[WikiEN-l] Porchesia

Tue Oct 3 13:23:46 UTC 2006

On 03/10/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Either one is easy for a determined hoaxer to circumvent. If the only
> requirement is an external link, ISBN, ref, etc., the hoaxer can just insert
> such a link.

There's no technical measure that can circumvent a social problem on
Wikipedia without ridiculous collateral damage.

With a wiki, any idiot can edit your site. Think of battling hoaxers,
vandals, etc. as an arms race between the bad idiots and the good
idiots.

We can't stop the bad idiots being bad before they've done so without
stopping the good idiots from being good. So a technical approach that
will work is one that lets the good idiots find and deal with bad
content more efficiently with minimised collateral damage.

(This is the principle that means we use vandal-detection bots rather
than greatly limiting what people are allowed to type.)

- d.

- d.