Abuse resistant anonymous publishing - Proposed solution to the Wikipedia issue.

[Jimmy Wales]

Ben Burch wrote:
> The biggest problem I see is that if moderation is commissive, rather 
> than reactive, then if the original poster commits a crime (like 
> violating the Official Secrets Act) then the moderator who approves  the
> posting would likely be liable for the same crime.

Well, at least with respect to Wikipedia there are a few misconceptions
I should clear up.  First, something like that wouldn't be appropriate
for Wikipedia on editorial grounds.  ("No original research") -- we have
specific intellectual standards that would generally preclude that sort
of thing.

Second, 'moderation' at wikipedia is reactive.  That is, people
vandalize, and then we clean it up.

> The only solution I can think of that would allow Tor and Wiki to 
> interoperate would be to have a Tor-Wikipedia Moderation Team who  would
> actively look for Wikipedia vandalism originating from Tor exit  nodes,
> and revert out vandal's postings promptly.
> 
> The support we would need from Wikipedia would be minor;  Wiki would 
> have to implement a Watch function for postings from Tor exit nodes 
> that the Tor-Wikipedia moderation team would get email notifications 
> on.  There already are exit node listings that would allow Wikipedia  to
> create and refresh this list on a regular basis, and obviously  they can
> already do that as they have implemented a block.  Wikipedia  would have
> to agree that the Tor-Wikipedia Moderation Team would have  the right to
> revert ANY change from a Tor exit node without  discussion.  Once the
> vandals realize that they won't have any fun  using Tor to vandalize
> Wikipedia, the job of the TWMT would get quite  easy, as I don't imagine
> there would be more than a few dozen real  edits on any given day from
> the Tor cloud.
> 
> Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Well, it seems unlikely that we could recruit enough people to do this
effectively.  We already have a huge number of people monitoring the
site, people who are (mostly) sympathetic to Tor's aims, but they get
tired of it.


--Jimbo