On 11/1/05, Geoffrey Goodell <goodell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It seems likely that this solution has been discussed before, but my
understanding is that Wikipedia works by having a team of volunteers
periodically scour the submitted pages for signs of vandalism. Why
should they do this ex-post? Is there some critical need for edits to
Wikipedia pages to be published as quickly as possible, even if this
means that there is potential abuse? I question the need for publishing
first, asking questions later.
It's historical more than anything. Publishing first and asking questions later was what made Wikipedia so successful. Nowadays that might be obsolete, but there would be a lot of backlash from some of the regulars to take it away.
Therefore, I propose screening edits from Tor nodes. Aside from the
delay, this method carries no additional cost, since your editors are
accustomed to scouring articles anyway. As long as vandalized pages are
not published successfully, the value of this method for trolling the
world will be neutralized. Even if the world magically turns into a
utopia of location-independent sources, you will have a means of dealing
with abuse quickly. and provided that your editors are sufficiently
effective, you will never publish a vandalized page.
Geoff
I think it'd just be enough to identify edits by anonymous Tor users under a single account. There's no advantage to having the specific IP, and it'd be easier to police edits if all edits made anonymously through Tor were lumped under a single account. It'd also increase the anonymity slightly, though that's just a side effect.
Sure, you could screen the edits too, but that'd be a bit of extra work on the coding side, would bother a number of users, and wouldn't have much benefit. I guess it'd lessen the incentive to vandalize, but not very much.
Anthony