With Rootology shutting down wikiabuse.com, and offering it up for sale, the suggestion now is whether Wikipedia Review should take it over. They have already been linked in a lot of ways, with it being posted here, and discussed here so much, and many of the users here posting over there too. Wikipedia Review, like Wikitruth (and now like Wikiabuse) was the target of serious legal threats by Wikipedia and Jimbo Wales, and survived, quite happily. They tried to shut us down and failed miserably. So I think that we would be quite confident that we would survive legal threats if we were to take over Wikiabuse.

However, as we've discussed here, there are many issues that we might want to consider if we were to take it over, so I am going to do a poll here to go over some of the options.

Lots of options! Beware its a Blissy poll!

Does it have to be a wiki, though? I hate those things... unless they're being used for satirical purposes, of course.

I mean, I don't see why something like Joomla or even a group blog like WordPress couldn't be used for something like that. Presumably there would be less edit-warring that way, and it would be fairly clear who was saying what, at least.

I think it's best for wikiabuse to remain independent of WR.



Really, I haven't decided. It's probably best not to.


Open accounts. Must register first. Must verify registration via email. If possible, must be approved by an administrator (that might require some code tweaking).



All administrators, and some users who are not admins.



Depends on the circumstances.



Probably.



Some of the more prominent ones. It wouldn't be feasible to list everyone and everything.



I would have liked to see detailed !voting records for XFD debates and RFA discussions. It would be quite useful to be able to look at a glance and see that Admin XYZ had !voted in 372 AFD debates, 48 keep, 7 merge, 317 delete, for example.

Part of the problem with answering this is I don't know who we are dealing with, regarding the credible legal threat. This is a person or group who finds Wikipedia very fucking important, evidently more so than I. That and I don't know what was said.

I've seen the promise a site like this offers and I've also seen that people have a lot of different ideas as to how a thing like this should be ran, so I have low confidence in anything like it being replicated.

Yes, I do think it has to be a Wiki. And no, there should be no outing. But these questions are really not the problem at this point, the problem is figuring how to deal with a "credible legal threat" from someone who has financial interest in the success of Wikipedia. That's a question I can't begin to answer. If you can figure that out, then you've figured out who will take over WA, unless of course the whole thing is an over reaction.

I voted "yes" as to whether WR should take over WA, but that "yes" is premised on two all-important conditions.

First, get the site off wiki. I am convinced that this alone proved the source of so many headaches for Root that he was ill-prepared to deal with the legal threats that were sure to come, and did come. I must admit, though, that they set upon him far sooner than I would have imagined, given the modest and conservative goals he set for the original site. I guess the cabalistas' paranoia goes even deeper than I thought (and that would be pretty damned deep).

Second, memberships by approval only. The concern here is that abusive admins on WP will try to continue the mischief they began on the old site. That is not to say all WP admins should be ineligible; I am very much aware that some valuable contributors on WR are WP admins. But careful screening here is definitely in order. This is not merely to protect the integrity of the site, but also to protect WP admins who may choose to provide valuable information to the site. Naturally, means should made available to anyone to communicate with the mods in order to provide info that may be of use. But it would not be safe for all of such to be direct contributors. The cabalistas will most definitely be lurking about, looking for "edit patterns", "unique phrasing", etc., to aid them in their constant witch-hunts. No need to assist them any more than may be avoided.

Bobby is right. WR needs more information about the nature and source of the legal threat before it can consider taking on the mission. WR also needs to consider exactly what "WR" is from the point of view of the entity making the threat. Iowa Non-Profit Corporation would be nice, but is not presently the case. Legal advise would be useful. The burden/cost of getting on a proper footing might be small.

Even if WR were to somehow incorporate itself - not likely or necessary, IMO - it would be best to do it outside of the US anyway. If there are people out there looking to engage in legal harassment against anti-WP websites, as seems to be the case, better that WR has the advantage of not operating in the world's most litigious society, right?

Still, I'm told the incorporation fees in Iowa are fairly reasonable...

Defending WR in Dear Leader's Peoples Court might turn out to be more of a burden to WR than to WR's adversaries. Taking some measures to limit personal liability seems prudent.

I agree with Cedric's perspective on this, but if his conditions are met, wouldn't we simply have another Wikipedia Review? I think that the one we have is sufficient. The one thing that WikiAbuse had to offer that we do not presently offer was concise profiles of abusive admins, with some documentation. We might think about preparing something like that here at WR.

