Saturday, 24 January 2009

Steps to improve wikipedia

I have just been repeatedly insulted by a user on wikipedia with such terms as "you really are just talking gibberish now", "Your accusations of original research are pathetic", "I cannot believe I wasted my time on these arguments believing you to at least be rational", "you're a complete hypocrite", or "I am sorry you don't possess the intelligence...".

Well it's the first time it happens for me, and I'm really editing in wikipedia for some years now, so it's not such big deal (I'm sure it can / will happen to everyone after a while), but it made me think about things that could improve editing in this project. This will not change anything in cases like mine now (sadly there's people like that everywhere), but I'm trying to look more generally than just around my little problem):

  • make it mandatory to register, so as it would really be possible to block vandals (again this is NOT related to my case, as the user insulted me, but he clearly is NOT a vandal). I remember a case when various IP addressed obviously coming from the same origin kept vandalizing various articles, but the address changed because it must have been an internet cafe or a school, so it was really impossible to block it, even using IP)

  • allow to see the IP for any registered accounts (except in special cases of course, related to people wanting to be protected when posting, such as in some countries when posting on internet can be dangerous from their well-being). This would then be easier to detect people payed to post for various companies

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