While I found the article quite interesting, and thought provoking, the author does make some mistakes when it comes to Wikipedia. I hope to clarify the actual state and history of Wikipedia below.
To start with, the claim that Wikipedia offers “little differentiation between the experience and tools available to registered users and to anonymous visitors” is not correct. Wikipedia has a page on this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account? . The differences mentioned there include: “The ability to start new pages. / The ability to edit semi-protected pages (i.e., pages which are totally blocked from editing by unregistered editors). … The ability to upload images. … Your own user page.” (A page where you can provide whatever information you wish about yourself, and keep notes and things to work on.) “The use of your own personal watchlist to which you can add articles that interest you. … The ability to customize the appearance and behavior of the website. … Your IP address will no longer be visible to other users.” There are other benefits I didn’t mention here. This is hardly “little differentiation”.
Next, there’s the claim that, before the Seigenthaler controversy, Wikipedia was “an almost completely open, registration-free system”. This is simply incorrect. Wikipedia has allowed visitors to register user accounts since it began. See the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia , particularly this quote: “the article UuU, created by the user Eiffel.demon.co.uk on 16 January 2001, at 21:08 UTC. This was on the second day after the start of Wikipedia.” What the author may have meant was that registration was not required in order to edit articles. This also has been true throughout Wikipedia’s history, and remains true to this day. After the Seigenthaler controversy the creation of new pages was restricted to registered users, but the editing of the more than one million existing articles has not and was not restricted.
The statement that Wikipedia has “no formal system of checks or balances built-in that ensures the information is factual” is true, depending on what you mean by “formal”. While historically the main method of verifying and correcting Wikipedia content was based simply on the principle of “many eyes”, we are working on a number of more formal approaches, ranging from easing and clarifying the process of citing external sources to proposals for stable versions of articles, to the longstanding “Featured article” process which involves a detailed examination of an article by interested Wikipedians.
The claim that: “before [Wikipedia] implemented its current registration requirements, anybody could – and did – add anything to the site, of any quality, and with no ramification or fear of discovery for antisocial behavior” is simply wrong, in a number of different ways.
First of all, as I explained above, Wikipedia does not have any registration requirement – certain abilities are granted to registered users, but the central ability to edit pages was, and remains, open to nearly any visitor.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that Wikipedia has no methods to discover bad edits, or prevent bad editors from damaging the content; in fact, Wikipedia has a large and well used set of tools to do exactly that. They include the fact that all changes (from registered and unregistered users alike) are recorded in at least three places – in the revision history of the page they edited (available from URLs like: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Example&action=history ) – in the publicly viewable list of all their contributions (identified by user name for registered users, or by IP address for unregistered users) (available from URLs like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/JesseW ) – and finally on the Recent Changes page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges ), a constantly updated list of all the changes made to any page in Wikipedia. Based off of these basic logs, a large number of filtering tools have been developed, which use complex algorithms to identify edits that are likely to have been vandalism (Wikipedia jargon for an obviously bad edit). These include stand-alone programs, IRC bots, and javascript tools that can be installed directly into a registered user’s view of the site.
Once bad edits have been identified, Wikipedia is not lacking when it comes to methods to handle them, and the people who commit them. The main method for handling vandalism is simply to revert it (Wikipedia jargon for replacing the vandalized page with the previous, un-vandalized version always stored in the pages revision history). There are tools available to make this a one-click process. If vandalism by a registered user or an IP address continues, warnings are given to the person committing the vandalism, by means of their Talk page (a public intra-site method of communication). If they persist after having been warned, they are blocked from further edits to the site for a period of time.
I’m not sure what the author meant by: “Because Wikipedia didn’t care who its users were, it had only limited and blunt tools to fix community problems that cropped up (such as completely locking an article to stop anyone else from editing it).” Locking an article (referred as “protection” in Wikipedia jargon) is used not because Wikipedia doesn’t “care who its users were” (whatever that means); it’s used as a cooling off measure for the times when registered, known users get into fights(known as “edit wars” in Wikipedia jargon), and on pages where bad edits would be severely disruptive to the operation of the site (such as the MediaWiki namespace pages that determine the site interface). While they certainly could be better, I hope I’ve demonstrated that the tools available to Wikipedians are not “limited and blunt”.
