Wikipedia to Restrict Creation of Articles 368
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."
That's Okay (Score:5, Funny)
To add insult to injury (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insult (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu (Score:3, Interesting)
On this topic, the notion of anonymous voting was actually a relatively r
Re:Abuse of anonymity is the injury *AND* the insu (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:3)
I don't know (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The reason is that it's a little roadbump (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I guess it had to happen... (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope they still allow anonymous edits and posts.
Re:I guess it had to happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
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. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not a problem. (Score:2)
If Seigenthaler sues, now Wikipedia can respond that when Seigenthaler sent them a request to take down the article, they did so, and instituted changes to prevent something similar from happening again. That's a pretty good way to get a lawsuit dismissed.
Re:Who is Siegenthaler? Why is s/he important? (Score:2)
Re:Who is Siegenthaler? Why is s/he important? (Score:5, Informative)
The article in question is right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Who is Siegenthaler? Why is s/he important? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who is Siegenthaler? Why is s/he important? (Score:3, Informative)
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
Establish some standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Establish some standards (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Establish some standards - exactly right (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikibooks.org]
http://www.opensourcetext.org/ [opensourcetext.org]
Re:Establish some standards - exactly right (Score:2)
This sounds really frustrating, but I don't understand why all your content was lost. Doesn't the wiki keep diffs for each edit? If not, it seems to me that that's the solution. If someone comes in and makes a mess, you just revert to the previous state.
Re:Establish some standards - exactly right (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Establish some standards - exactly right (Score:4, Insightful)
Dan East
Re:Establish some standards - exactly right (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Establish some standards (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does this really solve the problem? (Score:3, Informative)
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).
Template:High-traffic (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 m
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:3, Insightful)
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 lik
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:2)
we'll be rectalfying it shortly
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Basically, what you're saying is that Wikipedia doesn't scale. That'
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:2)
Proof?
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:2)
If the article is linked to from Slashdot, the editor-to-visitor ratio will drop significantly, and the number of views will encourage asshats to deface the article.
If, on the other hand, the number of eyeballs is high and steady as opposed to an one-time surge, good-willed people will have enough time to catch any vandalism before significant damage is done (damage defined as number of views of the defacement-- exactly the same thing that measures th
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:2)
It's not a comment on the voracity [sic] of the page's content, but rather the freshness.
As anyone who's adminned a site that deals with bursts of high traffic can tell you, one way to speed up page serving is to remove dynamic content and replace it with static content to whatever extent possible.
Faced with a Slashdotting, it makes sense for Wikipedia to cache a static copy of the page and serve that for some interval. Most of the time, it won't matter to user
Re:Template:High-traffic (Score:3, Insightful)
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,
Stop anonymous contributors adding external links (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem with efficiency... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Problem with efficiency... (Score:2)
Creeping elitism (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is how to manage this tightening. To quick shuts off valuable contribution, too slowly risks splintering chaos.
Re:Creeping elitism (Score:3, Insightful)
Poker nuts? (Score:3, Funny)
Oy, me achin' poker nuts!
Sometimes a comma is a good thing. Sorry, couldn't resist
Did you read page two? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Did you read page two? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 authori
Re:Did you read page two? (Score:3, Interesting)
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, w
Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [basicreations.com]
Re:Great! (Score:2)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Bad news (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org], how many hoaxes are there? This list [wikipedia.org] 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!
Not THAT bad (Score:3, Informative)
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 general
Wikipedia's great amount of suckage + goodness = (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wikipedia's great amount of suckage + goodness (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia [wikipedia.org]. That is the beginning and the end of it. Encyclopedias happen to also be information sources. It is not [wikipedia.org] an all-encompassing well of knowledge. At what point is this ambiguously stated?
Jimbo Wales & Seigenthaler on CNN (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jimbo Wales & Seigenthaler on CNN (Score:3, Insightful)
...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 f
Re:Jimbo Wales & Seigenthaler on CNN (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, and some people see the words CNN and think, "okay, this is valid, good information."
Wikipedia and the coming article crunch (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The real problem (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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.)
Wikipedia is not black/white... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:3, Insightful)
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), bu
Shame (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Shame (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
In related news... (Score:3, Funny)
*blinks*
joking!
Crap (Score:5, Interesting)
"Experiment," says Wales (Score:3, Informative)
Seigenthaler situation was rather unusual (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Wikipedia discussions about this issue? (Score:3)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The Seigenthaler slander is just a symptom (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [democratic...ground.com], 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.
Modify the System (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia links (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2005-12-05/Page_creation_restrictions [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pum p_(news)#Anon._page_creation_disabled [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Nocreatetex t [wikipedia.org] - The message that gets displayed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Nocrea tetext [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_fo r_creation [wikipedia.org] - The page where anon users can list content.
Abuse is going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikinote and its sister website, Shortify [shortify.com], 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:Where can I learn about the controversy? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hey, wasn't that the only thing they had going? (Score:3, Informative)
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 m