "free" encyclopedia. If I read something on there that I know not to be true, I can edit it. If no one catches the error, and they believe it to be "fact", well, that's kind of why you are not supposed to use Wikipedia as a scientific reference in the first place.

Wikipedia's success has come from people joining together and creating new articles, not just editing them. We need to be able to post new facts, new ideas, and new discoveries that are going on in the world. New users are the primary source of these articles.

I would rather have a "free" encyclopedia where I can post articles of my subjects of interest than having to edit those that already exist. Besides, I, like most other people out there, use Wikipedia not for scientific research, but to broaden my perspective on the various subjects out there which old fashioned books are "out of the scope" to provide insight for.

Daniel
basiCreations Software

Re:Great!

[AeroIllini]

Wikipedia's success has come from people joining together and creating new articles, not just editing them. We need to be able to post new facts, new ideas, and new discoveries that are going on in the world. New users are the primary source of these articles.

Perhaps you didn't read the summary.

"Wikipedia will restrict the creation of new articles to members. Anonymous users will only be able to edit existing articles."

Members. Not admins, or moderators, or privileged people. Just members. All you have to do to create an article is sign up. Becoming a member is free.

Most people on Slashdot moderate/modify Anonymous Cowards into oblivion. If someone takes the time to register their name, there's a greater likelihood that what they have to say is relevent, from a purely statistical point of view (trolls obviously also register their name). I don't see how Wikipedia should be any different in its regard of anonymous postings.

I don't know

[Descalzo]

but perhaps they are trying to increase responsibility and accountability. Perhaps if that guy had been able to find out who had libeled him, he would never have been libeled, or at least they would have fired him or sued him or whatever.

Re:I don't know

[Kadin2048]

I still maintain that Sigenthaler is full of horseshit with regards to his libel claims, and it's unfortunate that the person who wrote that page can't be identified just so Sigenthaler can't have his day in court, and be promptly laughed out of it.

Because he's a public figure, he'd have to not only show damages (which are doubtful, given that it would require demonstrating that people essentially take Wikipedia as gospel, when in reality you could get any number of reasonable, unsophisticated users to say "well duh, everyone knows wikipedia is full of suspect information"), and also show that the writer acted with malice, which might be difficult because for all we know, the writer was a conspiracy-theory nut who honestly believes his comments about Sigenthaler to be the truth. Unless Sigenthaler could demonstrate both of those things (damages and malice), he'd be done, and Wikipedia would be vindicated.

Or alternately -- although I doubt he'd be that stupid -- it would be amusing if he tried to sue Wikipedia's operators directly under some strange secondary liability doctrine. It probably wouldn't make it very far, but at least it would provide a story for the media to use as a sort of finale and end it on a winning note for Wikipedia.

Instead, we have this move by Wikipedia that can only be called placation -- which no matter how you spin it makes Sigenthaler look like the winner (as he is, because they let him). I just have no idea why: he had no case, as any first-year law student could attest, and his resources are infinitely more limited than the ones the EFF and the ACLU probably could have thrown at it.

For the record, I don't think Wikipedia's move (to prevent ACs from posting articles) was necessarily a bad one. I'm all for a psuedonymous system rather than an IP-address based one; as it provides more privacy for posters while also enabling good citizens to build a reputation, and a thus has sustainable social model. If anything, the move actually gets further away from what a pro-censorship person would want; it's just that their timing makes them look like a bunch of pushovers, when they had the clear opportunity to do something significant.

Nope

[bwd]

You don't even need to provide a valid email address to create a wikipedia account right now; it's purely optional. This looks like more of a PR move than a move aimed to actually improve the quality of the content submitted.

Re:Nope

[smallfeet]

The whole idea in the wikiwiki is that good information will drive out bad over time. If it is wrong today, fix it and it is correct, at least for a while. If have to see it as a dynamic media of time.

The problem with Wikipedia is that it is too big and impossible to control. Maybe a more distributed approach would be better, SciencePedia, HistoryPedia, etc. Less pages, more focused, the editors might be able to keep more of a handle on things.

Bad news

[Willy on Wheels]

As an ex-vandal of Wikipedia, I see this is as bad news. First of all, it only takes a few minutes to create an account, so vandals can still create vandalism. Consider this, Wikipedia restricted page-moves from new users due to page moving vandals, but vandals just created accounts, left them to mature for a few weeks and still got through. It will stop idiots performing toolbar vandalism, but it won't stop the professionals.

To give an example, we had a user who created lots of new articles, then claimed he created lots of hoaxes. They banned him, but they still haven't repaired all the damage. There are over 12000 articles tagged for clean up, how many hoaxes are there? This list for example has tonnes of hoaxes, and they have been kept there for over a year!

The Willy on Wheeels is no longer a threat to the Wiki, entropy and admin ignorance is!

Re:Where can I learn about the controversy?

[Andrew Lenahan]

No, they aren't. There's this article or, for something more general, there's this one.

