4 ms·

I'm of quite the opposite opinion. Within reason (importantly), I believe any public service, which is also managed by an anonymous, decentralized community, ou

I'm of quite the opposite opinion. Within reason (importantly), I believe any public service, which is also managed by an anonymous, decentralized community, ought to be under test constantly and by anyone. What's the alternative, really? Imagine if it was taboo to independently test the integrity of bitcoin for example. The sibling mentioned the linux kernel case. I admit that one felt wrong. It was a legitimate waste of contributor time and energy, with the potential to open real security holes. I don't pretend to have reconciled why one seems right to me and the other wrong.

hp6 3y ago
I think the key difference is supervision, is there another party keeping an eye on what is tested and how. And maybe insuring no permanent damage is done at the end.
dataflow 3y ago
> Imagine if it was taboo to independently test the integrity of bitcoin for example. > The sibling mentioned the linux kernel case. I admit that one felt wrong. > I don't pretend to have reconciled why one seems right to me and the other wrong. The "how" is what matters here, not just the "what". "Testing the integrity of Bitcoin" by breaking the hash on your own machine (and publishing the results, or not) is one thing. "Testing" it by sending transactions that might drain someone else's wallet is quite another. Similarly with Linux, hacking it on your own machine and publishing the result is one thing. Introducing a potential security hole on others' machines is another. Similarly with water: messing with your own drinking water is one thing. Messing with someone else's water is quite another.
- lll-o-lll 3y ago
  > Similarly with Linux, hacking it on your own machine and publishing the result is one thing. Introducing a potential security hole on others' machines is another. Playing devils advocate for a moment. How else do you test the robustness of the human process to prevent bad actors? Don’t you need someone to attempt to introduce a security hole to know that you are robust to this kind of attack?
  - xxs 3y ago
    You do it w/ a buy-in, e.g. permission from some of the maintainers - so they are aware. If you do not get permission, you do nothing. It's similar to penetration testing/
    - dataflow 3y ago
      Interestingly, while I 100% agree with you regarding the parent's question about security holes, I'm actually not sure how an experiment like the one on Wikipedia could be performed even with proper buy-in from all the owning entities (Wikimedia Foundation?) Is it even in principle possible to test this ethically without risking misleading the users (the public)? If not, does that mean it's better if nobody researches it at all? The best I can think of is by making edits that as harmless as possible, but their very inconsequentiality would make them inherently less likely for them to be removed. Any thoughts?
      - maxbond 3y ago
        This seems really easy to test ethically. You sift through the edit log to find edits correcting factual errors. Then you find the edit where the error was introduced. You can probably let an LLM do the first pass to identify likely candidates. With maybe 20 hours of work you could probably identify hundreds of factual errors. (Number is drawn from a hat.)
        dataflow 3y ago
        How do you find the factual errors that weren't corrected to figure out what the correction rate was?
        maxbond 3y ago
        Excellent point. That's more difficult but I think the ethical way to do it would be to recruit subject matter experts to fact check articles across a variety of disciplines. Bonus, you can then contribute corrections. In general what I'm saying is, this is a fertile ground for natural experiments. We don't need to manufacture factual errors in Wikipedia. They occur naturally.

hp6 3y ago

I think the key difference is supervision, is there another party keeping an eye on what is tested and how. And maybe insuring no permanent damage is done at the end.

dataflow 3y ago

> Imagine if it was taboo to independently test the integrity of bitcoin for example. > The sibling mentioned the linux kernel case. I admit that one felt wrong. > I don't pretend to have reconciled why one seems right to me and the other wrong. The "how" is what matters here, not just the "what". "Testing the integrity of Bitcoin" by breaking the hash on your own machine (and publishing the results, or not) is one thing. "Testing" it by sending transactions that might drain someone else's wallet is quite another. Similarly with Linux, hacking it on your own machine and publishing the result is one thing. Introducing a potential security hole on others' machines is another. Similarly with water: messing with your own drinking water is one thing. Messing with someone else's water is quite another.

lll-o-lll 3y ago
> Similarly with Linux, hacking it on your own machine and publishing the result is one thing. Introducing a potential security hole on others' machines is another. Playing devils advocate for a moment. How else do you test the robustness of the human process to prevent bad actors? Don’t you need someone to attempt to introduce a security hole to know that you are robust to this kind of attack?
- xxs 3y ago
  You do it w/ a buy-in, e.g. permission from some of the maintainers - so they are aware. If you do not get permission, you do nothing. It's similar to penetration testing/
  - dataflow 3y ago
    Interestingly, while I 100% agree with you regarding the parent's question about security holes, I'm actually not sure how an experiment like the one on Wikipedia could be performed even with proper buy-in from all the owning entities (Wikimedia Foundation?) Is it even in principle possible to test this ethically without risking misleading the users (the public)? If not, does that mean it's better if nobody researches it at all? The best I can think of is by making edits that as harmless as possible, but their very inconsequentiality would make them inherently less likely for them to be removed. Any thoughts?
    - maxbond 3y ago
      This seems really easy to test ethically. You sift through the edit log to find edits correcting factual errors. Then you find the edit where the error was introduced. You can probably let an LLM do the first pass to identify likely candidates. With maybe 20 hours of work you could probably identify hundreds of factual errors. (Number is drawn from a hat.)
      - dataflow 3y ago
        How do you find the factual errors that weren't corrected to figure out what the correction rate was?
        maxbond 3y ago
        Excellent point. That's more difficult but I think the ethical way to do it would be to recruit subject matter experts to fact check articles across a variety of disciplines. Bonus, you can then contribute corrections. In general what I'm saying is, this is a fertile ground for natural experiments. We don't need to manufacture factual errors in Wikipedia. They occur naturally.