Anonymous edits

[Robert_W_King]

In my opinion, allowing anonymous edits goes against everything that CZ is founded upon and only opens the floodgates for vandalism and trolls.

I would rather that we have absolutely no part of this to happen in our wiki.  The fact that we use established identities, although may deter a large amount of users, serves us well.

[RJensen]

I completely agree with Robert King.  The only case for anonymity is if someone would get punished for writing for CZ (say, a person inside China)--and in that case the Constables should know the name.

[Stephen Ewen]

My own view of the matter is pretty simple. 

1. If anonymous contributors are so healthy for a system, Wikipedia is right down the road.  Enjoy yourself, if you think you can, but we'll see you when you get back.

2. If anonymous contributions are just so good, we have a system whereby we may import the material from WP.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

The general policy issue is clear: the real-names policy has a quantitative deterrent effect and reduces the volume of edits significantly. It also has a qualitative effect, which is that people feel responsible for what they write. If you change the one, you change the other: the result of allowing anoynmous edits would be that people felt much less responsible or accountable for what they wrote, and CZ would look more like WP.

Your conclusion depends to a great extent on what you think about WP...

[Warren Schudy]

In my opinion, allowing anonymous edits goes against everything that CZ is founded upon and only opens the floodgates for vandalism and trolls.

I would rather that we have absolutely no part of this to happen in our wiki.  The fact that we use established identities, although may deter a large amount of users, serves us well.

I am not proposing that we replicate WP's flawed anonymous editing policies. In my original message I detailed policies designed to prevent vandalism and trolling. Policy 1 was designed to prevent vandalism, and policy 3 to prevent trolling. Can you explain why you believe those policies would be ineffective?

[Robert_W_King]

In my opinion, allowing anonymous edits goes against everything that CZ is founded upon and only opens the floodgates for vandalism and trolls.

I would rather that we have absolutely no part of this to happen in our wiki.  The fact that we use established identities, although may deter a large amount of users, serves us well.

I am not proposing that we replicate WP's flawed anonymous editing policies. In my original message I detailed policies designed to prevent vandalism and trolling. Policy 1 was designed to prevent vandalism, and policy 3 to prevent trolling. Can you explain why you believe those policies would be ineffective?

Do you wish for me to tear your arguments down one by one?  Fine.


1) Allow anonymous edits, but do not show such edits to the world immediately. Anonymous edits go in a queue, and any author or editor can then endorse an anonymous edit and make it go live. (This could perhaps be implemented by automatically reverting any change an anonymous user makes.) The endorsing author would take responsibility for the edit. Improper anonymous edits would not be endorsed, so there's no incentive to make them, hence, we shouldn't have to waste much time sorting through spam. This is similar to wikipedia where people watch pages they're interested in and revert vandalism, but the default would be reject rather than accept. This can also be compared to the way CZ user account requests are human-approved.


We don't want this because of the sheer number of "proposed edits" that would occur; it would create an unfathomable backlog, possibly of obscene text from vandals and trolls, so absolutely not.


2) Anonymous users can edit talk pages, and such changes appear immediately. However, a constable (editor?) can lock a talk page to anonymous users if anonymous users are causing problems.


No, this invites vandalism and trolling.  Aboslutely not. 


3) Anonymous users are required to defer to registered users, even if the registered user does not give good reasons for their position. This allows registered users to ignore obnoxious anonymous users rather than arguing with them.


See my rebuttal for #1.  I for one do not want to deal with traffic from a bunch of trolls, on any account and additionally, I refuse to debate with them on their level.


4) People can create pseudonymous accounts without proving their identity. A pseudonymous account is treated like an unregistered (anonymous) user for all policies; the only difference is pseudonymous users are known by a pseudonym instead of an IP.


NO NO NO.  Absolutely not; that's asking for sockpuppetry through proxies and IP spoofing.

I'm sorry Warren but all of your arguments ("proposals") are contrary to the spirit of Citizendium, and support everything that we intentionally avoid.  Your support for these ideals indicate that perhaps maybe you aren't really convinced of our policies and that's fine; if you are truly satisfied in a world of anonymous edits than perhaps Wikipedia would be more suited for you.

[Stephen Ewen]

I'd suggest, Warren, that the better way to explore increasing contributors is one consistent with the real names policy:

http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,630.0.html
http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1134.0.html
http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1320.0.html
http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1303.0.html
 

[Paul Wormer]

We don't want this because of the sheer number of "proposed edits" that would occur; it would create an unfathomable backlog, possibly of obscene text from vandals and trolls, so absolutely not.

Are you sure this will happen? How do you know?  You don't even want an experiment of say a month or two? Personally, I'm willing to referee quite a few (maybe 50/week) anonymous edits. 