Wikipedia's great amount of suckage + goodness =

[PortHaven]

Wikipedia, nice concept...a fairly large resource of information, but a good example somewhat of anarchy in action.

First, Wikipedia often fails to state it's purposes clearly. Is it an information source, an encyclopedia or an all encompassing well of knowledge?

Take for example issues regarding web comics. Wikipedia went on a purge of dozens of web comic entries. Eliminating vast amounts of effort put in by individuals. The premise, "noteworthiness"....a change in the meaning of that term eliminated large quantities of listings. Such a premise must be taken into account before entries begin. To decide to change the qualifications so as to eliminate 90% of entries is to deride the effort of user's works.

Second, a complete lack of check and balances for edits allow for great risk of destructive behaviors. Were Wikipedia to simply implement a small concept common in Roget's rules of order and most others rules of order there would be much less inclination toward destruction. And that is to require a member to "second" any edits. Sure, it still poses risk. But to do so would enable a bit more order. Perhaps large and substantial edits or deletions of content would require 2 or more "seconds" before said change would be implemented.

Changes should go thru some sort of review process and affirmation.

*shrug*

Until such processes are implemented little will impede the anarchy that is Wikipedia.

Jimbo Wales & Seigenthaler on CNN

[jacoplane]

Jimbo Wales and John Seigenthaler Sr. were on CNN to debate this issue. There's a partial transcript being worked on now.

Re:Jimbo Wales & Seigenthaler on CNN

[jreedy21]

...And that was Jimmy Wales and John Seigenthaler Sr., giving us the only two possible sides to this issue.

Next on CNN, in keeping with our binary debate format, we'll hear from the Rev. Jerry Falwell, telling us how secularists are trying to kill Christmas, and from Michael Newdow, who thinks all Christians should "shut the hell up."

Join us later this evening, when Anderson Cooper will oversee a cage match to the death between a pro-life activist and her pro-choice counterpart. All on CNN...We set up false dichotomies, you decide!

Re:Jimbo Wales & Seigenthaler on CNN

[guanxi]

"Now, you - you see the word Wikipedia, so you think encyclopedia and you think "Oh, okay, this is valid, good information." But yet, if you look at what happened to John, that's not the case, [quoting Kyra Phillips, CNN interviewer].

Yeah, and some people see the words CNN and think, "okay, this is valid, good information."

Wikipedia and the coming article crunch

[Andrew Lenahan]

Although it hasn't happened yet, and arguably isn't likely to happen for months or perhaps years, there will be a point at which every even slightly encyclopedic topic will have a Wikipedia article. Think about it: an average week goes by... there's maybe two or three major news stories, a handful of books, movies, and records get released, maybe a new product or two comes to market, and occasionally there will be some sort of scientific discovery. Even by very loose standards, that would be maybe 50-200 new encyclopedic topics per week. Wikipedia has thousands of editors, and currently several new articles every minute.

Since I don't think the flow of new articles will cease once the encyclopedic topics are covered, this means we'll reach a point when "bad" new articles will far outnumber the "good" new articles. Any action on Wikipedia's part to help stem the tide is a good thing. Wikipedia's openness is both its greatest asset and its curse. The challenge it must face is to strike that perfect balance between freedom and control. All the openness in the world will do it no good if nobody takes it seriously as even a causal information source.

Re:Wikipedia and the coming article crunch

[typicallyterrific]

eh, not quite.

I'm willing to bet there's more content realsed on a daily than someone could enjoy in a solid month. Several movies a day, dozens of records and books - and your local newspapers, zines, university literatures.

What makes news for you? Xbox delayed in the uk? A little boy in India who is said to have gone without food for a few months? The debate between two politicians in portugal?

There's almost an endless of crap to write about, mang!
Wikipedia's best strength IS it's openess and the fact that anyone can write in it aout anything. That we've achieved a fairly useful pool of articles on just about anything, just from random people writing about random things, is incredible! It's like a victory of democracy and human ability over cynicism and apathy.

Long live wikipedia!

Re:Establish some standards - exactly right

[ebusinessmedia1]

This is exactly right. In fact, I had an entire Wiki wiped out by someone who didn't "agree" with the thrust ofo my project. The project in question was a Wiki project that I had been using as a placeholder to show the potential power of distributed and open source publishing to state public education officials. It's a K-12 textbook project.

What I discovered one day - because i dodn't visit the Wiki every day - was that the whole thing had been co-opted by some anarchistic fool who simply thought that *his* take on my project was a better one. That person literally stole my Wiki URL, erased what I and many others had constructed, and started putting his content on it. That, instead of simply starting his own project under a different name. I had to find an intermediary to help me negotiate with this person, just to get him to cease and desist. In the interim, I lost the promise of help for the project that I had received from several people who could have made the project move along faster. they were afraid that their work could/would be wiped out.