Obviously, registering in Russia or other countries with next to no legalities with regards to internet use is best. Australia is not a good country to register a web site with if you want to protect it from legal hassles. But then again, doing it like that is just asking for trouble. I say you register it with whichever is cheapest, and most convenient, but make sure that whoever it is registered with has good legal grounds. Its more the company than the nation.

As I said elsewhere, it sounds like "no outing" is a good policy, but that is if you associate outing with cyber stalking. But here's a couple of reasons why its a bad policy:

- Wikipedia will call it an "outing" site regardless of its policy on outing (David Gerard and SlimVirgin, supported by Wikipedia discussion list, already said that Wikiabuse was an outing site)
- Some of the "outing" is needed in order to protect from abuse (esp see Essjay, Seigenthaler's harasser)
- Wikipedia is an attempt at an encyclopaedia. An encyclopaedia is meant to have everyone's names on it.

If you say "no outing" then it puts you in a difficult position and hides the truth. Wikitruth allows outing, and I think that that is the way to go. Of course, if Amorrow-style "outing" happens, that's a different matter, because that's illegal. Regular old Brandt-style outing is quite legal.

I think some corporate protection from liability is important. A 501( c )(3) is not needed, just simple non-profit status, and maybe a solicitation license (to do limited fund raising) this would not permit foundation grants, nor would donations be tax deductible, but I doubt if either of these would matter. I think to have someone available in state/nation is important. Look at the problems bringing an action in FL when Brandt is in Texas causes. Imagine doing something in Russia. US is litigious but sec. 230 might be available or at least a deterrent. English language seems vital. Australia might make sense but Blissy says not so great. I'm not sure why. Maybe some kind of lease/contract with domain owner(Blissy?) root admin (Selina?) and the non-profit. All of this is for discussion and advice of counsel in relevant jurisdiction should be sought.

In some ways the wiki did prove successful in WA. Might need to tighten who can edit, arguments run both ways. As for IRL responsibility i.e. outing I have discussed my thoughts here. I believe it is an important activity but do not think this should be part of the WA project.

That's my two cents.

It seems like there's several topics on this now, so I am not sure where the best place to post this is, but I want to put these thoughts out there:

I think some people are automatically attaching wiki=bad because they feel that wikipedia is bad. The software is only as good as the people who are using it. A wiki isn't inherently bad, but it is understandable why some people may be leary of using it. You have to weigh inherent advantages and disadvantages, as there is rarely a perfect solution.

The inherent disadvantages of a wiki--well you all know quite well. It's easy to subvert if membership is open and there isn't a core group watching. Right now I think we have a core group to defend against that sort of thing. And of course the edit warring, general whining, and petty fighting. That kind of thing is too much for one person in charge to deal with, and there should be two "in charge" and at least five very trusted admins to start.

The advantages are, if membership is relatively open, you will have members that are "good" admins on WP that want to snipe at another admin, with good evidence of course. Also, not restricting heavily who edits it, good content is more likely and it will be less myopic.

For example, say I am a person that doesn't post here for whatever reason, but I want to edit an article about an admin and his abuse. If the process is to ask someone for access, wait to be authorized, etc., it is a lot harder than just signing up and adding my piece and never coming back. You have to remember "that guy" that only wants to comment on one thing and get the hell out of your way.

The advantage of the blog is that it's stable and probably will be more entertaining. The disadvantage is, as Blissy said in another post, not everyone wants to write a blog. It's more of an individual sport, while a wiki is supposed to be a team sport. If you misstate something on a wiki, someone may come around and fix it. If it's on a blog, it's usually pointed out in the comments (maybe) and then maybe it gets fixed and maybe it doesn't. Your work is more heavily criticized.

A blog would be more about ideas or recent happenings, while a wiki has to mostly be about cold hard facts. A blog is inherently myopic, with the author bringing his own experience and interpretation of events into things. Who is around to say, "well you have that part right, but this other part didn't happen like that, it happened more like this." With a wiki you have that.

It depends on what you want. I liked the idea of a wiki that people could use when someone slapped an arbcom on them. They could look in one area (not multiple threads or blog postings) and get some good information that perhaps led them to other information. I can't see a blog doing that. If it even comes close to that, the information would not be as easily found by whatever person was searching for it.

Speaking from talker experience, the most popular talkers were the ones that had massive restrictions on people to join. There were some that required you to submit your e-mail address (hotmail etc were banned) and then do this and that and this and that to get through, and then you were junior and so forth. They were the most popular ones.

Seriously, people who want to post won't mind too much at having to ask. And even having to ask on WR. They could ask on e-mail or PM as well, it wouldn't have to be made public.

