Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-03-01/By the numbers
Slight inaccuracy?[edit]
"Other than a global lock, which prevents an editor from editing on all WMF sites, a block is the most serious action that an editor faces on Wikipedia."
I'd consider a site ban more serious than a block. --kingboyk (talk) 18:54, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
- You are right, I missed that during copyediting prior to publication. I hope that the new sentence makes more sense. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:57, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
- @Kingboyk: Now I think I see your point better, ban versus block. Maybe the text should have said the block is the strongest technically enforced action that an editor faces. Perhaps I'll leave this to the original author to consider. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:12, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
- The problem is, none of the variations on blocks are meaningful deterrents to spam. Spam accounts are free, disposable, and easily replaced. The only thing a spammer cares about is the content, since that's what they get paid for. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:06, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
- We think they actually get paid for getting spam to stick for a finite period of time. Which is why detecting and removing it early is so important. There's another UPE model of long-term article "monitoring" for a set fee, but that's a different story. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:08, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
- I've read similar info about spammers' terms of payment and the resulting need to remove offending material quickly written by the spam-fighting Charcoal team over at Stack Overflow. I would wager you are correct. --kingboyk (talk) 19:19, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
- We think they actually get paid for getting spam to stick for a finite period of time. Which is why detecting and removing it early is so important. There's another UPE model of long-term article "monitoring" for a set fee, but that's a different story. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:08, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
- The problem is, none of the variations on blocks are meaningful deterrents to spam. Spam accounts are free, disposable, and easily replaced. The only thing a spammer cares about is the content, since that's what they get paid for. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:06, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
From a look at the numbers above it appears that the workload of all editors in fighting spam would be made substantially lighter if edits by only registered users were permitted. The spammers would then be much easier to trace as it would not be so easy for them to hop to another IP address. In lieu of that I would like to see administrators take a much more proactive approach to semi-protection. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:02, 2 March 2020 (UTC).
- There is nothing that will actually solve the problem unless we ask for identification of editors working on certain types of articles, and I think most of us would regard it as a last-ditch measure, an\ unacceptaable compromise of "anyone can edit". What might help is explicitly asking editors to declare whether or not they have a COI, and if so a paid COI. Some will blatantly deny it, but I think about half the people with coi would in fact declare. This will at least provide a solution to editors with a nonfinancial COI to come clean about it. (I did propose this a year or two ago, and it was soundly rejected. Maybe by now there will be a better reliazation of the problems. ) DGG ( talk ) 06:21, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
- On my watch page of a few hundred articles I identify at least a score with likely abusive editing: suspected paid editors and professional reputation managers, POV editors, ego editors, attack editors etc. I do not have the resources of time to follow them all up and these editors usually have unlimited energy to pursue their individual obsessions. The suspected rogue contributors are registered editors, often redlinks, and IPs in roughly equal proportion. The result is that the articles that they attack degrade as time goes by. There will never be a complete solution to the problem, but I think it could be made a bit more manageable by banning IP edits as this would push those into becoming the more traceable registered editors. I know that there has long been a prejudice to allow anybody can edit as IPs, but I have never seen the force of that as anybody can register anyway. Because of its growing maturity, Wikipedia is different to what it was fifteen years ago, and because of its size, it is becoming more difficult to maintain its quality in many areas. A change in the policy of IP editing is needed now to make curation easier. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC).
- WMF has a proposal I think you would like, Xxanthippe, if I understand your point and the proposal IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation.
[E]dits will be recorded using an automatically-generated, unique, human-readable identifier instead of the IP address when an edit is made by an unregistered user. This identifier will stay consistent over a session and possibly longer...
What do you think of it? ☆ Bri (talk) 05:03, 3 March 2020 (UTC)- Thank you for bringing my attention to this proposal, which I had not seen before. Unfortunately I was unimpressed by what I saw. I found the proposal obscure, incomplete, and likely to make vandal detection more difficult. There was even a suggestion to put cookies on people's computers. Most security conscious users delete their cookies on a regular basis, so this would not work. The proposal seemed like a Heath Robinson contraption (any unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance). The direct solution is to ban IP edits. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:14, 4 March 2020 (UTC).
- Keeping peoples contributions associated with a single account, if possible, I believe will help. Of course there is always work arounds. But many will not bother to figure them out, especially initially.