The entire incident caused immeasureable harm to my project, and to the project's self-image. The project lost viable contributions from nearly 100 contributors that really cared about what I was doing.This has since been repaired. I had to reconstruct everything from scratch. This disaster happened simply because there was no proper control designed into the process. Thiings are noe getting better on Wikipedia

If you want to see the project- the California Open Source Textbook Project [COSTP] now almost fully back from near-decimation, go to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/COSTP_World_History_P roject

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

The real problem

[Kohath]

Here's the real problem with this episode:

1. Some jackass complains about something

2. People listen and decide they care.

3. Wikipedia is changed to suit the needs of the complainer.

The mistake was #2.

A more correct action:

2. Fix the article.

3. Issue an insincere apology.

4. Ignore subsequent whining by irrelevant jackasses.

5. Continue as before.

Re:The real problem

[Kohath]

The first process you describe sounds a heck of a lot like democracy, while the second sounds closer to the process that would be used by a dictatorship.

So, in a democracy, one whiny jackass gets to make the decisions by virtue of his whininess? I thought democracies were ruled by the majority.

It's the masses, not the asses.

There's no reason the majority needs to wimp-out and acquiesce to every useless complainer who opens his mouth. (Though they can if they want to.)

Re:Who is Siegenthaler? Why is s/he important?

[slavemowgli]

(Disclaimer: I'm a relatively active editor on Wikipedia, although under a different name than this.)

The article in question is right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr.

And yes, the IP addresses of (anonymous) people doing page edits are logged and publicised; but that still doesn't mean that people can be held accountable. If all you know is that whoever wrote a particular sentence in an article that's considered libellous or something else is that they edited from an AOL IP three years ago... good luck finding that person.

The big difference that Jimbo points out and that makes sense is that articles written by other users are likely on someone's watchlist, so that person would see the edit and check it out - I know I do that with articles on my watchlist, especially if the edits are by anonymous contributors or people I don't know. A malevolent user could still sign up for an account, of course, and get around the restriction that way, but I'd think it's safe to say that at least some trolls are gonna be deterred by that (although it's probably the low-level trolls who write things like "XYZ is a dumbass" in new articles instead of the high-level ones that write articles that look reasonable but are wrong in subtle but important ways); and if the problem persists, the system could just as well be expanded to people who have just signed up five minutes ago or who have not edited any existing articles yet etc. (Of course, that's just an idea of my own, and I'm not speaking for Jimbo, Wikipedia editors in general, the Wikimedia Foundation or anyone here.)

In the end, the lesson is probably that freedom also always means that people will be able to do bad things.

But look at it like this - even though there's almost a million articles in the English Wikipedia already, and even though Wikipedia is among the top 40 most popular sites on the entire Internet, as determined by Alexa, these are about the only examples of real controversy surrounding Wikipedia yet. I'd say we've been pretty successful at showing that the Wiki model *does* work - if the naysayers had been right, the whole site would've collapsed a long, long time ago. But it hasn't, not at all.

So we must be doing something right.

The reason is that it's a little roadbump

[GroeFaZ]

There is virtually no hassle to register a free account. Virtually is the keyword. This little hassle is what might reduce the creation of flamebait or other nonsense articles. If you are going to create a legit article, then I'd wager you have enough determination to take this little step anyway, so there's no problem in that respect, either.

Re:Establish some standards - exactly right

[ebusinessmedia1]

Apparently, that's the way the system is supposed to work. in this case, it didn't. My content was gone. Some of it was recovered eventually, but much of it disappeared.

Following this incident, a control system was begun that let project initiators have increased control over their Wiki. this appears to be working.

Wikipedia is a great resource, and a great idea. That said, I think the move to more rational control - to prevent malicious attacks or even inadvertant disasters - is a good idea.

Wikipedia is not black/white...

[edashofy]

A lot of stories of this ilk about Wikipedia seem to imply that Wikipedia is sort of a black or white thing - it's either authoritative or not, it's either correct or not, it's either a good resource or it's not.

In reality, it's (of course) some of all these things. Sure, it may be less correct on average than some other source, or it may be less authoritative, but that doesn't make it any less useful (especially on topics that are new, esoteric, or emerging - where else could you find well-written, generally correct information about Leeroy Jenkins or the GNAA?)

Honestly, I think having something where a slightly greater burden lies on readers to evaluate the quality of information is probably a good thing - we should really be doing that more with all "authoritative" information sources anyway.

Re:Wikipedia is not black/white...

[guanxi]

Honestly, I think having something where a slightly greater burden lies on readers to evaluate the quality of information is probably a good thing - we should really be doing that more with all "authoritative" information sources anyway.

I couldn't agree more: Tell me, what is authoritative? CNN? The New York Times? The Wall Street Journal? Never see any slander, errors or pure fraud sneak into those sources.

To be fair, CNN and the Times are probably more accurate (if you ignore editorial pages/shows), but they're in no position to throw stones.

Shame

[elfguy]

I used to be a big Wikipedia proponent. I have well over 3,000 edits there. Now however I think the site has gone to hell. I do think that it remains a nice reference site when trying to find general information about a common subject, but its usefulness stops there. Trying to get involved in the process any further is an exercise in futility. The site is run by people with huge egos, and any change you do will most likely get changed back regardless what it is. The time of big contributions of factual information is over, and it's mainly revert wars, arguing and vandalism that are most of the current edits.

