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More Wiki Than Ever
From the early days of Wikipedia, we were forced to do something that we did not like to do: protect (lock) pages. For a long time, whenever there was a major editing dispute requiring a cool-down time, or a sudden spate of vandalism to an article, the community administrators of Wikipedia were forced to put pages into a state where no one could edit them. (Admins could technically edit them, but by social custom did not, in order to preserve the level playing field between admins and ordinary users.)
Protection was a good way to prevent further vandalism, but it did unfortunately still allow the general public to see the vandalism.
After many years of this, we recognized that protection was too un-wiki for us, and so the community devised a new software feature: semi-protection. An article which is semi-protected is more open than an article which is protected, because it is open for editing for all but anonymous editors and the very newest of accounts. This innovation has been very popular in Wikipedia precisely because it allowed us to be more wiki, more open, than when we were forced to lock articles.
Encouraged by this development, and after carefully watching the use of the feature and finding it to be a net improvement, members of the German community in particular thought creatively about how we might do an even better job of openness and therefore quality. Could we simultaneously open editing still further, while also dealing better than ever with the problem that protection and semi-protection were designed to solve?
After much discussion, a clever and elegant innovation was found. This innovation holds forth the promise of Wikipedia being able to open the front page for editing for the first time in 5 years! And at the same time, it provides a finer tool for preventing much of the vandalism that had unfortunately slipped through to the general public, while eliminating the need for semi-protection!
The new feature will allow the community, using the same sorts of procedures and norms that we have used for years to determine semi-protection and protection status, to flag certain versions of articles as "non-vandalized", and these versions are what will be shown to users who are not logged in. The feature will be tested in the normal manner of all new features at Wikipedia, with a simple quiet introduction and a period of testing and evaluation within the community.
We expect the following benefits from this innovation:
- Wikipedia will be more wiki than ever, in the sense that for the first time in years, we expect that nearly ALL pages will be open to editing by ANYONE, even non-logged-in users. This means the almost complete elimination of the editing restrictions we have been forced to have for years.
- We have good reason to believe that the primary incentive for most vandalism, as the primary incentive for most graffiti in the real world, is that the vandalism can be seen by the general public. Vandals seek to shock people. The new feature will deprive them of that benefit, and we expect to see a corresponding drop in the total amount of vandalism that the community has to deal with. This is an excellent example of our philosophy of trusting the general public to do the right thing when given the right incentives, and an illustration of why openness and transparency is better than control.
- Although not all pages will have the 'non-vandalized versions' feature enabled, we expect that it will be enabled quickly by the community on all the pages that are currently semi-protected due to being popular vandalism targets. Thus, we will achieve our aim of preventing the general public from seeing vandalized versions (as we do now on these articles), but at the same time allowing open editing of these articles.
A quick summary to make this even more clear:
- PROTECTION - NO ONE can edit, NO ONE can affect the public version
- SEMI-PROTECTION - all except new users and anons can edit, all except new users and anons can affect the public versions
- VERSION FLAGGING - ANYONE can edit, all except new users and anons can affect the public versions
As you can see, each step of this chain allows MORE people to do MORE things, rather than less. Each step of this chain is becoming MORE wiki, not LESS wiki.
The news media has an unfortunate temptation to follow a story arc that goes something like this. "Open editing is impossible. It worked for a little while at Wikipedia, but now even Wikipedia is admitting that it does not work, so they are closing off public editing step by step. This proves that our traditional model is best in the end."
The fact that this story arc has no relationship to the reality of changes in Wikipedia has not stopped them. I am hopeful that this post will catch enough attention that journalists will start to grasp the real revolution that is taking place here.
Sounds like the standard thing that happens to any concept or idea. Over time, it becomes associated with "good", and its absence associated with "bad". The term then has its meaning diluted by more and more things being shoved into its definition, to avoid them seeming bad. I'd guess that something like that is going on here. "If it's Wiki, it's good; if it's not Wiki, it's bad (for Wikipedia). Since our new changes are good, they must make it more Wiki."
For a perfect example of this process, examine the concept of theft and the rampant misuse of it (theft = bad, here's something that's bad, therefore it must be theft).
I always thought it would be a great idea if some group (a major university, perhaps) were to fork Wikipedia and make "confirmed correct" pages that could then be used for real research. This is an interesting spin on that: not "confirmed correct" but at least "not patently wrong", and it (may) approach this goal without needing to fork. Good luck guys.
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Q: Why did this take so long?
A: Because people in general can be idiots and can mess around with information posted on wikipedia for a few giggles before someone has to go in and moderate it back to the article's original state. For example, remember the fiasco with Stephen Colbert? That page on elephants had to restricted because people kept on going in and changing it. Before that, there was restrictions on congressmen from editing pages on their opponents (search slashdot) because they were putting in false information about them as well as false accusations.
Although I like the idea of having information free and able to update it instantaneously, however, the vast majority of people are not ready to truly treat wikipedia the way it should be treated.
Before, information was only allowed to a select few but as technology evolved, so did the ability to acquire information as well. And now it really is becoming highly accessible for everyone, however, there are no checks and balances to see if the information that is posted/edited is correct and factual, even if a majority thinks one entry is true but in reality it isn't, this can and will happen and the rest of the world isn't ready for a true wikipedia.
I do have to say though that this venture in Germany will kick off well because Germany has less chance of people, anonymous people, go in and just start messing around.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
I go to Wikipedia to look things up. Usually, I'll click through to a few related links. If I happen to see that something is vandalised or blatantly wrong, I will log in and either fix it or stick one of the dispute bugs on the page and open a talk issue about it.
