[WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

Mon Feb 7 19:04:16 UTC 2005

We could have two recent changes, one that has everything, another that has
pages of interest, a sort of watchlist for everyone that had all pages that
were embroiled in controversy listed.

Fred

> From: "Karl A. Krueger" <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:51:15 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
> 
> On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 04:58:55PM +0000, Jake Waskett wrote:
>> On Monday 07 February 2005 17:06, David Gerard wrote:
>>> I'm not sure we need this for *all* pages - it's really the problematic
>>> 0.1%.
>> 
>> I'm sorry, I meant only the highly controversial (read: problematic) pages.
> 
> One place where a few more technical tools might be useful is in
> ascertaining where the problematic pages are, and bringing it to more
> people's attention when a page goes into edit-war.
> 
> As the volume of editing on Wikipedia increases, it's harder and harder
> to discern anything about current problems by looking at Recent Changes
> -- there are hundreds of changes every hour.  I'll notice an edit war if
> it shows up on my watchlist or WP:RFC, but if nobody is watching and the
> editors involved don't post to WP:RFC (or don't know about it), the
> problem can persist indefinitely.
> 
> Each of us can name some pages that have experienced edit wars, NPOV
> controversies, and problems with advocates insisting on unverifiable
> inclusions.  But consider an editor who wants to help resolve these
> problems but doesn't know where the worst of them are ... or an editor
> who's in the middle of one of these conflicts and doesn't realize that
> it's *unusual*, that the behavior they're facing is well outside of the
> Wikipedia norm, and that it's time to ask for help.
> 
> It should be relatively simple to automatically discern if a given edit
> is a revert to a previous version of the article.  (Even if an abuser is
> using cut-and-paste reverts instead of editing older versions, the
> people *responding* to the abuse will probably use older versions.)
> Given this, the software could calculate a "revert temperature" of each
> article -- the number of times it's been reverted over the past 48 or 96
> hours, say.
> 
> Articles with a high revert temperature get listed on a special page --
> which might serve as a short list for admins protecting articles.
> (Automatic protection would probably be a BAD idea, since the software
> can't tell if a version is a blatantly vandalized one ... and it could
> be deliberately gamed to lock-in a maliciously edited version.)
> 
> Possibly other technical cues might kick in when an article's revert
> temperature gets high ... such as a warning on the edit page that the
> reverts were getting noticed, and recommending dispute resolution; or a
> requirement that the edit comment be filled in; or the like.
> 
> -- 
> Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
> Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
> 
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