Re:Shame

[Fyz]

I honestly think that wikipedia has just fallen(arguably) to the same problem as /.: lack of scalability.

What they need is a solid, decentralised moderation system based on some kind of digital respect. For example, let everyone moderate a change in an article or a new one either up or down. But let those who have previously had good moderations have a greater voice.

It's just an example, and might not work, but a system the size and complexity that wikipedia has reached needs some kind of feedback mechanism that's more than just everybody screaming at the top of their lungs at each other.

Re:Shame

[jacoplane]

My experience over the last few months has been totally different. I've been working with others in the Wikiproject CVG and I find that by far the most contributions are from good contributors, not vandals. On certain articles, like the Bush article, sure there are a lot of vandals. Besides, others are actively working on countering vandalism.

Re:Shame

[Ragesoss]

My area of interest (not quite expertise, but getting there) is history (of science, in particular). In general, there is room for a massive, huge, gargantuan, enormous number of new articles on historical topics... Wikipedia is just scratching the surface. I don't see the time for big contributions ending any times soon in that regard. But the biggest problem I see with Wikipedia on more traditional encyclopedia content types (as opposed to the esoteric culture articles for which it is a great resource) is organization. The thematic hierarchies of topics are very limited. For example, there are lots of history of science-related articles that don't get linked to from the broad "history of science" or "history of physics," etc. articles. At least for the kind of articles I'm interested it, I haven't seen very much vandalism at all.

Re:Shame

[bcrowell]

I used to be a big Wikipedia proponent. I have well over 3,000 edits there. Now however I think the site has gone to hell.
I have about 4,000 edits over the last 3 years, and I more or less agree with you. There is definitely a phenomenon that once an article hits a certain high level of quality, it then tends to get worse over time, as various people come along and make low-quality, disorganized edits. It's amazing when you look at a mature article and do a diff between the versions on, say, Nov. 1 and Dec. 1. You see that there is essentially no difference, and yet hundreds of edits have been made. All that's going on is vandalism that gets corrected, or other low-quality edits that just get reverted.

WP is right up there with Civilization and Freecell in the competition for the most efficient time-eaters ever created. It's sort of like the humans in The Matrix -- they're all pumping huge amounts of energy into the system, and most of it isn't productive.

Now that all the most important topics have articles, it's really just devolved into a situation where people check their watchlists obsessively to keep changes they don't like from happening to their cherished articles. Nothing constructive is going on, and it's really getting to be a waste of time. I've emptied out my watchlist, and have made an effort not to waste any significant amount of time on WP since this summer.

Re:Shame

[mdwh2]

In some sense though, that's inevitable - once an article has reached a certain level of maturity and is reasonably good, it's hard to improve it that much further. The popular mature articles continue to get a lot of attention and edits, but it's hard to actually make it that much better without causing disagreements.

I mean, the OP was complaning that his edits were getting reverted - I'd say the real problem is that people are wasting time editing already mature articles whilst not really making them any better (no offence to the OP - but it's hard to accept his claim as evidence that Wikipedia has gone downhill, without knowing what some of these edits actually were).

As you say, the edits tend to be vandalism or "low-quality edits", so I don't see it's a problem that these tend to get reverted on Wikipedia. Change shouldn't be done for the sake of it - if an article is essentially the same over a month, then I'd say that's good, and a sign of maturity.

The problem here is editors wasting their time (both the new contributors, and those who have to revert/edit the changes). Personally I prefer to try to work on the many newer articles out there that are in need of attention.

Even when these new articles look like someone's pet project, I've still gotten away with making significant changes.

WP is right up there with Civilization and Freecell in the competition for the most efficient time-eaters ever created. It's sort of like the humans in The Matrix -- they're all pumping huge amounts of energy into the system, and most of it isn't productive.

Wikipedia is nonetheless quite an achievement, and I've found it very useful. The way I look at it is time spent debating on Wikipedia at least results in something, unlike time spent debating on forums such as Slashdot ;)

In related news...

[merc]

Slashdot reports that soon, slashdot editors will only accept story submissions which contain severe grammatical or spelling errors, which are dupes of stories you have already sumbitted.

*blinks*

joking!

Crap

[m50d]

If I wanted just articles on what the people in charge thought was worth having them on I've got Encarta for that. I go to Wikipedia for the article on a small-time foreign singer whose one obsessive fan was able to write a great bio via his public library's net connection. I *want* there to be articles on everything. What makes wikipedia so great is the anonymous stuff. Has anyone actually counted how much of the good contributions come from anonymous people? I know I never went to the trouble of making an account. There are three pretty good articles (they were barely more than stubs when I started them, but the internet has worked its magic and they're pretty darn good now) that wouldn't be there if this policy had been effect in the past.