The author’s understanding of the Congressional staff editing issue is also not entirely correct. He says that Wikipedia’s “only choice was to shut down editing access to whole blocks of IP addresses”. This is simply wrong. A number of other possibilities were considered, ranging from greater review of the contributions of those addresses or the articles in question, to contacting Congress. The blocks were intended to be temporary, and were mainly a result of the massive media attention rather than any lack of ability on the part of Wikipedia. The statement: “Wikipedia, not really knowing who most of its editing users actually are” is rather amusing, considering that, later in the article, the author makes the point any free online registrations is not too effective as a way to know who people “actually are”, in fact, such registrations tell you “nothing more about a person than they want you to know”. Wikipedia is very aware of the problem of one user creating multiple registered accounts (the Wikipedia jargon term is “sockpuppet”); in fact, IP addresses (which are more visible in the case of unregistered users) provide a better way to identify malcontents than a flood of opaquely named sockpuppets.
This quote provides a good, if sad pointer for improvement by Wikipedia: “If the benefit or value of registering isn’t obvious, as is the case with Wikipedia”. I’m not sure what more we could do, considering that (for unregistered visitors) every page on Wikipedia contains a link in the upper right corner marked “Sign in/create account”, which leads to a page that states: “Registering a free account takes only a few seconds, and has many benefits.” which is linked to the page “Wikipedia:Why create an account?” I mentioned above. But if the author or any readers have any suggestions about what more we can do to make the benefits of registration more obvious, please post.
I would really like for the author to expand on this sentence, in regards to IP blocking, the Vandal Fighter tool, and page protection: “These are not elegant solutions and might have been less necessary had a traditional membership system been in place from the beginning.” Maybe I am missing something, but I fail to see how having a “traditional membership system”(which, as I pointed out above, has always been an option) would alleviate the need for these features. I look forward to the author’s explanation of this.
This seems to have turned into more like a small essay in itself, so thanks for making it all the way through it. I hope I have manage to clear up some of the misunderstandings of Wikipedia, and I look forward to the responses.
Now that this discussion seems to be winding down I wanted to comment on the polarity of much of what has been said relating to this article. While I certainly appreciate the discourse regarding the value of anonymity on the Internet I think some of the participants are making assumptions that aren’t necessarily valid.
While the author, based on assumptions of my own that are not necessarily valid, does appear to find more value in a non-anonymous community I don’t see this article as a rant against anonymity as a concept. I think most of the ALA contributors and audience can certainly recognize how important anonymity can be to, say, a dissident from China.
Then again, I’m sure many people have participated in an online discourse that at one time or another was disrupted by someone looking for a fight, looking for attention, or who just plain wanted to mess with people. And lets not forget those oh-so-enjoyable flame wars that go on and on with two people saying the same thing over and over … good times. What I took away from this article is that you can help decrease these kinds of disruptions by making some kind of connection between an online persona and a real person.
A decrease in anonymity in an online community or on the Internet in general isn’t something that’s necessary, pertinent, or even a good idea when applied globally. However, if enacting registration is something that a community wants or needs then the author has given some fairly trivial and non-obtrusive means of doing so.
I look forward to more discussion on anonymity vs. registration in online communities … not to mention more random flames from the anarchists.
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Weixi Yen
I see the points of this article. Most of the points you made are quite logical and made sense to me. However, I was hoping there would be some better evidence and facts included in the article, as it does seem like just someone’s opinion of how the internet should be. Also, I felt the example of the Wikipedia scandal was not very strong. I read the CNN article and really the guy is just a crybaby over one small little detail.
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muoka muoka
I came across some information on an international conference, They have very interesting panels on identity and a featured panel on Barak Obama and you can also make a real African Safari”¦
The Institute of Identity Research (IDmap) announces an international conference
on Identity Politics on the Internet to be held in Kenya on the 27th to 29th of
August 2009. The aim of the Conference is to create discourse in the area of
Identity politics on the Internet and other related topics.
The Conference will be graced by several leading scholars who have written and
researched extensively on issues of Identity. We hope that this conference will
result in solutions and better understanding of the problems facing issues of
identity in the contemporary context.