[Robert_W_King]

We don't want this because of the sheer number of "proposed edits" that would occur; it would create an unfathomable backlog, possibly of obscene text from vandals and trolls, so absolutely not.

Are you sure this will happen? How do you know?  You don't even want an experiment of say a month or two? Personally, I'm willing to referee quite a few (maybe 50/week) anonymous edits. 

Yes, I am sure this will happen.  As soon as you allow an opportunity, a small trickle will eventually turn into a serious leak, followed by loss of structural integrity.  That's the way the internet works.

[Warren Schudy]

1) Allow anonymous edits, but do not show such edits to the world immediately. Anonymous edits go in a queue, and any author or editor can then endorse an anonymous edit and make it go live. (This could perhaps be implemented by automatically reverting any change an anonymous user makes.) The endorsing author would take responsibility for the edit. Improper anonymous edits would not be endorsed, so there's no incentive to make them, hence, we shouldn't have to waste much time sorting through spam. This is similar to wikipedia where people watch pages they're interested in and revert vandalism, but the default would be reject rather than accept. This can also be compared to the way CZ user account requests are human-approved.


We don't want this because of the sheer number of "proposed edits" that would occur; it would create an unfathomable backlog, possibly of obscene text from vandals and trolls, so absolutely not.

To help with the volume, we could tell anonymous editors to only make substantial edits: either fixing an important error, a dozen copy-edits, or at least 1 new sentence.

2) Anonymous users can edit talk pages, and such changes appear immediately. However, a constable (editor?) can lock a talk page to anonymous users if anonymous users are causing problems.


No, this invites vandalism and trolling.  Absolutely not. 


3) Anonymous users are required to defer to registered users, even if the registered user does not give good reasons for their position. This allows registered users to ignore obnoxious anonymous users rather than arguing with them.


See my rebuttal for #1.  I for one do not want to deal with traffic from a bunch of trolls, on any account and additionally, I refuse to debate with them on their level.


4) People can create pseudonymous accounts without proving their identity. A pseudonymous account is treated like an unregistered (anonymous) user for all policies; the only difference is pseudonymous users are known by a pseudonym instead of an IP.


NO NO NO.  Absolutely not; that's asking for sockpuppetry through proxies and IP spoofing.

Policy #3 is designed to make trolling and sockpuppetry unrewarding, which should prevent it from happening much. If 4 real-name users and 2 other users want X, and 2 real-name users and 20 other users want Y, that should be considered by culture and policy as a strong majority in favor of X. If people followed this policy and paid attention to the ideas of fake-name users but not their number, sockpuppets would be useless for manipulating the process. Trolling would also be useless since people could simply ignore trolls.

How about modifying #2 so that non-real-name users can only edit a specific portion of the talk page? That way trolls, vandals and sockpuppets would be really easy to ignore, and it would be clear what the real-name-user consensus was.

I'm sorry Warren but all of your arguments ("proposals") are contrary to the spirit of Citizendium, and support everything that we intentionally avoid.  Your support for these ideals indicate that perhaps maybe you aren't really convinced of our policies and that's fine; if you are truly satisfied in a world of anonymous edits than perhaps Wikipedia would be more suited for you.

I am not happy with WP's implementation of anonymous edits. I think my proposal would keep CZ's maturity while attracting more content. Why do you ignore the differences between the policies I proposed and WP's policies? Shall I rename "restricted anonymous editing" to "machine-readable reader feedback" so that it isn't guilty by association? Actually, that would probably be a better name for it.

[Robert_W_King]

Warren, you don't understand.

"To help with the volume, we could tell anonymous editors to only make substantial edits: either fixing an important error, a dozen copy-edits, or at least 1 new sentence."

Right.  Try telling anonymous trolls to make only "substantial edits".  Good luck with that, let me know how it goes.

Policy #3 is designed to make trolling and sockpuppetry unrewarding, which should prevent it from happening much. If 4 real-name users and 2 other users want X, and 2 real-name users and 20 other users want Y, that should be considered by culture and policy as a strong majority in favor of X. If people followed this policy and paid attention to the ideas of fake-name users but not their number, sockpuppets would be useless for manipulating the process. Trolling would also be useless since people could simply ignore trolls.

How about modifying #2 so that non-real-name users can only edit a specific portion of the talk page? That way trolls, vandals and sockpuppets would be really easy to ignore, and it would be clear what the real-name-user consensus was.

You don't get this real name policy at all.