Re:Who is Siegenthaler? Why is s/he important?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say we've been pretty successful at showing that the Wiki model *does* work - if the naysayers had been right, the whole site would've collapsed a long, long time ago. But it hasn't, not at all.

No one ever disputed that wiki is good for something. The question is, what things are they good for. Even before I had heard of wikipedia, I already liked wikis -- but I had also seen more than one abandoned due to porn spamming and other abuse. Wikipedia is susceptible to similar problems, but is more successful at resisting them than I'd thought possible.

What Jimbo and Wikipedia have done is amazing, and greatly increases my respect for wiki methods. BUT: if the goal is to create a Britannica-quality encyclopedia, I doubt that it will ever be met. The quality of the average contributor is just too low, and so the popular articles reach an equilibrium far from what I'd call "excellent", in which for each real improvement made by one editor, some editor, in changing something else, unwittingly drags the same article further from the ideal.

"Experiment," says Wales

[massysett]

The News.com story did not report this: Jimbo Wales calls this an "experiment." Link to his email announcing the change.

To add insult to injury

[jim_v2000]

"...the Seigenthaler article not only escaped the notice of this corps of watchdogs, but it also became a kind of needle in a haystack: The page remained unchanged for so long because it wasn't linked to from any other Wikipedia articles, depriving it of traffic..."

Not only does the Wikipedia contain incorrect information about Mr. Seigenthaler, but they now also let out that he's not important enough for anyone to care about his biography. /hilarity

Seigenthaler situation was rather unusual

[Dachannien]

The situation with the Seigenthaler article was somewhat unusual. The article (according to the OP link) had no links from within Wikipedia, allowing it to escape the scrutiny of Wikipedians. The article might as well have been posted to someone's Myspace page, except that being on Wikipedia grants somewhat more credibility than just appearing on some random blog. In other words, Wikipedia is as much a victim here as Seigenthaler, as its credibility was usurped (presumably with contravention of Wikipedia's rules like NPOV and no original research) to post an unsubstantiated political point. If the article went unnoticed for so long, it's likely that the only people that ever saw it were people who got the link e-mailed to them by the article's OP, or people who actually searched for Seigenthaler's name. Given such minimal exposure, the damage caused to Seigenthaler's reputation is probably greater now than if he hadn't said anything publicly after he eventually edited the article himself.

But unlike Seigenthaler, Wikipedia gets it from both ends in this case. An anonymous user posts (allegedly) false information about Seigenthaler, and then, seeing that he has no recourse against the offender, Seigenthaler lambasts Wikipedia. Are there problems with Wikipedia's policies? Sure. Adding restrictions upon anonymous users is a good thing, especially given how prone Wikipedia is to vandalism, and I'm still surprised it doesn't require every contributor to post under an account (which would let them then focus their attention on weeding out sock puppets). But that doesn't make Wikimedia, as an organization, responsible for the incorrect content. In fact, the whole point of Wikipedia is that if you, the user, see something that you know is incorrect, you behave as any good member of the community would, and you contribute to making Wikipedia more factually correct. This is peer-to-peer information: the community as a whole suffers if you only take without giving back.

Re:Establish some standards - exactly right

[Dan East]

Why not set up wiki software on your own site and manage wiki permissions as you see fit? It doesn't sound like you expected a bunch of strangers to compose the book for you, so the main gain of it being on wikibooks is negated.

Dan East

Poker nuts?

[geeber]

and this is over simplified so don't jump on me poker nuts

Oy, me achin' poker nuts!

Sometimes a comma is a good thing. Sorry, couldn't resist :)

Wikipedia discussions about this issue?

[Jugalator]

I know there use to be behind the scenes discussions on Wikipedia.org itself, but was wondering if someone knew off the top of their head a place where such discussions take place there? That is, about this issue with vandalisms and thoughts on how to counter it, assume there is such a discussion there ?

I often feel it's a sort of a maze to find stuff among all the meta-Wiki and special pages there, but I'm also interested in following this discussion if there is one, as I hope Wikipedia can continue to exist, but hopefully in a better shape with improved mechanisms against vandalism in general.

I'm not sure this specific action will help much, so I hope Jimbo is intending to proceed trying to drive a discussion about this, as the most important thing for an encyclopedia is credibility, really.

I'm aware of the "Wikipedia 1.0" initiative with only screened articles, but I'm more wondering along the lines of Wikipedia rights and policy changes on the site itself.

What's truly sad about this whole affair is...

[sbaker]

In most cases when someone says or prints something nasty and incorrect about you, you have a major struggle on your hand to get it retracted.

This is the one - possibly the *only* - place where you can simply get in there and fix it yourself. Yes, someone can then go back and trash you again - but there are Wiki mechanisms to get that fixed.

If someone had said this stuff about the guy on Slashdot - or in the New York Times - or on radio or TV - he'd have had an enormous fight on his hands to get his good name cleared - and in all likelyhood, never have gotten clear retractions. A retraction in a newspaper doesn't retract all of the copies already in print - an erratum or even a full apology is going to go unread by the vast percentage of readers and would possibly occur weeks or months after the damage was done.

