David-
Sadly, it appears that there are some hurtful vandals
out there
who are attacking the people trying to counter them. For example,
User:Zoe has just posted that she's abandoning her efforts to counter
vandals; see:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AZoe
which begins: "I'm tired of fighting, I'm tired of arguing,
I'm tired of being called names."
First, Zoe made this decision about a month ago:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Zoe&oldid=869255
And it had to do with more than just vandals editing her page. If that was
the problem, she could have just protected it, as some sysops have done.
Here's a more controversial idea: perhaps some
information relating to deletion of pages and banning of users
should be hidden from non-sysops. For example,
since "delete" can only be done by sysops, why not just tell
non-sysops that a deletion occurred, but not WHICH sysop did it?
By the same token, perhaps some discussion areas should be
only readable/writeable by sysops, in particular a discussion
area to discuss banning someone.
This is not going to happen. At Wikipedia we strongly value openness and
transparency, and the lack of different "user classes". Sysops should
merely be the "executive organs" of the users at large. If you want to see
a system that works the opposite way, take a look at Everything2, where
new users are told that they should expect half of their first articles to
be deleted. Users are only notified of deletions by an anonymous bot
called "Klaproth" and have no way of questioning them. The party line is
that "abuses may happen, but they will probably be rare". The whole E2
system is built up so that users have to work their way to the top,
gaining new privileges as they write. It has 13 different levels, many of
which come with new "powers". Suffice it to say that as a level 1 user,
your opinions are not worth much. Oh, as for censored conversations, the
only real forum they have is the "chatterbox", and if you say something
they don't like, any editor or "god" (they are really called gods) can
unleash the "Everything Death Borg" on you and silence you.
Are you scared yet? I hope you're scared. I'm not making this up. This is
what happens when you let a bunch of insecure geeks run a collaborative
writing community :-). Any power that is not kept in check by those who do
not have it is likely to be abused.
We are always looking for new solutions that allow us to maintain two
ideals:
1) We want to productively create an accurate, high quality encyclopedia.
2) We want our system to be as free of restrictions and power structures
and as open and transparent as reasonably possible.
Regards,
Erik