The important thing here is that I am NORMALLY not logged in. If the most-vandalised pages are version flagged, I will never see the vandalism, and thus I will never fix it.
I don't know how many people browse this way, but if there are enough of them, it will have an impact on how the whole wiki concept works.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
I always thought it would be a great idea if some group (a major university, perhaps) were to fork Wikipedia and make "confirmed correct" pages
Good idea, but there is no need to fork Wikipedia, just have a protected field for organizations or people who are considered athorities in their area. A cosmology article, for example, might have a note at the bottom that says "Roger Penrose has looked at this and vouches for it's accuracy". If somebody edits it, the field then reads "Prior to the most recent edit, this page was vouched for by Roger Penrose."
A person would think twice about changing something when the record would show that he thereby made it inferior.
What you're missing in your rush to defend it, and to disagree with me (even though I think the plan is a good idea), is that most wikipedia users ARE "random" not-logged-in anonymous users. They're not registering accounts. They're not editing pages. They're using wikipedia as a resource. Those people will never see anything but the most recent "approved" page on version-flagged pages, and that takes away a certain amount of the "wiki" nature, at least from those pages.
And also, I didn't say it was being applied site-wide. In fact, I spoke to that fact specifcially, and noted that precisely because version-flagging will be viewed as less drastic than protection or semi-protection, my personal feeling is that it WILL be applied to more pages. The more pages that don't publish edits immediately, the less of a "wiki" it is.
Now, that may not be a bad thing. But it's still incorrect to say it's "more of a wiki", and that's my only point. And if you want to nitpick, what's better: protected pages, or version-flagged pages? If they're the same amount, I guess I'd agree and say version-flagged. But what if there are double the amount of version-flagged pages as there were protected pages. Ten times? Fifty times?
It sounds like a good idea in practice, but it's susceptible to a large-scale conspiracy. And don't go waving that off as some silly paranoid delusion, not only can it happen, it HAS happened.
I submit the Colbert Report. He's got a huge legion of geeks ready to do whatever he says, albeit all in good-natured jest. He overwhelmed an online vote in some European country to name a bridge after him (he got something like 2 million votes, which was significantly more than the population of said country). He's even gone after Wikipedia, suggesting that people edit the page on African elephants to suggest that their population has tripled in the past few years.
Now, imagine if this system were in place. The same legion of Colbert-inspired editors would also flag the page as valid, thus making it the default page and making the harm difficult to repair.
The company were i work, some years ago started the internal knowlege base like a wiki (its a consulting, support and staff company) and monetary incentives were put in place to reward those whom contribute to persist the not printed, archived or formalized "know how" (there is alot of that in there... and some times a big part of a team is new or exiting the job)
The problems arised because there are areas were there is no clearly right answer and the teams allways expect the criteria of their particular client to prevail
1st) We ended building a versioning wiki like system depending of the user group (teams by client)
2dt) But the project managers got mad because didnt wanted or had time to policy the contributions... so we added accept/reject community voting (and only unrejected posts were payed)
3rt) Voting wars exploded inside user groups... so poster names where removed and the versioning system was reworked around belief groups (user votes ranked unshowed contributors and the users are grouped depending of who they belief)
4rt) The users feeled the system worked half the time; because the default version showed to the user reflected the group thinking, but only for information contributed by someone higly ranked in his/her trust list. For posts not related historicaly to the user (and therefore contributed by someone not in the trust list) the overall most trusted version usually didnt reflected the expected point of view... so we added networks of trust, the trust lists of the gurus of the user are recursively linked until select the version to show for historicaly not viewed information
5th) For a belief group the most showed version sometimes ended wasnt the "better"... so now the new versions are notified to the poster of the edited version, and his/her accept votes put the edited version in merge mode of the "syntax colored" diff of the two versions (the most trusted and the new accepted one) and to the browsing by group was added browsing by level of trust inside a group (to view the rejected posts... posts rejected several times and not accesed are deleted)
Unexpected results were:
- The most trusted versions tend to merge (the most trusted version of one belief group its edited by the poster of the most trusted version of other belief group and is accepted)but the belief groups not
- To be a guru or trusted regular contributor pays well, but to be a regular merger pays more
- The gurus cluster (some dont stand each other in real life but put accept votes to each other)
- Some gurus are only virtual (in real life dont show)
- The gurus have wider belief groups (have trust lists with gurus of different belief groups)
- The gurus can change frecuently of belief group... almost with the same trust list (mostly changes the ranking)
The weirdest thing its that now accounting, sales, etc knows what "diff" and "merge" is
What you're missing in your rush to defend it, and to disagree with me (even though I think the plan is a good idea), is that most wikipedia users ARE "random" not-logged-in anonymous users. They're not registering accounts. They're not editing pages. They're using wikipedia as a resource. Those people will never see anything but the most recent "approved" page on version-flagged pages, and that takes away a certain amount of the "wiki" nature, at least from those pages.
Compared with currently protected pages, where they will never see those unapproved edits at all, because the unapproved edits could never be made!
I take your point though that it would be bad if more pages were put under this new system. I'd oppose that, and hope it only gets used in cases where protection would currently be needed.
I fail to see two things:
1. How does it remove instant gratification, except as much as is necessary to satisfy users who expect Wikipedia to be more like an encyclopedia. Users who want their instant gratification will just need to log in. I don't see what's so hard about that.
2. How would forking the project increase the instant gratification? It seems to me that turning Wikipedia into two things rather than one thing with two interfaces would just increase the overhead involved in keeping things synced and get rid of some of the things that make Wikipedia great as an encyclopedia - the way that articles get updated to reflect new developments almost immediately comes to mind.