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Wikipedia Semi-Protection Begins
seanvaandering writes "Admins began applying their recently announced 'Wikipedia semi-protection' feature this week. The first articles to be semi-protected were George W. Bush, Hitler, and Jesus Christ, barring the newest 1% of all users and anonymous visitors from modifying the article (apparently Satan didn't make the cut). Does this mark the end of the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit?"
I agree 100%. Requiring prior participation is not the same as requiring a "premium" subscription fee or some other such nonsense. IMO, anything that protects the quality of Wiki is in the best interest of us users.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
It was a joke.
Wikipedia really needed to do something like this, and banning anonymous changes to a few reasonably stable articles seems like a decent compromise. The articles can still be edited by most people who are into wiki.
That being said, all this outcry over a couple articles being changed is way over hyped. That nature study that showed that it was nearly as accurate (in science articles) as the online encyclopedia britannica just confirmed that.
The articles that are semi-protected are mostly huge writeups that are more or less complete by now, it's not like they would be edited much anyway, it would be a different thing if the page about George W Bush was to be semi-protected as a stub, i.e. when it needed a huge flow of information to be made. A good reason for unprotecting a page would be if huge discoveries had been made about it and it needed much input, like if someone proved Jesus was a hoax.
It's also a good thing to have to keep the vandals out, it's been rampant since the John Siegenthaler controversy.
Maybe there is a dream which still survives among some idealists, that everyone, everywhere, should be able to contribute equally, and with equally fruitful productivity, to a knowledge database, absolutely regardless of any ability they possess to summarise and intepret knowledge in a useful and logical fashion. But for those with a realistic outlook, Wiki article writing ends up looking like any other skill set. It isn't intuitive. It takes a bit of experience. And the more experience you have, the better you'll be at it. Closing off, in effect, those with no experience whatsoever, and requiring you be reqistered at least for a few days to edit specific articles, ultimately, is no loss.
Karma: Chameleon (comes and goes)
Not to troll, but how is this slogan anything but accurate? ANYONE can edit Wiki. ANYONE can take the time to learn how to use and benefit Wiki before contributing. ANYONE can benefit from a non-Google source of the "worlds information" that has been protected from the scum of the Internet (ref to Spammers, idiots, etc, not Google).
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
They're huge subjects, which leads to well-written articles, which in its turn leads to many readers, vandals want many readers, so they edit those pages.
There should be an equation for article editing. An article should be given a value ranking its popularity and users should be given a rank, ranking their contributions to the wiki community. Only highly valued contributers should be able to modify high ranking entries.
If you want to edit Hitler you must frist be a proven, intelligent, useful contributer. If you want to write an entry on the superconduction uber widget, knock yourself out. My 2
These measures may slow the casual trolling and idiocy but it will do nothing to deter or prevent the more dedicated trolls.
I'm a coder and I can't imagine why Wikipedia would want to semi-protect select articles, and not *all* articles. (Bitflag vs Micromanagement)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The key similarities between Bush and Hitler are that both are fierce nationalists pushing agendas that include aggressive foreign policies and a reduction in civil rights. The conditions in Germany following WW1 gave Hitler the support he needed; the conditions in America following 911 gave Bush the support he needed. Both societies were deflated and wanted to rally around a strong leader. Both leaders used that to their advantage, breaking long-standing rules, purportedly for purposes of strengthening the nation.
Nationalism and intimidation is how Hitler did his thing. It's creepy as hell to watch the President deflect pertinent questions with patriotic jargon. It's even creepier when DHS agents bang on people's doors who aren't doing anything wrong. Of course Hitler went farther, and of course W isn't the first president to do such things, but that doesn't make it any less creepy.
Say it is time to elect a new world leader, and your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates:
Candidate A associates with crooked politicians, and consults with anthologists. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
Candidate B was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every evening.
Candidate C is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn't had any extramarital affairs. Which of these candidates would be your choice? Decide first, no peeking, then scroll down for the answer.
Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt
Candidate B is Winston Churchill
Candidate C is Adolph Hitler
Sorry it doesn't involve bush, but it shows you can never judge a book by its cover!
And another ones for kicks:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?
Because she gave birth to Beethoven.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Aside from the principles of the thing - that's three articles out of 800,000 that can't be edited by *everyone* - and with the number of members growing at a rate of 5 to 10% per month - anyone who has been a member for a week or so will out of the 'newest 1%' catagory. Sure, more articles will inevitably get added to that list over time - but it's never going to be more than a vanishingly small percentage of articles.
In terms of practical limitations, that's pretty minor - and if it keeps the site maintainable and useful - it gets my vote.
As a matter of principle - well, Wiki isn't about giving people the right to free speech - it's about getting facts into an encyclopedia.
It is believed that the encyclopedia will be better if everyone can edit any article at any time because 'Many eyes make all bugs shallow'. Even as an uninformed layperson looking up Aardvarks, I can spot a spelling mistake in an article and fix it right then and there...but in the case of the kinds of articles being restricted here, there are already PLENTY of eyes on them and adding more won't improve the encyclopedia.
From that perspective, how likely is it that someone who has authoritative knowledge about those few articles will know something that is verifiable that can't wait one week to be posted?
You might argue that (say) some insider in the pay of George Bush needs to be able to post especially incriminating evidence that he/she just discovered onto the Wiki page - and might need to do so either urgently - or anonymously. But that kind of information is unverifiable and falls under the 'no original research' criteria which would eliminate it from Wiki anyway. Wiki isn't a news site - information of that kind should be posted elsewhere first - and only end up in the encyclopedia when it's been verified, understood, etc.
People who visit the Wiki and search on 'George Bush' should not expect to find the latest, juicy tidbits about him there. It's an encyclopedia - they should expect to find historical information that's reasonably well established. It should contain information ABOUT any controversy without actually being controversial itself.
The VAST amount of work that goes on in the Wiki is far more mundane. The other day, I looked up Red Squirrels - found that a sentance about the number of young they bear was incomprehensible - so I looked the information up on half a dozen web pages about squirrels to find out the truth - and corrected the sentence right then and there.
Red Squirrels - not reigning US monarchs^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpresidents.
www.sjbaker.org
Maybe this has already been well discussed, but why doesn't Wikipedia use a system of meta-moderation like slashdot? Before a change was accepted it would have to pass some other random moderators check, who would simply approve or disaprove whether or not the content seemed plausible. What do you think? What do I not know about this debate?
Hitler was a fierce racist, not just nationalist. Bush obviously has no problems with Americans of any race -- just look at his administration. You can't dismiss Rice, Gonzales, Powell, Alito as "uncle toms". There is no nationalism as in "America for Americans" either -- if anything, Bush is blasted by dimwits from Left and Right for being too easy on the immigrants (legal and otherwise).
And then, of course, there is Godwin's Law. In short, you may truly hate George W. Bush, but he is not sending (nor would like to send) millions of innocent people to gas chambers. To compare someone to Hitler, the accusation must of that kind of gravity.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Or, the alternate explanation: both sides were right...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The biggest difference between G.W. Bush and Hitler is that Hitler is widely considered one of the most skilled orators of all time...