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Wikipedia Adopting Semi-Protection of Pages

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the countering-the-angry-jerk-effect dept.

kizzle (the other one) writes "A major policy change on Wikipedia was just passed 103-4-2 along with Jimbo Wales' endorsement to incorporate a process called 'Semi-protection' only on the most frequent targets of vandalism."

10 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. The wiki by smeagols_ghost · · Score: 5, Funny

    The semi free encyclopedia, editable by some.

    1. Re:The wiki by Virak · · Score: 5, Informative

      Did you bother to RTFA, or even read the entire summary? This only applies to pages which are frequent targets of vandalism, and only prevents anonymous and very new users from editing them; from the SPP page:

      The barrier should be low enough that editors who wish to contribute constructively need only wait a short time (on en.wikipedia, the newest 1% of accounts last about 4 days) to be fully active.

      While I'm sure there'll be plenty of idiots screaming about how Wikipedia is becoming less 'Free', if anything it's becoming less restricted; up until now, the only possible course of action has been 'full protection', in which case only *admins* can edit the article.

    2. Re:The wiki by TuringTest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What do you mean? Anyone can create and edit articles in Wikipedia now, and it IS the best thing since sliced bread. Only difference between then and now is, not ALL articles are under this process, just new/unpopular/not-vandalized ones. What people doesn't tend to realize (is it a flaw of human brain?) is that as processes scale, what served for the small doesn't work for the big.

      There's such thing as knowledge crystallization, which changes the nature of the creation process. At the beginning Wikipedia didn't have mature content, so it didn't needed protection for it. Current immature content benefits from wiki default policy now as much as at the Wikipedia beginnings. But now Wikipedia is not homogeneus, so it doesn't makes sense treating all its content equally. So now it includes the best policy for immature content, and the best policy for mature content; it just happen not to be the same policy for both. Big deal.

      --
      Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
  2. Move along ... by arrrrg · · Score: 5, Informative

    While this might be a significant change if you are a frequent Wikipedia editor, it really isn't anything that we on the outside will notice. This is basically a less restricted form of protection that is currently applied to a heavily vandilized pages, where only administrators are allowed to edit. This adds an intermediate status where you don't have to be an administrator, but your account has to be (only) about 4 days old.

  3. This actually helps on some pages by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The PHP page over at wikipedia has been attacked by spambots. Basically, what the spambot does is blank the page, and replace the page with links to some web pages the spammer has set up, usually completely unrelated to PHP. The IPs the spammer use constantly change; we think the spammer in question is controlling a number of zombies across the net since the same IP never spams the page more than once.

    When the spammer hits again, this particular for of protection will stop the spammer cold. This does nothing to stop the kind of subtle vandalism where someone falsely states that someone helped assassinate Kennedy, for example. But it does help stem a particular problem some wikipedia pages encounter.

  4. Taking the heat off Wikipedia - Wiki.Slashdot by NZheretic · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Hey CmdrTaco and Roblimo! Want to help Wikipedia and at the same time deliver more page views to your advertisers?

    wiki.slashdot.org : WikiSlashdot
    Add a Wiki plugin to slashode and host it on slashdot. This it will attract the trolls away from Wikipedia and introduce a persistant layer to the debate that takes place on slashdot.

    Individual changes could be moderated just like on slashdot and the user could elect to ignore changes with a low score.

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. Re:contributor rating system? by Kuciwalker · · Score: 5, Funny

    And so Wikipedia would then be as reliable as slashdot posts?

  7. That would have the same effect as in slashdot by Julian+Morrison · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Namely, groupthink, conformism, the silencing of heretics, and the promotion of biased agendas.

    If there's two things Slash and Wiki have taught us, it's:

    - collaborative creation is a success. Most people do good work. It's a positive-sum game.

    - collaborative restriction is a failure. Most people wield their power to blindly advance their politics. It's a zero-sum game.

  8. Entropy is a bigger problem than vandalism by ThurlMakes7 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    IIRC, this kicked off when Jimmy Wales admitted two entries chosen at random by Nick Carr were "horrific crap". They weren't the result of vandalism, but just really badly written collections of badly chosen facts.

    This happens alot with writing by committees, and isn't unique to Wikipedia. It just gets worse as it gets older. Wikipedia has collected more facts over time, but it reads worse.

    There's no cure for this except getting experts and real editors with good language skills, and they're hard to find as anyone who's tried to staff a tech docs team knows. But this runs counter to the "anyone can do it" philosophy.

    So no amount of tweaking the processes helps - you simply need skillful people. The ex-Britannica guy (McHenry?) had a good line, which is that Wikipedia can get better, or Wikipedia can keep the utopians - but it can't do both.