[Wikipedia-l] [Note: Obscene language on Tsunami Article]

Fri Jan 7 15:12:16 UTC 2005

On Jan 7, 2005, at 10:02 AM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> p.s.  In case someone thinks the 'sysop forces publication
> immediately' is somehow unfair, note that it is necessary to prevent a
> denial of service attack once a bit of vandalism *does* slip through,
> which is inevitable.  That is, if someone managed to get vandalism on
> an important page, they could prevent others from removing it by
> simply repeatedly touching the page within the 10 minute window.
>
> The 'sysop force' means that responsible people can get a sensible
> version back live.  We can make clear that sysops are only supposed to
> do this in the case of vandalism, not just because they don't like the
> way the article is written.
>
>

What about merely having a logged in user force publication? If a login 
repeatedly forces vandalizations in, then that would be grounds for 
banning.

In many CMS's there is the concept of a "trusted user", who has 
privileges to do such things, but is far from being a sysop. It might 
well be worth looking at a similar idea for wikipedia - which would 
allow such "judgment calls" to be made by users who have put the time 
in on wikipedia, but who aren't interested in, and do not need, full 
sysop privileges.