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This is fake, right? Why would Wikidata touch this with a ten-foot pole? There is a lot of paid promotion on Wikipedia and highly-motivated vandalism. Just bec

This is fake, right? Why would Wikidata touch this with a ten-foot pole? There is a lot of paid promotion on Wikipedia and highly-motivated vandalism. Just because someone has reserves of ETH, they get to say what a valid edit is? It seems altogether antithetical to the free-knowledge open-source ethic of the WMF. It is one thing to propose this as an extension for MediaWiki that some rando running a website may use. It's entirely another thing to mock this up as if it's part of Wikidata's own interface. EDIT: Headline says "Wikipedia" but screenshots are allegedly "Wikidata" which is really different.

tzumby 3y ago
This has nothing to do with how much ETH one has. Metamask is a PKI keystone, you’re just signing something using your public key.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? MediaWiki has a mechanism called Pending Changes, where edits are held from public view until an officially-designated reviewer editor signs off on the edits. This is the sort of endorsement already built-in and in active use on Wikipedia, and it leverages the reputation of a trusted user to "endorse" possibly disruptive edits. I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Wikipedians also use something called a "Committed Identity" which is a cryptographic proof of their identity, which can be used to recover an account if credentials don't work. Since it's encrypted, it doesn't amount to revealing your real-life identity, it merely provides a mechanism for them to verify it with your cooperation.
  - World177 3y ago
    > What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? I think you're right in that it's so far not been necessary to use blockchain based identities. Though, I think blockchain based identities are objectively better. In implementation, it doesn't have to be a random person, it could be anyone or any organization that could endorse changes. > I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Ethereum based identities are easy to remember and harder to censor. If Wikipedia wants to censor someone currently, they can just remove the system they have implemented. The solution offered provides an external system that provides a way to determine if someone did something even if Wikipedia tries to hide it later. (with the certainty that also backs billions of dollars in value on Ethereum)
    - bawolff 3y ago
      > The solution offered provides an external system that provides a way to determine if someone did something even if Wikipedia tries to hide it later. No it doesn't. This system is signing the revision id number (im assuming based on the video). There is not neccessary any connection between the signer and the revision id. There is no way to verify if the revision id was ever valid (typically revision ids are sequentially increasing numbers but there are edge cases where that is not true. And i dont mean censoring edge cases, although there are systems on wikipedia where pages can be deleted or revisions hidden) So what does this system actually prove? That someone at a specific point in time signed an integer. Maybe that integer corrdsponds to a edit they like, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they never read the edit. Maybe the edit never existed. This whole thing is seriously stupid. It is a non-solution to a non-problem. The problem they are trying to solve doesn't exist and even if it did this wouldn't fix it. I mean hell, at the very least you think they would sign a hash of the edit instead of just an id number.
      - World177 3y ago
        > No it doesn't. I wasn't really paying attention to the implementation, but just what is easily possible. It would be simple to sign the full edit and provide that to other people without ever storing it on chain. It's also possible to create a contract that serves for domains of an organization to sign messages, etc. > This whole thing is seriously stupid. It is a non-solution to a non-problem. The problem they are trying to solve doesn't exist and even if it did this wouldn't fix it. I think this a valid. I actually do think blockchains solve identity well through domains, though, with endorsements, there's already seemingly good trust to the accuracy of identity on social media platforms. As an example, there's not usually a question to whether Elon Musk was the person who made a Tweet endorsing something as true. > I mean hell, at the very least you think they would sign a hash of the edit instead of just an id number. With most blockchain based stuff, it seems like projects are frequently made without much consideration.
        bawolff 3y ago
        > It would be simple to sign the full edit and provide that to other people without ever storing it on chain You could definitely do better than what they were doing, but i dont see how you would be able to distinguish between a signature on a real edit and one on a fake edit that never existed on wiki. Of course you could have a trusted third party verify the edits, but in that case you might as well just use a normal website.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    The fundamental flaw at the heart of crypto: the insistence that only onchain data matters, while in the real world, your reputation is tied to your real identity. This idea would work if the ETH wallet was tied to a real identity, but since crypto keeps insisting on anonymity, all you get is a random address signing a thing.
