[WikiEN-l] threats and abuse from IP user

Fri Aug 22 20:42:37 UTC 2003

     > From: "james duffy" <jtdirl at hotmail.com>

     > A problem is exists with one IP user who continually tried to add in a
     > couple of paragraphs to [[Israel]]
     > ...
     > I am going to gather my friends for a whole range of contributions if
     > you keep forcing your POV. don't delete facts.
     > ...
     > Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?

Sigh. I have a *very* bad feeling about this - the same kind of bad feeling I
had the day Cantor and Siegel sent their first spam, and wouldn't stop when
asked to.

As the Wikipedia becomes more and more widely known, you're just going to
have a higher and higher probability of including in that group some of the
many humans who are losers. And, as the aftermath of Cantor and Siegel
proved, that effect gets worse, not better, as the community grows.

I'm not happy about this. I got the same feeling from the Wikipedia that I
had in the early days of the Internet, this wonderful group of people who all
had a positive attitude. And we all know where that went...

Look, don't get me wrong, I hope I'm misguided here, or being pessimistic, or
something. Maybe the Wikipedia community will be able to withstand the losers.

But maybe it won't; and maybe there's a reason the world doesn't have many
large, working anarchies - because they don't work.

So, much as it saddens me (which is no doubt not a fraction as bad as it
saddens those of you who've been around a lot longer), you might have to
think about introducing *even more* controls in the Wikipedia than the few
you have already - and maybe a fair number of them.

Don't be afraid to add mechanisms to keep the losers under control - because
if you don't, they will destroy the good stuff you *are* trying to create.

If so, I beg of you to take some lessons from the Internet, where we e.g.
tried too long to keep email open - with the results that you're all seeing
today in your inboxes. How I wish we'd added more teeth, back when.

Imagine the worst - because it will surely happen. (And realize that some of
the people you're dealing with see nothing wrong with deliberately killing
kids - against which trashing some electrons is very small beer indeed.)

So, with that background, here are some practical suggestions.

First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be
protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of
protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has
it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But
allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just
going to turn into a constant edit war.

Now you need to think: how will the vandals respond to that? If I were him,
and I were determined to harm the Wikipedia for perceived hostility towards
Palestinians (and there's a lot of anger boiling around there), I'd probably
start to vandalize random pages.

Blocking IP addresses will work for a while to stop that, but if it doesn't
maybe you'll have to disallow all edits from non-logged-in users, and maybe
even go to a system were a new user is watched for a while to make sure they
aren't a vandal.

But my overall message is "think about the worst case and try and plan for
it". Sadly, I expect it will probably come to pass. But if you think about
it, and discuss it, way up-front, when you have the time and leisure to do so
in a calm and leisurely way, that will be best. Trying to fix it in the heat
of the moment will produce VfD-notice-debate^9.

I hope this email didn't depress you all too badly. The Wikipedia is a really
cool thing, and I am quite it will succeed in really making an impact. (I
wouldn't be working so hard on it if I didn't think so! I'm too ancient to
have this much energy without good cause! :-)

But you do need to protect yourselves.

	Noel