- We could disallow IPs editing of certain types of articles (such as small companies and BLPs) if we so chose. Anything with a specific project page on the talk page could be semi protected automatically for example. We would need to figure out how we would measure if this is effective or not before we do it though.
- Well Wikipedia accounts involve zero investment, those at Upworks/Fiver etc require significant investment before they become useful. We really need to push these entities to work with us. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:52, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
- Your suggestion of not allowing IP edits on some categories of topic is excellent provided that it is allowed by the system and that community-wide consensus is obtained. BLPs would be a good place to start. I have seen BLPs, for example B. Wongar: Revision history or Alain de Botton: Revision history (I don't know why these are redlinks), that have been blighted for years by tendentious IP edits of all sorts. Semi-protection works for a while, but when it ends the trouble resumes. Assessing if the suggested scheme works can be done by seeing how many complaints arise. If an IP wants to make a change to one of these protected BLPs they can ask on the talk page, as at present. If they don't wish to be geolocated by their talk page edit they can register and make their complaint that way (and make their edit anyway as a registered editor!). Xxanthippe (talk) 03:41, 6 March 2020 (UTC).
- @Xxanthippe: These links work: Special:History/B. Wongar and Special:History/Alain de Botton ☆ Bri (talk) 04:57, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
- Thx! Xxanthippe (talk) 05:02, 6 March 2020 (UTC).
- @Xxanthippe: These links work: Special:History/B. Wongar and Special:History/Alain de Botton ☆ Bri (talk) 04:57, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
- Your suggestion of not allowing IP edits on some categories of topic is excellent provided that it is allowed by the system and that community-wide consensus is obtained. BLPs would be a good place to start. I have seen BLPs, for example B. Wongar: Revision history or Alain de Botton: Revision history (I don't know why these are redlinks), that have been blighted for years by tendentious IP edits of all sorts. Semi-protection works for a while, but when it ends the trouble resumes. Assessing if the suggested scheme works can be done by seeing how many complaints arise. If an IP wants to make a change to one of these protected BLPs they can ask on the talk page, as at present. If they don't wish to be geolocated by their talk page edit they can register and make their complaint that way (and make their edit anyway as a registered editor!). Xxanthippe (talk) 03:41, 6 March 2020 (UTC).
- Thank you for bringing my attention to this proposal, which I had not seen before. Unfortunately I was unimpressed by what I saw. I found the proposal obscure, incomplete, and likely to make vandal detection more difficult. There was even a suggestion to put cookies on people's computers. Most security conscious users delete their cookies on a regular basis, so this would not work. The proposal seemed like a Heath Robinson contraption (any unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance). The direct solution is to ban IP edits. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:14, 4 March 2020 (UTC).
- WMF has a proposal I think you would like, Xxanthippe, if I understand your point and the proposal IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation.
- On my watch page of a few hundred articles I identify at least a score with likely abusive editing: suspected paid editors and professional reputation managers, POV editors, ego editors, attack editors etc. I do not have the resources of time to follow them all up and these editors usually have unlimited energy to pursue their individual obsessions. The suspected rogue contributors are registered editors, often redlinks, and IPs in roughly equal proportion. The result is that the articles that they attack degrade as time goes by. There will never be a complete solution to the problem, but I think it could be made a bit more manageable by banning IP edits as this would push those into becoming the more traceable registered editors. I know that there has long been a prejudice to allow anybody can edit as IPs, but I have never seen the force of that as anybody can register anyway. Because of its growing maturity, Wikipedia is different to what it was fifteen years ago, and because of its size, it is becoming more difficult to maintain its quality in many areas. A change in the policy of IP editing is needed now to make curation easier. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC).
- There is nothing that will actually solve the problem unless we ask for identification of editors working on certain types of articles, and I think most of us would regard it as a last-ditch measure, an\ unacceptaable compromise of "anyone can edit". What might help is explicitly asking editors to declare whether or not they have a COI, and if so a paid COI. Some will blatantly deny it, but I think about half the people with coi would in fact declare. This will at least provide a solution to editors with a nonfinancial COI to come clean about it. (I did propose this a year or two ago, and it was soundly rejected. Maybe by now there will be a better reliazation of the problems. ) DGG ( talk ) 06:21, 2 March 2020 (UTC)