    - everfree 3y ago
      In what way does crypto "keep insisting on anonymity"? It's a system of private keys. You can attach identities to these keys, or you can not attach identities to them. The tech itself is unopinionated in this way.
      - spaceman_2020 3y ago
        Tech isn’t insulated from culture, and crypto culture so far has heavily emphasized anonymity, starting from the very beginning with Satoshi’s undisclosed identity. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that you even started seeing real world identity startups pop up.
    - sowbug 3y ago
      "... your reputation is tied to your real identity." Why do corporations get to conduct business, have credit scores, influence others' credit scores, and even make political contributions without anyone knowing the identity of the humans directing them? Seems like that reputation system functions well enough, and it's anonymous vis-a-vis "real identity." Shouldn't human beings be entitled to at least as much privacy as a shell corporation?
      - spaceman_2020 3y ago
        On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. On the internet, no one also knows that you’re a 14 year old signing off on Wikipedia pages about vaccines. Anonymity is welcome and important, but some things require connections to your real world knowhow.
    - xinbenlv 3y ago
  - xinbenlv 3y ago
    > NoZebra120vClip@: Wikipedians also use something called a "Committed Identity" which is a cryptographic proof of their identity, which can be used to recover an account if credentials don't work. Since it's encrypted, it doesn't amount to revealing your real-life identity, it merely provides a mechanism for them to verify it with your cooperation. OP: Thank you for brought it up. The growing adoptiton of crypto wallets brings hope for more people to sign as this Wallet apps are built for regular users so their user experience is much easier than PGP / "Committed Identity tools which is SHA-256 and other options even though those options has existed for decades. A metaphor will be FaceID / TouchID supported PassKey vs other crypographic signing GNU libraries.
bawolff 3y ago
Anyone can make a mock up, doesnt mean wikidata is going to use it.
- xinbenlv 3y ago
  > bawolff@: Anyone can make a mock up, doesnt mean wikidata is going to use it. OP: that's true. We are trying to get a small percentage of early adoptor who would love to opt-in this user script.
xinbenlv 3y ago
OP: Haha, no, it's not fake. It's done via a Wikipedia feature called "User script", which works like a Chrome/Firefox Extension. If an user choose to install what you build, it could load additional JS and CSS. Our code is open sourced on https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt, and the feature is enabled for my own account User:Xinbenlv https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem.js https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem... Anyone interested could try to enable it in their account if they choose to, by opt-in this user script that we built.
xinbenlv 3y ago
> NoZebra120vClip@: EDIT: Headline says "Wikipedia" but screenshots are allegedly "Wikidata" which is really different. OP: We use "Wikipedia" here because that's what most audience might recognize. In technical specifics, the site is Wikidata.org which is a sister project of Wikipedia, also supported by Wikimedia Foundation and share the same spirit. The Wikipedia is powered by software called MediaWiki, and Wikidata uses an extension of MediaWiki called Wikibase. It has its whole ecosystem and terminologies like all other open source movement.
xinbenlv 3y ago
> NoZebra120vClip@: Just because someone has reserves of ETH, they get to say what a valid edit is? > NoZebra120vClip: What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. > World177: ... Though, I think blockchain based identities are objectively better. In implementation, it doesn't have to be a random person, it could be anyone or any organization that could endorse changes... OP: Actually to use this tool we don't require anyone to own any ethers. It's just a digital signature signed with Ethereum compatible wallet. And I am super glad that @World177 pointed it out. That's exactly what where we are going. If we could let people sign with identities that's crypographically and blockchain native, we could further expand it with other social and tech architecture. For example, with support of Ethereum Name Service or other DID, people could sign with their identiteis associated with some institutions or organizations. Or they could collaboratively sign - e.g. a committee of reputable peer review group would only sign as a whole when their signatures aggregates to beyond the threshold. There is also another possiblitity that we establish a decentarlized computer graph based on "who has endorsed whose edits" so that the editors who are endorsed by more people, has a greater power endorsing others. Visualize the similar approach of Google's PageRank or Facebook's EdgeRank except for each vertex could be an editor's decentralized identity or an article, and each link could be the endorsement relationship or the author-article relationship.