People would do it.

Just letting anyone join and you get people like User:Person on Wikiabuse, who just ruin the whole thing.

Does that type of Person (like User:Person, heh) ruin it entirely though? Starting something like this I expect some type of problem, the only question is the severity of the problem. I know you had some battles with User:Person, but I think part of the problem was that Root was taking on too much responsibility in dealing with everyone. If there was more than one individual that could have acted against User:Person (more than reverting), then maybe it wouldn't have been a nuisance at all. Not to mention that the way Person acted was very obnoxious and condescending but his points were not always wrong, he was just a dick.

For example, say we do the wiki thing and it's restricted to members of WR only. There are still going to be conflicts, because I know for a fact we do not all agree on how such a thing should be approached. Conflict is unavoidable, the only thing that can be done is limiting it.

It may be profitable to consider why WR is not inundated with slavish devotee's of the cult. Maybe being a wikipariah has its advantages? (Or are the Authorities here quietly beating them off with a stick?) If Wikiabuse is to be resurrected, perhaps the first item on the agenda is to ensure it will be subject to the usual "den of iniquity" commentary from the alpha-admins at WP.

It's because we allow, encourage — indeed, demand — real criticism here. Wikipediots have forgotten how to do that, along with everything else that they have fogotten about the world outside their hive, and their skills in it have e-trophied to the level of bans & barn*s & nada in between.

It's that cult mentality — solidarity for its own sake — that renders them ever more incapable of functioning outside the Self-Love Of The Hive (SLOTH).

Jonny

I didn't say just WR members. This was my idea for how to do it:

Initially: Only "trusted" WR members (there's a group, and they get to see all the hidden boards)

Then: Anyone from the outside can personally ask one of the members, either by e-mail or message here, and they get in (ad infinitem). A bit like how you get a Gmail account from someone.

Doing it that way there will of course be problems. Some of us disagree rather hugely on how to do an article. But we at least have some kind of a common approach.

The second part of that is to decide how we are going to do it. Is it going to be much the same as wikiabuse.com? If so, then we all know what we're doing, and working together has more of an aim. Primarily to just document admin abuses.

How many people have Gmail now anyway? Like a billion?

But anyway we'll see what people want to do.

To summarise the responses so far:

WR should take over wikiabuse.com (8/5/3)

Wikiabuse.com should not allow outing (5/9/2)

Wikiabuse.com should not allow anonymous IPs. Still undecided whether to have registered accounts (as Wikiabuse.com was originally run) (4), invitation by e-mail (6) or invitation through WR. Could conclude that we could allow either invitation by e-mail or invitation by WR, with a possibility to allow open editing for registered accounts in the future.

Still undecided whether wikiabuse.com should record details of all administrators, or just abusive ones (split 8/7/1). A reasonable compromise would be to list all, but have stub articles on the less controversial ones, as happened in original wikiabuse.com.

Wikiabuse.com should record details of regular level users who act as sock/meat puppets of admins, but undecided whether to extend this to include all abusive users.

Wikiabuse.com should record details of bans, at least highly controversial bans, and possibly all disputed ones, maybe even all long-term bans. This can be developed as it goes.

Wikiabuse.com should list details of all Wikipedia critic sites (10/3/1/2)

Wikiabuse.com should include other things, especially such things as analysis (e.g. SlimVirgin & Crum375), to be analysed further later.

So most things we are pretty well decided on. Wikiabuse.com having no outing I actually disagree with, but so be it.

My personal feeling is that if an admin. is only doing his job, that outing isn't necessary; However, I know of at least one specific situation in which an admin. is editing under a conflict of interest situation that you can't explain unless you can say "X's name is John Doe He works for this church, according to this document and that explains the edits he makes on the subject of Y".

If an editor has a conflict of interest that he or she is abusing and it has been proven by documented evidence, and the only way to point it out is to "out" that person, then I would think that this might be an exception. I would put together some sort of a mechanism where these kinds of situations would have to be approved by someone before the information got into circulation, maybe by the head sysop of the site or something?

I also feel strongly that where the money is coming from and how it is spent has to be an important part of this system. We have theories that certain people edit certain articles because they are paid by certain interests. I believe that WP is full of these hidden agendas. This is probably what caused Root's problems too, but this is where the real problem lies....

