2 ms·

Won't this just take the battleground about what is "fact" or not to Wikipedia? If someone was trying to discredit say, Obama, and saw "Barrack Obama was born

Won't this just take the battleground about what is "fact" or not to Wikipedia? If someone was trying to discredit say, Obama, and saw "Barrack Obama was born in the United States - according to Wikipedia" surely they'd rush there and try to sneak conspiracy theories past the moderators. So what happens then, Wiki has to lock down more and more pages, or effectively only allow approved edits to topics people are trying to shill over. That happens, and it's no longer the crowd-sourced/accepted truth, it's Wikipedia moderators truth.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Won't this just take the battleground about what is "fact" or not to Wikipedia? Wikipedia isn't ad-driven. That reduces its incentive to be addictive by any means necessary. It's also been arbitering truth fairly effectively for many years.
mratzloff 9y ago
Nutjobs already constantly try to edit Wikipedia. Moderators revert those changes.
cooper12 9y ago
When pages are locked, they're not limited to only admins (who I'm assuming you are referring to by "moderators"; otherwise, any user can undo an edit, and it doesn't require an account). There are several levels of page protection: [0] * Pending changes protection: Anyone can edit, but edits must first be reviewed before becoming visible. Autoconfirmed [1] users have their edits go through right away, while other edits have to be approved by a pending changes reviewer. The criteria for reviewing edits basically boils down to "anything that is not vandalism" is reviewed and then it's treated like a normal edit that can be contested by other users. In effect it reduces the incentive to vandalize or make disruptive edits because they won't even be visible. * Semi-protection: Only autoconfirmed users can edit. See [1]. This is used for pages where a large proportion of the edits are vandalism rather than helpful edits. 99% of vandalism stops here because most vandals are too lazy to get autoconfirmed or don't know how, since their goal isn't really to be productive. * Extended confirmed protection: This is a fairly new option and requires an account 30 days old and with at least 500 edits. This is mainly used for pages under sanctions (namely the Israeli-Arab conflict), and in certain cases where autoconfirmed users are causing abuse. * Full protection: Very rarely used. Mainly used in instances where multiples experienced editors are editing disruptively on a page such as by edit warring. The protection is always very short because it otherwise blocks editing from all users. In most cases though, the editors themselves are usually blocked or warned instead of a page necessitating full protection. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy [1]: Account must be four days old and have made at least 10 edits, so not hard at all to obtain

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Won't this just take the battleground about what is "fact" or not to Wikipedia? Wikipedia isn't ad-driven. That reduces its incentive to be addictive by any means necessary. It's also been arbitering truth fairly effectively for many years.

mratzloff 9y ago

Nutjobs already constantly try to edit Wikipedia. Moderators revert those changes.

cooper12 9y ago

When pages are locked, they're not limited to only admins (who I'm assuming you are referring to by "moderators"; otherwise, any user can undo an edit, and it doesn't require an account). There are several levels of page protection: [0] * Pending changes protection: Anyone can edit, but edits must first be reviewed before becoming visible. Autoconfirmed [1] users have their edits go through right away, while other edits have to be approved by a pending changes reviewer. The criteria for reviewing edits basically boils down to "anything that is not vandalism" is reviewed and then it's treated like a normal edit that can be contested by other users. In effect it reduces the incentive to vandalize or make disruptive edits because they won't even be visible. * Semi-protection: Only autoconfirmed users can edit. See [1]. This is used for pages where a large proportion of the edits are vandalism rather than helpful edits. 99% of vandalism stops here because most vandals are too lazy to get autoconfirmed or don't know how, since their goal isn't really to be productive. * Extended confirmed protection: This is a fairly new option and requires an account 30 days old and with at least 500 edits. This is mainly used for pages under sanctions (namely the Israeli-Arab conflict), and in certain cases where autoconfirmed users are causing abuse. * Full protection: Very rarely used. Mainly used in instances where multiples experienced editors are editing disruptively on a page such as by edit warring. The protection is always very short because it otherwise blocks editing from all users. In most cases though, the editors themselves are usually blocked or warned instead of a page necessitating full protection. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy [1]: Account must be four days old and have made at least 10 edits, so not hard at all to obtain