tzumby 3y ago

This has nothing to do with how much ETH one has. Metamask is a PKI keystone, you’re just signing something using your public key.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? MediaWiki has a mechanism called Pending Changes, where edits are held from public view until an officially-designated reviewer editor signs off on the edits. This is the sort of endorsement already built-in and in active use on Wikipedia, and it leverages the reputation of a trusted user to "endorse" possibly disruptive edits. I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Wikipedians also use something called a "Committed Identity" which is a cryptographic proof of their identity, which can be used to recover an account if credentials don't work. Since it's encrypted, it doesn't amount to revealing your real-life identity, it merely provides a mechanism for them to verify it with your cooperation.
- World177 3y ago
  > What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? I think you're right in that it's so far not been necessary to use blockchain based identities. Though, I think blockchain based identities are objectively better. In implementation, it doesn't have to be a random person, it could be anyone or any organization that could endorse changes. > I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. Ethereum based identities are easy to remember and harder to censor. If Wikipedia wants to censor someone currently, they can just remove the system they have implemented. The solution offered provides an external system that provides a way to determine if someone did something even if Wikipedia tries to hide it later. (with the certainty that also backs billions of dollars in value on Ethereum)
  - bawolff 3y ago
    > The solution offered provides an external system that provides a way to determine if someone did something even if Wikipedia tries to hide it later. No it doesn't. This system is signing the revision id number (im assuming based on the video). There is not neccessary any connection between the signer and the revision id. There is no way to verify if the revision id was ever valid (typically revision ids are sequentially increasing numbers but there are edge cases where that is not true. And i dont mean censoring edge cases, although there are systems on wikipedia where pages can be deleted or revisions hidden) So what does this system actually prove? That someone at a specific point in time signed an integer. Maybe that integer corrdsponds to a edit they like, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they never read the edit. Maybe the edit never existed. This whole thing is seriously stupid. It is a non-solution to a non-problem. The problem they are trying to solve doesn't exist and even if it did this wouldn't fix it. I mean hell, at the very least you think they would sign a hash of the edit instead of just an id number.
    - World177 3y ago
      > No it doesn't. I wasn't really paying attention to the implementation, but just what is easily possible. It would be simple to sign the full edit and provide that to other people without ever storing it on chain. It's also possible to create a contract that serves for domains of an organization to sign messages, etc. > This whole thing is seriously stupid. It is a non-solution to a non-problem. The problem they are trying to solve doesn't exist and even if it did this wouldn't fix it. I think this a valid. I actually do think blockchains solve identity well through domains, though, with endorsements, there's already seemingly good trust to the accuracy of identity on social media platforms. As an example, there's not usually a question to whether Elon Musk was the person who made a Tweet endorsing something as true. > I mean hell, at the very least you think they would sign a hash of the edit instead of just an id number. With most blockchain based stuff, it seems like projects are frequently made without much consideration.
      - bawolff 3y ago
        > It would be simple to sign the full edit and provide that to other people without ever storing it on chain You could definitely do better than what they were doing, but i dont see how you would be able to distinguish between a signature on a real edit and one on a fake edit that never existed on wiki. Of course you could have a trusted third party verify the edits, but in that case you might as well just use a normal website.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  The fundamental flaw at the heart of crypto: the insistence that only onchain data matters, while in the real world, your reputation is tied to your real identity. This idea would work if the ETH wallet was tied to a real identity, but since crypto keeps insisting on anonymity, all you get is a random address signing a thing.
  - everfree 3y ago
    In what way does crypto "keep insisting on anonymity"? It's a system of private keys. You can attach identities to these keys, or you can not attach identities to them. The tech itself is unopinionated in this way.
    - spaceman_2020 3y ago
      Tech isn’t insulated from culture, and crypto culture so far has heavily emphasized anonymity, starting from the very beginning with Satoshi’s undisclosed identity. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that you even started seeing real world identity startups pop up.
  - sowbug 3y ago
    "... your reputation is tied to your real identity." Why do corporations get to conduct business, have credit scores, influence others' credit scores, and even make political contributions without anyone knowing the identity of the humans directing them? Seems like that reputation system functions well enough, and it's anonymous vis-a-vis "real identity." Shouldn't human beings be entitled to at least as much privacy as a shell corporation?
    - spaceman_2020 3y ago
      On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. On the internet, no one also knows that you’re a 14 year old signing off on Wikipedia pages about vaccines. Anonymity is welcome and important, but some things require connections to your real world knowhow.
  - xinbenlv 3y ago
- xinbenlv 3y ago
  > NoZebra120vClip@: Wikipedians also use something called a "Committed Identity" which is a cryptographic proof of their identity, which can be used to recover an account if credentials don't work. Since it's encrypted, it doesn't amount to revealing your real-life identity, it merely provides a mechanism for them to verify it with your cooperation. OP: Thank you for brought it up. The growing adoptiton of crypto wallets brings hope for more people to sign as this Wallet apps are built for regular users so their user experience is much easier than PGP / "Committed Identity tools which is SHA-256 and other options even though those options has existed for decades. A metaphor will be FaceID / TouchID supported PassKey vs other crypographic signing GNU libraries.

