Wikipedia and Tor - a solution in the works?

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/1/05, Geoffrey Goodell <goodell at eecs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> It seems likely that this solution has been discussed before, but my
> understanding is that Wikipedia works by having a team of volunteers
> periodically scour the submitted pages for signs of vandalism. Why
> should they do this ex-post? Is there some critical need for edits to
> Wikipedia pages to be published as quickly as possible, even if this
> means that there is potential abuse? I question the need for publishing
> first, asking questions later.

 It's historical more than anything. Publishing first and asking questions
later was what made Wikipedia so successful. Nowadays that might be
obsolete, but there would be a lot of backlash from some of the regulars to
take it away.

> Therefore, I propose screening edits from Tor nodes. Aside from the
> delay, this method carries no additional cost, since your editors are
> accustomed to scouring articles anyway. As long as vandalized pages are
> not published successfully, the value of this method for trolling the
> world will be neutralized. Even if the world magically turns into a
> utopia of location-independent sources, you will have a means of dealing
> with abuse quickly. and provided that your editors are sufficiently
> effective, you will never publish a vandalized page.
>
> Geoff

 I think it'd just be enough to identify edits by anonymous Tor users under
a single account. There's no advantage to having the specific IP, and it'd
be easier to police edits if all edits made anonymously through Tor were
lumped under a single account. It'd also increase the anonymity slightly,
though that's just a side effect.
 Sure, you could screen the edits too, but that'd be a bit of extra work on
the coding side, would bother a number of users, and wouldn't have much
benefit. I guess it'd lessen the incentive to vandalize, but not very much.
 Anthony
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