I am not happy with WP's implementation of anonymous edits. I think my proposal would keep CZ's maturity while attracting more content. Why do you ignore the differences between the policies I proposed and WP's policies? Shall I rename "restricted anonymous editing" to "machine-readable reader feedback" so that it isn't guilty by association? Actually, that would probably be a better name for it.

Warren, I'm sorry but I am not convinced you have CZ's best interests in mind and you aren't entirely convinced of our project aims and goals.  There are very specific reasons why we restrict editing to users under real identities, and for someone to propose to allow anonymous editing shows me that they just do not accept these reasons.  You may have good intentions, but frankly all of us read and agreed to the project charter (in good faith) when we signed up because we understand the implications of our actions.

[Hayford Peirce]

I've been here for about 7 months and have created *dozens* of articles about various subjects, most of them pretty minor, but many of them perfectly ready for Approval, since there's really not much more to say about these subjects. But I am *straining* to think of a single, ie, ONE, case in which an editor has ever looked at, commented on, or edited one of my articles. Sure, a History editor might have some kind words to say about one of my *sports* articles, but he is in no position to Approve it.  There are only *3* Visual Arts editors, two of them apparently non-active.  I emailed all three of them, asking them to take a look at one of my articles.  The only one who replied said that he was not qualified to edit it.

I *ask* you, therefore, where all of these so-far imaginary editors are going to *come from* in order to edit these anonymous articles that some of the other CZians are touting? Tell me that, and then maybe I'll pay a little more attention to your proposals.

[Warren Schudy]

I've been here for about 7 months and have created *dozens* of articles about various subjects, most of them pretty minor, but many of them perfectly ready for Approval, since there's really not much more to say about these subjects. But I am *straining* to think of a single, ie, ONE, case in which an editor has ever looked at, commented on, or edited one of my articles. Sure, a History editor might have some kind words to say about one of my *sports* articles, but he is in no position to Approve it.  There are only *3* Visual Arts editors, two of them apparently non-active.  I emailed all three of them, asking them to take a look at one of my articles.  The only one who replied said that he was not qualified to edit it.

I *ask* you, therefore, where all of these so-far imaginary editors are going to *come from* in order to edit these anonymous articles that some of the other CZians are touting? Tell me that, and then maybe I'll pay a little more attention to your proposals.

I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble finding editors. However, I don't see how that's related to anonymous edits. Most tasks on CZ can be done by authors. Anyone can help an author improve an article; the only things another author cannot do is give official approval or settle disputes. The anonymous edit process I proposed allows any author to approve anonymous edits, so editors are not required.

How would anonymous edits make your difficulty finding editors to approve articles you wrote worse? It sounds like the problem isn't that the the editors in your area are overworked, but that there are no active editors in your area. Allowing anonymous edits could not make that worse! Anonymous edits might actually help your problem, since anonymous edits are a way for new users to get their feet wet before registering. Potential editors might start editing anonymously, get hooked, register to become editors and then approve the articles you wrote.

By the way, my understanding is there's no such thing as "my article" or an "anonymous article". CZ articles are not owned by anyone. An article might have been created primarily by one person, but isn't theirs. So I hope you mean "my article" as an abbreviation for "article primarily written by me", not as a statement of ownership. See http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:The_Author_Role .

[Hayford Peirce]

Since most of the articles I was referring to were primarily or exclusively written by me, I used the easiest possible way to refer to them without in any way trying to assert that I owned them.  I should, I suppose, have written, "no Editors have ever interjected any useful information, advise, or feedback into any of the articles that were primarily written by me." But I figured that people would know what I was talking about without the pedantic precision that I would have used in any actual article that was partially, mostly, or even exclusively written by me and to which I was referring.

[Patrice Gross]

With the current setup at CZ, anonymous editing is strongly advised against. However, if one would accept a  system in which draft articles can be edited by anonymous editors (not IP-'s), but the rest only by established editors, you will attract many many more editors. This can be done by defining a Draft namespace Draft:Title and adding several conditional statements to the localsettings.php file, similar to this [ code ].

What you can do wit this is restrict reading of IP's to the main namespace and other selected namespaces, while logged in, non-confirmed editors canonly edit the draft namespace, making vandalism useless, as it is not seen by the target public. Approved material is moved to the main namespace as soon as an editor deems it good enough. A simplification of the current approval process would be very advisable anyway. For example, just approving a new section should not be an issue, same as a well rewritten paragraph, etc.

I disagree with this proposal, because we have already Wikipedia articles at our disposal in order to initiate Citizendium draft articles. So, in my opinion, anonymous edits would above all disturb the Citizendium contributors, and seldom improve the quality of articles.

I suggest to allow anonymous editing only in users' talk pages, on one condition: any user could disable/enable this feature.

Plagioclase