[WikiEN-l] Protecting Wikipedia as it grows ever larger

Sat Aug 23 14:10:31 UTC 2003

J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
> 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.

I agree with you and Jimbo. This is an excellent idea. It
doesn't prevent anyone (except trolls) from joining us, or
from editing articles. It is an unintrusive way of
preventing damage while still maintaining our principles.

> 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.

At the moment, we do not need to do this. The number of
trolls is small compared to the number of serious
contributors and newbies.

However, over time the number of people visting Wikipedia
will become huge, and eventually vandalism will become a
problem that will take all of our time and effort to deal
with.  Eventually, we will probably need to implement this
suggestion.

Every day Wikipedia becomes more and more well known, and
the use of the Internet worldwide is growing by leaps and
bounds. We would be naive to underestimate the threat posed
by the less than 1% of visitors who are out to cause havoc.
Less than 1% of a huge number, is still a very large
number.

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

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