"The change is part of a growing realization on the part of Wikipedia’s leaders that as the site grows more influential, they must transform its embrace-the-chaos culture into something more mature and predictable."
They evolve into uselessness, as any system does. They already have their own bureaucracy. Once they will introduce their own editorial process, the transformation will be finished.
That makes no difference, actually. I believe, that their technology just does not scale further. A couple of centuries ago, Britannica was also young and disruptive. No anymore.
It's not an issue of being sued. The DMCA protects us, and always has. It's an issue of culture - people want to be 'respectable'. They don't have the mental toughness to stay the course; they're traumatized by bad PR.
Consider the Seigenthaler incident: the moment the bad PR started piling up, Jimbo rolled over and instantly banned anonymous page creation. Did this stop bad pages from being created? No. Did this harm the community? Yes. Was it done without consultation? Yes. Has it proven utterly useless and likely wouldn't've stopped the original page from being created? Yes. Did it destroy a valuable source of information for New Page patrollers? Yes.
Yet, it allowed Jimbo to face the press and bleat that Something Has Been Done. Flagged revs is much the same.
I agree. As a Wikipedia admin since 2004, I'm upset by the increasing hesitance of long-term editors to allow anonymous IPs to explore and edit. One wonders if they can even remember when they were a green anonymous IP editor, adding content or fixing typos, before being wholly sucked into the wiki-world.
I too wish that Jimbo were more stubborn in sticking to his principles of openness. But openness seems to be giving way to consensus. And the admins on IRC seem to have his ear on vandal fighting.
However, if flagged revisions are meant only to replace protected and semi-protected article status, then I think it's a good move. Because it allows people to edit and hash things out, even if the changes aren't immediately shown to the public. This is better than simply locking all users out. One hopes that we can curb the proliferation of flagged revisions, but I'm not sure one will be able to stop its expansion to nearly everything in Category:Living people.
Comments
"The change is part of a growing realization on the part of Wikipedia’s leaders that as the site grows more influential, they must transform its embrace-the-chaos culture into something more mature and predictable."
This seems like flawed logic to me.
They evolve into uselessness, as any system does. They already have their own bureaucracy. Once they will introduce their own editorial process, the transformation will be finished. That makes no difference, actually. I believe, that their technology just does not scale further. A couple of centuries ago, Britannica was also young and disruptive. No anymore.
Wikipedia is increasingly conscious of being sued by public figures because of the high profile vandalism cases that occur with some regularity.
It's not an issue of being sued. The DMCA protects us, and always has. It's an issue of culture - people want to be 'respectable'. They don't have the mental toughness to stay the course; they're traumatized by bad PR.
Consider the Seigenthaler incident: the moment the bad PR started piling up, Jimbo rolled over and instantly banned anonymous page creation. Did this stop bad pages from being created? No. Did this harm the community? Yes. Was it done without consultation? Yes. Has it proven utterly useless and likely wouldn't've stopped the original page from being created? Yes. Did it destroy a valuable source of information for New Page patrollers? Yes.
Yet, it allowed Jimbo to face the press and bleat that Something Has Been Done. Flagged revs is much the same.
I agree. As a Wikipedia admin since 2004, I'm upset by the increasing hesitance of long-term editors to allow anonymous IPs to explore and edit. One wonders if they can even remember when they were a green anonymous IP editor, adding content or fixing typos, before being wholly sucked into the wiki-world.
I too wish that Jimbo were more stubborn in sticking to his principles of openness. But openness seems to be giving way to consensus. And the admins on IRC seem to have his ear on vandal fighting.
However, if flagged revisions are meant only to replace protected and semi-protected article status, then I think it's a good move. Because it allows people to edit and hash things out, even if the changes aren't immediately shown to the public. This is better than simply locking all users out. One hopes that we can curb the proliferation of flagged revisions, but I'm not sure one will be able to stop its expansion to nearly everything in Category:Living people.
(Hey, an admin of my generation! Not many of us left.)
Reading the second poll, it seems that the plan is to apply it to all BLPs immediately. I only hope it stops there.