AN INTERNATIONALCONFERENCE IDENTITYPOLITICS ON THEINTERNET
August 27-29, 2009
Organized by Institute of Identity Research (IDmap)
www.idmap-conferences.net
Will be held in Amboseli Wildlife National Park, Kenya
Featured panel: Barack Obama’ Election and Kenyan politics of Identity:
Will he identify himself with the World or with his People?
“¢ The Dead line for submission of the Abstracts is 01.05.2009 (200-500 words)
in Word or PDF formats
“¢ The Dead line for submission of full-text papers is 01.07.2009
Preliminary program of the Conference includes the following panels:
“¢ Kenyan 2007 Presidential elections and the Internet
“¢ Traditions and Identity in Kenyan politics: Barak Obama as a Luo
representative of Kenyan identity politics
“¢ Facebook and Identity: do old ethnicity definitions still matter?
“¢ World Identity politics: Case-studies and Comparative Analysis
“¢ Parties and recruitment in the digital world
“¢ Gender, ethnicity and empowerment: what is better to be a white man or a
black woman?
“¢ When religion comes to the Internet: the new ways to build and reinforce
religious identity
“¢ Government on the Internet: new ways to preserve Nation-state and its
identity on the Net
“¢ New English and E-Linguistic: jargon and vocabulary of Internet campaigns
Participants are welcomed to join the following working groups:
“¢ Computers and identity
“¢ Culture and identity
“¢ Mathematical expressions of identity
“¢ Internet and Politics
“¢ Internet Vocabulary
Best Identity MA/PhD Thesis work award:
During the conference the Institute will award the best MA/PhD work submitted
for the evaluation. The work should reveal an original and innovative approach
in the field of Identity with its expression on the Internet. Information
regarding submission procedure can be found on our site or through direct
contact of our Administrators.
Does anyone have any citations they can offer in terms of what percentage of people actually register to join an online community or social network? What percentage register on a publisher’s site online to access additional features and functions? Looking for research on the topic. Thanks in advance!
48 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleJesse W
While I found the article quite interesting, and thought provoking, the author does make some mistakes when it comes to Wikipedia. I hope to clarify the actual state and history of Wikipedia below.
To start with, the claim that Wikipedia offers “little differentiation between the experience and tools available to registered users and to anonymous visitors” is not correct. Wikipedia has a page on this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account? . The differences mentioned there include: “The ability to start new pages. / The ability to edit semi-protected pages (i.e., pages which are totally blocked from editing by unregistered editors). … The ability to upload images. … Your own user page.” (A page where you can provide whatever information you wish about yourself, and keep notes and things to work on.) “The use of your own personal watchlist to which you can add articles that interest you. … The ability to customize the appearance and behavior of the website. … Your IP address will no longer be visible to other users.” There are other benefits I didn’t mention here. This is hardly “little differentiation”.
Next, there’s the claim that, before the Seigenthaler controversy, Wikipedia was “an almost completely open, registration-free system”. This is simply incorrect. Wikipedia has allowed visitors to register user accounts since it began. See the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia , particularly this quote: “the article UuU, created by the user Eiffel.demon.co.uk on 16 January 2001, at 21:08 UTC. This was on the second day after the start of Wikipedia.” What the author may have meant was that registration was not required in order to edit articles. This also has been true throughout Wikipedia’s history, and remains true to this day. After the Seigenthaler controversy the creation of new pages was restricted to registered users, but the editing of the more than one million existing articles has not and was not restricted.
The statement that Wikipedia has “no formal system of checks or balances built-in that ensures the information is factual” is true, depending on what you mean by “formal”. While historically the main method of verifying and correcting Wikipedia content was based simply on the principle of “many eyes”, we are working on a number of more formal approaches, ranging from easing and clarifying the process of citing external sources to proposals for stable versions of articles, to the longstanding “Featured article” process which involves a detailed examination of an article by interested Wikipedians.
The claim that: “before [Wikipedia] implemented its current registration requirements, anybody could – and did – add anything to the site, of any quality, and with no ramification or fear of discovery for antisocial behavior” is simply wrong, in a number of different ways.