In this case, a dozen keystrokes would have fixed the problem within minutes of the problem being discovered - and REPLACED the offending material burying the original maligning text where most people will never look - and those who do will understand clearly what happened from the document history. Furthermore, the fact that nobody noticed the problem means that almost certainly nobody read the darned article in the first place.

This should never have happened to Wikipedia - it's the one place where this kind of thing isn't a real problem.

Re:bloggers complaining about wikipedia

[noz]

"Every fact in there must be considered partisan, written by someone with a conflict of interest."

You're a fool if you don't criticise everything you're told. Haven't you heard of the Scientific Revolution, studied Hamlet or read Voltaire? What are they teaching you in school these days?

The Seigenthaler slander is just a symptom

[br00tus]

One of Wikipedia's problems is it has a political point of view, but it does not say it does. Thus it is similar to television news, and this contradiction makes it unstable, where at some point it will probably collapse. Jimbo Wales has talked about how he is an admirer of Ayn Rand, wants Wikipedia to follow a von Mises model and so forth. If you're following how people get on the Arbitration Committee, Jimbo is unhappy with the elections (which actually put up much better candidates than he selected) and wants to exercise more power over it again. A Wikipedia guideline is "Wikipedia is not a democracy", something that is being said more and more often recently, and you know where that leads. Slanders, trolls, vandalism and so forth are left alone - trolls operate for months and months and months and are not dealt with, while all of Wikipedia will come down on someone who displeases the "Wikipedia cabal"

As I have said before on Wikipedia, on the top of the front page of Wikipedia, it breaks almost all articles into eight master categories. On the Mathematics and Science categories it does fine. On the History and Society pages, it does an awful job. As far as the History and Society pages, they have just gotten worse and worse over time. Jimbo is lucky Seigenthaler is a free speech advocate and is raising the issue in the press instead of suing the hell out of him and Wikipedia. I foresee alternative wikis springing up to handle history and so forth. The left-leaning Democratic Underground has started Demopedia, although I'm unaware of Free Republic or any other conservative site starting a conservative counter to Wikipedia yet. Anyhow, I'm sure that's the route it will go down I'm sure, a balkanization of certain categories.

Re:Wikipedia's great amount of suckage + goodness

[SamSim]

Wikipedia often fails to state it's purposes clearly. Is it an information source, an encyclopedia or an all encompassing well of knowledge?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That is the beginning and the end of it. Encyclopedias happen to also be information sources. It is not an all-encompassing well of knowledge. At what point is this ambiguously stated?

Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insult

[shanen]

/. itself is a prime locus for the abuse of anonymity. There are a few cases where anonymity is reasonable, but in general, I'd estimate that 99% of the anonymous comments are made by people who would simply be too ashamed to want to be linked to the comment, even in the form of a link to their handle. The ACs (in /. parlance) apparently have various motivations and excuses, but all of them stink.

Go ahead and wail, you stupid ACs. My settings eagerly ignore your replies. One of the best little-known features of /., if you ask me.

Returning to the Wikipedia context, I can actually imagine a SINGLE case where anonymity would be justified. That is the case where someone wants to expose an important truth to the public, but would be subject to attack for telling that truth. However, in that case, Wikipedia is obviously the wrong place, since the same person or organization that wants to conceal that truth could just edit the Wikipedia article in question to remove or obfuscate the data.

This is actually the same kind of case where in the old (pre-Reagan) days you could have tried to find an actual journalist to pursue the story. Look at Bob Woodward to see how things have changed, eh? These days, I guess we just have to hope that the glut of data will allow enough of the truths to leak out? (But look at Iraq to see how well that works.)

Re:Establish some standards - exactly right

[timbo234]

I don't see how you could have lost anything when wiki's keep all page versions in the history. Sounds like a technical glitch on the part of whatever wiki program the site used more than anything else.

It was fun while it lasted

[planetoid]

When I would make articles like the year 2326, Wikipedia was my favorite place to play.

Re:Who is Siegenthaler? Why is s/he important?

[AK Marc]

(articles on Nazism will always be very negative, but there will be little mention of the atrocities committed by Jewish families, such as De Beers or Ariel Sharon).

The De Beers brothers were not Jewish. Neither owned anything more than a mine they were later forced out of. However, the company carying the name was founded by a Jewish person, but was named after the mine, not any Jewish family. Perhaps the reason that Wikipedia dosn't get into the anti-semitic articles is that those that wish to spread anti-semitism are ignorant of facts, so they are quickly taken off. You make it sound like you want a section on "evil jews" or something. I don't see Nike's entry talking up all the child labor problems and such. All the uncontroversial entries seem to be generally more positive than negative.

Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu

[orgelspieler]

I don't know about that. I think that people would just dismiss the "article" as delusional/paranoid/stupid whatever. They're even more likely to ignore it when the writer is anonymous. There are enough whack jobs with web sites that a lone whistleblower in Wikipedia is not likely to be noticed much less believed. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but I'd use my own critical thinking skills to try to determine the validity of the claims. But I take the same grain of salt with every article on Wikipedia, press release on whitehouse.gov, entry in Encyclopedia Brittanica, paragraph in a textbook, or any other source of information.

I feel the same way about ACs on /. Rather than dismiss their posts out of hand, I prefer to judge posts on their merit, not their post status. I'd bet liars and nuts post as much on /. whether AC or not.

I think you're leaving out a whole bunch of other cases that warrant anonymity. Oppressive governments, families and bosses all spring to mind. There are plenty of knowledgable people living in situations where they would get in some degree of trouble for expressing their views or even visiting Wikipedia.

One last thing, I find it a little Orwellian that you think anonymity, hence privacy, needs to be "justified." Did you really mean to use that word? Did you just mean in relation to Wikipedia?

Re:Establish some standards - exactly right

[skavj_binsk]

A potential resource for the creation of public collaborative works while retaining editorial control is "connexions" :

http://cnx.rice.edu/

There's already some open content there, and pretty decent tools for creating more. It's all creative commons.

Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu

[shanen]

Well, it was slightly out of context, but yes, I do mean "justified" in the case of anonymity, but not for privacy. Rather, I think the default for privacy should be exactly the opposite. Your personal information should belong to you, and no one else should have any right to collect information about you without your knowledge and consent. The other person should be required to justify any intrusion on your privacy, and you should have the absolute right to deny those requests. (This is basically an extension of the American Bill of Rights as regards warrentless searches and the right not to incriminate yourself.)

Even beyond that, I believe in possession as nine points of the law, and even if you agree to let someone collect and use information about you, the default case should require that they store that information on YOUR own computer. You should have the right to change your mind at any time, even if you felt like letting them collect that information in the past.

In practical terms, I think this would generally be handled by your own privacy policies as stored in your computer, and the basic tradeoff would be convenience against privacy. Examples:

1. You might allow your bank to hold the information required to deduct a regular monthly payment, or you might require that the bank's request for the payment be held pending that information until they check with you each month.
2. You might agree to allow a company to have certain information in exchange for a discount, but you should be able to deny them any further access to that information if you decide for any reason that you no longer want to do business with them.

Modify the System

[Rydia]

Why doesn't wikipedia just create a queue for articles before they're submitted. Have different queues for each topic that can be pared down, so the editors can see it before it's committed and vote on it or something to ensure some validity. If no one notices/votes on it while it's in the queue, you could commit it, flag the article at the top saying there was unverified data, and zip off a message to a couple people designated to keep an eye on articles committed due to review expiration. If you tweaked the system enough, I could see a couple days between submission and commitance (due to deadline) at the most, which would help credibility and accuracy a great deal, I think.

Re:Establish some standards - exactly right

[bcrowell]

I've written some free-as-in-speech textbooks, and I run a site that catalogs free books and accept user-submitted reviews of them. So far, I have never seen a successful book done via a wiki, except for Wikipedia. IMO, Wikipedia is a special case that happens to be very well suited to the wiki model (too big for one person to do alone, and inherently parallelizable). For any other kind of book, you need a single person who's a good writer (or at most 2 or 3 such people), and who has a commitment to writing a good book that has a single, clear, coherent story to tell.

Having said that, I wish you success, and I hope you prove me wrong!

Re:Hey, wasn't that the only thing they had going?

[Percy_Blakeney]

I hope to fan the flame of stories like these in the hopes that certain Slashdotters will quit citing some nonsense they read in Wiki as Gospel Truth which disproves my facts from the Webster's dictionary, Encyclopedia Brittanica, US & World Report, two published books specific to the topic, and a live interview with somebody who was there.

You're kidding, right? You're complaining about people getting "Gospel Truth" from Wikipeida, but then claim that the dictionary, encyclopedia, and a weekly news magazine are sources of fact? I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you should level the same sceptical eye towards those sources as you do towards Wikipedia. None of these things are original sources, and all are vulnerable to incorrect information. The same can be said for many published books -- just because someone published something doesn't make it correct.

Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu

[shanen]

I think you're getting too paranoid to worry that anyone would want to trace any individual votes. Control of elections is done differently. The quasi-legal form involves lots of money (though much of that money is often used in unethical but persuasive ways), and the illegal forms generally involve large-scale vote manipulation (including aggresive disenfranchisement, which seems to be one of the most favored techniques these days).

On this topic, the notion of anonymous voting was actually a relatively recent innovation, and I'm not sure if it's really such a good one. While it does prevent personalized targeting of specific voters, it also makes it relatively easier to manipulate elections. You can't trace either the valid or invalid votes, which actually leads us back to Wikipedia, where the problem is with tracing the sources of valid and invalid information.

Wikipedia links

[pamri]

Here are some ongoing disucssions at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2005-12-05/Page_creation_restrictions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pum p_(news)#Anon._page_creation_disabled

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Nocreatetex t - The message that gets displayed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Nocrea tetext

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_fo r_creation - The page where anon users can list content.

