[WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

Tue Feb 8 02:57:11 UTC 2005

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Deathphoenix said:
>  
>
>>You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act
>>as  moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating
>>much  more than a single "protected article"). The current
>>{{protected}}  system is good for protecting the article so that only
>>admins can edit  it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
>>    
>>
>
>Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness.  The best
>safeguard of content is verifiability.  The existing dispute resolution
>process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
>  
>
I would think that part of being in a team of moderators would be to 
edit according to consensus (per the talk page) and by verifying the 
data. The existing dispute resolution is great for handling disputes, 
don't get me wrong. I've been looking at the process and have been very 
impressed. However, if a large scale, rapid attack *were* to become a 
reality, the dispute resolution process might be too slow. Now, I 
definitely like Jimbo's Calvinball, but if the worst were to happen, and 
even a small fraction of a group like the <s>Stormtroopers</s> 
Stormfront were able to stop dragging their knuckles long enough to 
organise a long enough attack, even our benevolent dictator might be 
overworked.

Having teams of trusted moderators (not necessarily the same team for 
each article) to overlook certain "risky" articles might be a good 
compromise. Part of being in a team of trusted moderators is the 
knowledge that the best safeguard of content is verifiability. The team 
can have disagreements, but I think it would be better to argue on the 
talk page than to get into edit/revert war.

Just an idea for if the worst comes to pass.

Cheers,

DP