First of all, as I explained above, Wikipedia does not have any registration requirement – certain abilities are granted to registered users, but the central ability to edit pages was, and remains, open to nearly any visitor.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that Wikipedia has no methods to discover bad edits, or prevent bad editors from damaging the content; in fact, Wikipedia has a large and well used set of tools to do exactly that. They include the fact that all changes (from registered and unregistered users alike) are recorded in at least three places – in the revision history of the page they edited (available from URLs like: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Example&action=history ) – in the publicly viewable list of all their contributions (identified by user name for registered users, or by IP address for unregistered users) (available from URLs like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/JesseW ) – and finally on the Recent Changes page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges ), a constantly updated list of all the changes made to any page in Wikipedia. Based off of these basic logs, a large number of filtering tools have been developed, which use complex algorithms to identify edits that are likely to have been vandalism (Wikipedia jargon for an obviously bad edit). These include stand-alone programs, IRC bots, and javascript tools that can be installed directly into a registered user’s view of the site.
Once bad edits have been identified, Wikipedia is not lacking when it comes to methods to handle them, and the people who commit them. The main method for handling vandalism is simply to revert it (Wikipedia jargon for replacing the vandalized page with the previous, un-vandalized version always stored in the pages revision history). There are tools available to make this a one-click process. If vandalism by a registered user or an IP address continues, warnings are given to the person committing the vandalism, by means of their Talk page (a public intra-site method of communication). If they persist after having been warned, they are blocked from further edits to the site for a period of time.
I’m not sure what the author meant by: “Because Wikipedia didn’t care who its users were, it had only limited and blunt tools to fix community problems that cropped up (such as completely locking an article to stop anyone else from editing it).” Locking an article (referred as “protection” in Wikipedia jargon) is used not because Wikipedia doesn’t “care who its users were” (whatever that means); it’s used as a cooling off measure for the times when registered, known users get into fights(known as “edit wars” in Wikipedia jargon), and on pages where bad edits would be severely disruptive to the operation of the site (such as the MediaWiki namespace pages that determine the site interface). While they certainly could be better, I hope I’ve demonstrated that the tools available to Wikipedians are not “limited and blunt”.
The author’s understanding of the Congressional staff editing issue is also not entirely correct. He says that Wikipedia’s “only choice was to shut down editing access to whole blocks of IP addresses”. This is simply wrong. A number of other possibilities were considered, ranging from greater review of the contributions of those addresses or the articles in question, to contacting Congress. The blocks were intended to be temporary, and were mainly a result of the massive media attention rather than any lack of ability on the part of Wikipedia. The statement: “Wikipedia, not really knowing who most of its editing users actually are” is rather amusing, considering that, later in the article, the author makes the point any free online registrations is not too effective as a way to know who people “actually are”, in fact, such registrations tell you “nothing more about a person than they want you to know”. Wikipedia is very aware of the problem of one user creating multiple registered accounts (the Wikipedia jargon term is “sockpuppet”); in fact, IP addresses (which are more visible in the case of unregistered users) provide a better way to identify malcontents than a flood of opaquely named sockpuppets.
This quote provides a good, if sad pointer for improvement by Wikipedia: “If the benefit or value of registering isn’t obvious, as is the case with Wikipedia”. I’m not sure what more we could do, considering that (for unregistered visitors) every page on Wikipedia contains a link in the upper right corner marked “Sign in/create account”, which leads to a page that states: “Registering a free account takes only a few seconds, and has many benefits.” which is linked to the page “Wikipedia:Why create an account?” I mentioned above. But if the author or any readers have any suggestions about what more we can do to make the benefits of registration more obvious, please post.
I would really like for the author to expand on this sentence, in regards to IP blocking, the Vandal Fighter tool, and page protection: “These are not elegant solutions and might have been less necessary had a traditional membership system been in place from the beginning.” Maybe I am missing something, but I fail to see how having a “traditional membership system”(which, as I pointed out above, has always been an option) would alleviate the need for these features. I look forward to the author’s explanation of this.
This seems to have turned into more like a small essay in itself, so thanks for making it all the way through it. I hope I have manage to clear up some of the misunderstandings of Wikipedia, and I look forward to the responses.
