[WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...

Wed Jul 2 19:03:00 UTC 2003

>From: Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
>Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Over the weekend...
>Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 11:16:26 -0700
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>james duffy wrote in part:
>
> >Is there any program that can be written to keep track of any new users
> >coming from those IPs and perhaps highlight them to a handful of senior
> >figures on wiki?
>
> >But that private eye program should not be generally available. All users
> >should be treated with the presumption of innocence.
>
>Watch out that we don't develop a corps (or cabal?) of "senior figures"
>that keep tabs on suspected bad guys without others' knowing what's going 
>on.
>We have [[meta:List of Michael's pseudonyms]] available to all;
>any list of DW's pseudonyms should similarly be open to inspection.
>To be sure, such lists should state up front that these are /suspected/.
>(Michael's now does.)
>
>
>-- Toby

The reason why I suggested this method is to avoid mass troll hysteria 
breaking out as can happen, understandably given the behaviour of some 
trolls, everyone was spending their time watching the IPs and all ganging up 
on some new user, with each new user from those IPs being presumed guilty 
until proven innocent.

What I was suggesting that a very small number of universally respected 
wikipedians (eg, Jimbo, Brion and Mav) would have access to a program that 
would give them the chance to spot suspicious activities by "new" users from 
the range of IPs associated with DW or Michael. They could privately monitor 
the situation and if they are seriously worried that the likes of DW is back 
then raise the issue with everyone. In addition as now we would all be 
keeping our eyes out. And if we all had suspicions we could raise the issue, 
with they having the additional program to check out general wiki suspicions 
about a user.

To call that some sort of elitist cabal is misleading. Everyone organisation 
on the planet have people to keep an eye out for potential problems. After 
all I and most wikipedians have no access to the programs that run wiki, nor 
do I want it. But that does mean that those that do are some sort of 
secretive elitist canal. Unless wiki has some sort of program, we give 
trolls like DW the advantage, unless individual users do what I did and 
spent hours and hours trawling through the suspicious user's contributions 
to find patterns.

But having mass access to to such a program could cause more problems than 
it would solve and risk creating witchhunts. Allowing one or two universally 
accepted people a chance to /quietly/ check out the behaviour of a 
mysterious user first would offer wiki a chance calmly to keep an eye out 
for DW et al, in the process causing miminal disruption to wiki unless they 
have clear evidence that /something is going on/ when the issue would be 
raised with everyone.

JT

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