Re: Wikipedia & Tor

[Adam Shostack <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marc,

	You're right, but I think that we should search for arguments
that help people see what we're doing and why.  If you put Wikipedia
in the same set as China, then pretty soon you'll have no allies.

        There are folks who will never see what we want to accomplish
or why.  There are others who might, and starting out with "Wikipedia
is asking for it," while possibly correct, will not help us win any
popularity contests.

	Without a bit of popularity, it becomes much harder to fight
the caleas, the retention orders, and the rest of the encroachments.

Adam

On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 12:17:49PM -0400, Marc Abel wrote:
| I think --
| 
| The Wikipedia concept sets itself up for this problem.  The phrase
| "anyone can edit" is both highlighted and hyperlinked at
| http://en.wikipeida.org.
| 
| I think it's up to that site to address its concerns, and until its
| concept is more mature their only recourse might be to block Tor exit
| nodes.  And that is their right!
| 
| As I understand, Tor was written to permit anonymous communication
| between consenting parties.  Parties who negligently or, like Wikipedia,
| intentionally do not authenticate their users consent nonetheless.  It's
| not Tor's objective to force anyone into dialogs with unknown endpoints.
| 
| I don't think Tor operators should be any more concerned about
| Wikipedia's "objections" and allegations of irresponsibility than those
| of China, the FBI, or whoever.
| 
| Wikipedia's liberal editing policies cause more serious problems than
| mere spam and vandalism.  At least those are obvious to casual readers! 
| Some of their articles are riddled with bias and misinformation, often
| intentionally written.
| 
| I am a big fan of Wikipedia--though I marvel that it works as smoothly
| as it does--and I visit there to read just about every day.  I also
| operate a Tor server with the default exit policy.  I don't argue with
| myself as a proponent of both, and I hope those who are still sore about
| this incompatibility will find some peace soon.
| 
| Marc
|