Sadly, it appears that there are some hurtful vandals out there
who are attacking the people trying to counter them. For example,
User:Zoe has just posted that she's abandoning her efforts to counter
vandals; see: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AZoe
which begins: "I'm tired of fighting, I'm tired of arguing,
I'm tired of being called names."
The last straw seems to have been an edit by No-Fx to Zoe's
user page, in which No-Fx made it appear that Zoe was "into oral sex".
I don't know enough about this situation to know for sure if this
is an example, but I am concerned about the long-term dangers
if this starts a trend.
Attacks on users and sysops - particularly highly dedicated ones -
are much more dangerous to the Wikipedia than
simple attacks on a few pages. If these kinds of attacks cause
people to stop weeding out bad pages or vandals for
fear of retribution, the project is doomed.
Is there any way the software could be modified to make it harder
for vandals to counter-attack the people who are trying to
remove vandalism?
At the least, why not let the User:NAME pages be ONLY editable
by NAME? The "User_talk:" spaces need to be editable in some way,
but I don't see a need for others to "fix" the User: space of someone;
it's not critical that that content be fixed, and there's advantanges
to having some areas that are "precious" to each user.
Here's a more controversial idea: perhaps some
information relating to deletion of pages and banning of users
should be hidden from non-sysops. For example,
since "delete" can only be done by sysops, why not just tell
non-sysops that a deletion occurred, but not WHICH sysop did it?
By the same token, perhaps some discussion areas should be
only readable/writeable by sysops, in particular a discussion
area to discuss banning someone. Perhaps there could be a way
where anyone (non-sysop) could suggest that someone be banned,
without having their name revealed to non-sysops.
Since real deletes and banning can only be done by sysops anyway,
and sysops are trusted, there's no reason this information
MUST be public.
A related idea might be to modify the "talk" system so that it's
more like a bulletin board, with threaded messages and
a clear identification of who made it (click on "reply" to reply
to that item, maybe in a threaded way). That way, any message is
clearly
identified with its REAL author. A side-effect would be that
the attribution would happen automatically (no more
forgetting ~~~~). That way, when people discuss things, they
can't make it appear that someone else made an outrageous/nasty
statement.
The goal here would be to prevent people from attacking each other,
or at least limit its effectiveness.
Thoughts?
who are attacking the people trying to counter them. For example,
User:Zoe has just posted that she's abandoning her efforts to counter
vandals; see: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AZoe
which begins: "I'm tired of fighting, I'm tired of arguing,
I'm tired of being called names."
The last straw seems to have been an edit by No-Fx to Zoe's
user page, in which No-Fx made it appear that Zoe was "into oral sex".
I don't know enough about this situation to know for sure if this
is an example, but I am concerned about the long-term dangers
if this starts a trend.
Attacks on users and sysops - particularly highly dedicated ones -
are much more dangerous to the Wikipedia than
simple attacks on a few pages. If these kinds of attacks cause
people to stop weeding out bad pages or vandals for
fear of retribution, the project is doomed.
Is there any way the software could be modified to make it harder
for vandals to counter-attack the people who are trying to
remove vandalism?
At the least, why not let the User:NAME pages be ONLY editable
by NAME? The "User_talk:" spaces need to be editable in some way,
but I don't see a need for others to "fix" the User: space of someone;
it's not critical that that content be fixed, and there's advantanges
to having some areas that are "precious" to each user.
Here's a more controversial idea: perhaps some
information relating to deletion of pages and banning of users
should be hidden from non-sysops. For example,
since "delete" can only be done by sysops, why not just tell
non-sysops that a deletion occurred, but not WHICH sysop did it?
By the same token, perhaps some discussion areas should be
only readable/writeable by sysops, in particular a discussion
area to discuss banning someone. Perhaps there could be a way
where anyone (non-sysop) could suggest that someone be banned,
without having their name revealed to non-sysops.
Since real deletes and banning can only be done by sysops anyway,
and sysops are trusted, there's no reason this information
MUST be public.
A related idea might be to modify the "talk" system so that it's
more like a bulletin board, with threaded messages and
a clear identification of who made it (click on "reply" to reply
to that item, maybe in a threaded way). That way, any message is
clearly
identified with its REAL author. A side-effect would be that
the attribution would happen automatically (no more
forgetting ~~~~). That way, when people discuss things, they
can't make it appear that someone else made an outrageous/nasty
statement.
The goal here would be to prevent people from attacking each other,
or at least limit its effectiveness.
Thoughts?