Michael Straker
Thanks, JesseW, it was well worth the read. I too look forward to the author’s expansion. (Assuming he hasn’t forgotten his login information…)
Brian Sweeney
Now that this discussion seems to be winding down I wanted to comment on the polarity of much of what has been said relating to this article. While I certainly appreciate the discourse regarding the value of anonymity on the Internet I think some of the participants are making assumptions that aren’t necessarily valid.
While the author, based on assumptions of my own that are not necessarily valid, does appear to find more value in a non-anonymous community I don’t see this article as a rant against anonymity as a concept. I think most of the ALA contributors and audience can certainly recognize how important anonymity can be to, say, a dissident from China.
Then again, I’m sure many people have participated in an online discourse that at one time or another was disrupted by someone looking for a fight, looking for attention, or who just plain wanted to mess with people. And lets not forget those oh-so-enjoyable flame wars that go on and on with two people saying the same thing over and over … good times. What I took away from this article is that you can help decrease these kinds of disruptions by making some kind of connection between an online persona and a real person.
A decrease in anonymity in an online community or on the Internet in general isn’t something that’s necessary, pertinent, or even a good idea when applied globally. However, if enacting registration is something that a community wants or needs then the author has given some fairly trivial and non-obtrusive means of doing so.
I look forward to more discussion on anonymity vs. registration in online communities … not to mention more random flames from the anarchists.
Weixi Yen
I see the points of this article. Most of the points you made are quite logical and made sense to me. However, I was hoping there would be some better evidence and facts included in the article, as it does seem like just someone’s opinion of how the internet should be. Also, I felt the example of the Wikipedia scandal was not very strong. I read the CNN article and really the guy is just a crybaby over one small little detail.
Steven Kumar
Perfect.
Alan Buses
Thank you for this support. It’s clear, concise and helpful.
muoka muoka
I came across some information on an international conference, They have very interesting panels on identity and a featured panel on Barak Obama and you can also make a real African Safari”¦
The Institute of Identity Research (IDmap) announces an international conference
on Identity Politics on the Internet to be held in Kenya on the 27th to 29th of
August 2009. The aim of the Conference is to create discourse in the area of
Identity politics on the Internet and other related topics.
The Conference will be graced by several leading scholars who have written and
researched extensively on issues of Identity. We hope that this conference will
result in solutions and better understanding of the problems facing issues of
identity in the contemporary context.
AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
IDENTITY POLITICS ON THE INTERNET
August 27-29, 2009
Organized by Institute of Identity Research (IDmap)
www.idmap-conferences.net
Will be held in Amboseli Wildlife National Park, Kenya
Featured panel: Barack Obama’ Election and Kenyan politics of Identity:
Will he identify himself with the World or with his People?
“¢ The Dead line for submission of the Abstracts is 01.05.2009 (200-500 words)
in Word or PDF formats
“¢ The Dead line for submission of full-text papers is 01.07.2009
Preliminary program of the Conference includes the following panels:
“¢ Kenyan 2007 Presidential elections and the Internet
“¢ Traditions and Identity in Kenyan politics: Barak Obama as a Luo
representative of Kenyan identity politics
“¢ Facebook and Identity: do old ethnicity definitions still matter?
“¢ World Identity politics: Case-studies and Comparative Analysis
“¢ Parties and recruitment in the digital world
“¢ Gender, ethnicity and empowerment: what is better to be a white man or a
black woman?
“¢ When religion comes to the Internet: the new ways to build and reinforce
religious identity
“¢ Government on the Internet: new ways to preserve Nation-state and its
identity on the Net
“¢ New English and E-Linguistic: jargon and vocabulary of Internet campaigns
Participants are welcomed to join the following working groups:
“¢ Computers and identity
“¢ Culture and identity
“¢ Mathematical expressions of identity
“¢ Internet and Politics
“¢ Internet Vocabulary
Best Identity MA/PhD Thesis work award:
During the conference the Institute will award the best MA/PhD work submitted
for the evaluation. The work should reveal an original and innovative approach
in the field of Identity with its expression on the Internet. Information
regarding submission procedure can be found on our site or through direct
contact of our Administrators.
www.idmap.net
Heath Row
Does anyone have any citations they can offer in terms of what percentage of people actually register to join an online community or social network? What percentage register on a publisher’s site online to access additional features and functions? Looking for research on the topic. Thanks in advance!