bawolff 3y ago

Anyone can make a mock up, doesnt mean wikidata is going to use it.

xinbenlv 3y ago
> bawolff@: Anyone can make a mock up, doesnt mean wikidata is going to use it. OP: that's true. We are trying to get a small percentage of early adoptor who would love to opt-in this user script.

xinbenlv 3y ago

OP: Haha, no, it's not fake. It's done via a Wikipedia feature called "User script", which works like a Chrome/Firefox Extension. If an user choose to install what you build, it could load additional JS and CSS. Our code is open sourced on https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt https://github.com/wikiloop/signed-stmt, and the feature is enabled for my own account User:Xinbenlv https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem.js https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Xinbenlv/SignWithEtheruem... Anyone interested could try to enable it in their account if they choose to, by opt-in this user script that we built.

xinbenlv 3y ago

> NoZebra120vClip@: EDIT: Headline says "Wikipedia" but screenshots are allegedly "Wikidata" which is really different. OP: We use "Wikipedia" here because that's what most audience might recognize. In technical specifics, the site is Wikidata.org which is a sister project of Wikipedia, also supported by Wikimedia Foundation and share the same spirit. The Wikipedia is powered by software called MediaWiki, and Wikidata uses an extension of MediaWiki called Wikibase. It has its whole ecosystem and terminologies like all other open source movement.

xinbenlv 3y ago

> NoZebra120vClip@: Just because someone has reserves of ETH, they get to say what a valid edit is? > NoZebra120vClip: What's the point of some random person "endorsing" an edit? I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites. > World177: ... Though, I think blockchain based identities are objectively better. In implementation, it doesn't have to be a random person, it could be anyone or any organization that could endorse changes... OP: Actually to use this tool we don't require anyone to own any ethers. It's just a digital signature signed with Ethereum compatible wallet. And I am super glad that @World177 pointed it out. That's exactly what where we are going. If we could let people sign with identities that's crypographically and blockchain native, we could further expand it with other social and tech architecture. For example, with support of Ethereum Name Service or other DID, people could sign with their identiteis associated with some institutions or organizations. Or they could collaboratively sign - e.g. a committee of reputable peer review group would only sign as a whole when their signatures aggregates to beyond the threshold. There is also another possiblitity that we establish a decentarlized computer graph based on "who has endorsed whose edits" so that the editors who are endorsed by more people, has a greater power endorsing others. Visualize the similar approach of Google's PageRank or Facebook's EdgeRank except for each vertex could be an editor's decentralized identity or an article, and each link could be the endorsement relationship or the author-article relationship.