Wikipedia, Defamation, and Anonymity

[privacyprof]

I am a law professor who specializes in information privacy law. If you're interested, I have blogged extensively about this case in many posts: Curtailing Anonymity on Wikipedia Fake Biographies on Wikipedia This is on the Adam Curry case: Wiki Thyself I also blogged about an earlier potential defamation case on Wikipedia: Suing Wikipedia Posts on anonymity: A Victory for Anonymous Blogging Is Anonymous Blogging Possible? Using Lawsuits to Unmask Anonymous Bloggers

Abuse is going to happen

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

As the creator and administrator of a Wiki service myself (Wikinote), I have to wonder what Wikipedia is truly thinking.

Wikinote and its sister website, Shortify, have seen their share of abuse. Most of the time it's SSH password-cracking scripts that try millions of usernames and passwords (and make 1GB logfiles with the auth failures - password authentication is disabled on WikinoteShortify). Sometimes you get a user who will try to fill the DB with random garbage.

On WikinoteShortify, disk space is extremely limited, so the major focus of our anti-abuse methods are in limiting the size of individual pages (64KB). Abuse still happens, though.

I've often thought of using CAPATCHAs or email verification to slow down the tide of bogus signups. But, realistically, that would cause more trouble for my users than it would for the spammers.

Abuse is going to happen. Do what you can to limit it. But don't stomp on your users while you are doing it.

That's the problem with limiting page creation to signed-in users. Spammers will create an account (or many, through a script) and attack. The extra step of an HTTP POST to get a new account is nothing for a Python script (nor, mind you, is the block on Python's user-agent). If you think you're accomplishing something, you're not - people will still find a way to vandalize Wikipedia.

The real question is why it is so difficult to detect bogus page creation. Wikipedia has always relied on human intervention to prevent abuse. There's always someone watching. Why is page creation any harder to audit than editing?

Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu

[Ours]

There's not such thing as anonymity in Wikipedia. Even if you don't sign in, you IP and timestamp are posted. If it was just a question of publishing anonymously (i.e. not using you usual account), that would simply meen that the guy has to make a new account (an alias of sorts) and that's it.

Not THAT bad

[aepervius]

Quote from the wiki clean up page : The cleanup page is a place where articles with problems (ungrammatical, poorly formatted, confusing, etc.) can be listed. Any user can fix or list articles here.

So this could simply be bad spelling or grammar. Since wiki article are also written by persons not having english as first language this does not sound that bad. Example taken at random : # Project Chapleau - reads like a press release # Jeff Morrow - Contains poor language, lacking in formatting, and generally needs more information --Spring Rubber 22:00, 24 November 2005 (UTC) # Hydraulic power - Needs more info, categories, internal link creation, heading creation - the works in other words. - (Erebus555 20:25, 24 November 2005 (UTC)) # Fat acceptance movement A tad incoherent at times. # Smog, needs to be sorted into sections. --Thorpe 17:37, 24 November 2005 (UTC) * Article self descriptive? (bad pun, I know)

Granted there might be other section with "worst" cleanup ("read like a PR release, blatantly false, hoax, etc...) but tose 12000+ cleanup are NOT all bad article but also bad grammar that that is the point here.

Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu

[anshil]

AC on wikipedia like on many other webpage is most to encourage activity altough user laziness.

It just a good start to be able to just participate, without having do go through the "complicated" process to create an account. Its just to move one barrier away, to become a wikipedian. Once you feel more comfortable you will create an account nevertheless.

Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu

[bint]

I'm not saying that there isn't a (from an american perspective) leftist slant, but if you paint everyone with such broad strokes, why not link to a few examples? You know, references? It ought to be very easy for you if it is so very common.

It'll still not prove your point that "any post not leftist in nature" will be modded down, but it'll look less like the traditional right wing complaints of the "left wing media".

The GPs opinion of Bush does nothing for your point, I'm afraid. And the fact that you seem to brand anyone not agreeing with you a "leftist" doesn't help either.

Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu

[squiggleslash]

With the greatest of respect, that's complete rubbish. If you mean a "well researched" piece arguing that, say, blacks are lazy, or a woman's place is in the home, or that gays should be burnt at the stake, will be modded down, then yeah, but you wouldn't have to be "leftist" to do that.

Right now, I can't view a single article without dada21 giving his tuppenceworth, usually to the point of (what appears to me to be) lunacy, modded up to the heavens. Why? He may be right wing, but he's not trying to be offensive and he's clearly not a Nazi.

It amazes me that a group that considers itself the "silent majority" in this country is so convinced it's being persecuted. One mistake by Dan Rather is convincing evidence the entire media has a pro-Democrat slant, despite it goring Gore at the last election, and spending pretty much the entire second half of the nineties trying to find something to impeach Clinton about, finally obsessing itself about a minor affair in a way even mainstream Republicans didn't seem to be.