The thing is that at the time, we all thought that outing Essjay was pointless. After all, Essjay was a pretty good administrator old told, quite polite on most occasions, etc. Similarly, most of us thought that outing Kelly Martin and SlimVirgin (and Jayjg if it was possible) were very good ideas, not to mention Snowspinner. However, those 3, who probably deserved to be outed, didn't really go anywhere, and at least in Snowspinner's case, he was able to turn it around against this site. While Essjay as it turned out really warranted outing, not because of needing to know who he was, but because he was lying about credentials, and using those credentials to change history.

Of course, in saying that, we haven't really had topics to analyse Essjay's contributions, because I think that most people here agree that Essjay was a good contributor to Wikipedia. Not faultless, but pretty good.

What about HighInBC who got tracked down and got IRL harassment. I assume he did something bad as an administrator to deserve it. So what did he do?

Well, it would seem to me then that there are even more instances when outing has to be considered. If we choose a "closed system" editing system, then there should be forums where this sort of thing is discussed outside of public space and then a decision has to be made about outing or not, based on the evidence and the situation.

In other words, maybe outing everybody isn't right, but sometimes you have to out somebody to prove that they're doing something wrong...

Is being a "good WP admin" necessarily a good thing? I think that the system is so slanted and its objectives are so morally wrong that sometimes (as is the case with Essjay), a "good admin." is doing more damage to real people and institutions than he's "doing good".

I know of one Wikipedia administrator who has pictures of himself (with his family) on-line. He is a nice guy and has never made a personal attack on Wikipedia, has never blocked a good faith editor (because he has never blocked anything but 4 vandal IPs), and has made only constructive edits to the encyclopedia. He has written or co-written 17 Featured Articles.

I worry that a pro-outing policy will cause this user unneeded grief in the name of revenge against "the establishment", and I worry that pictures of his family will end up on an outting website, with cobbled-together details about their lives. Neither he nor his family deserve that.

I understand that there are abusive administrators on Wikipedia, but I think there are better ways than outting all (or even any) admins, and whatever sympathy WA had at WP will have been lost by such a move.

Well how about this compromise:

Any time that we consider adding someone's real name to an article, it needs to be discussed in private first. So we can discuss it in a closed "wikiabuse" subforum on WR, and do a poll if required, and then add it, or not, and in whichever form we feel is best.

Does that sound reasonable to everyone?

Certainly discuss in private first. My question is how private is private? Do we want only a hand-picked bunch of a dozen people in this forum, or every WR user with more than say 20 edits or every registered WR user? I'd go for the first, but am I being elitist?

No, your being sensible. If you have a group with the ability to discuss things in a closed forum maybe you should start there. I am not a member of that group but would not object to discussion continuing there. I am a little surprised such a discussion has not already started. Maybe my and others not included saying that a closed discussion is appropriate may give you more confidence in such a course.

I would only ask that you consider "what WR is" before determining "what WR should do." I think this question should be asked with a special concern for "what WR is" from the view point of the type of forces that caused Root to discontinue.

We can see from Wikipedia's budget that they spend $25,000 per month on keeping it running. That's something that we don't want to ever have to afford. I think that we should be looking at limiting it to 50 users max, and 10-15 to start with would be fine.

We may have difficulties, indeed, but again, I think that if there are any issues then they should be discussed in a private forum.

Some people have said that that is the worst part of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is all fine to view if you look at the front page only. But once you start looking at the talk page and history, and see all of the nonsense that goes on, you very quickly stop taking it seriously, and the whole thing becomes an embarassment.

We should have talk pages and history, but perhaps keep that element private.

Of course it goes without saying such a person does not need to be de-cloaked.

I mentioned a policy idea about this a while back, amounting to "WMF personnel, and alpha-admins" almost by default, and those who edit BLP's. Can it be generalized a bit? Perhaps only "out" those who themselves have direct or indirect access to "non public" data at Wikipedia. That would include WMF people, most ArbCom members, Checkusers, and, in particular, those who have more or less unfettered access to Checkusers. Or maybe "out" those who use the "non public" information as a blunt instrument of social control at WP?

Whatever is decided, I think people who play with fire can have no real expectation of not getting burned. And remember that this will apply in both directions, so it may be a good idea that those who deliberate in private on this kind of decision be themselves willing to "die by the sword" as well.

But GlassBeadGame is quite correct that a better decision will take into account the threat that Rootology faced.

Well wikiabuse failed as a wiki - you can call me Nostradamus.

I do not favor using a wiki at all. Wikis are there for collaborative editing and revision of documents.

What needs to be there is a news blog, a continuous conversation with the Internet about what is happening in Wikipedia, that others can use as a feed to spread conversation about Wikipedia around the "blogosphere" and hopefully to the mainstream news organizations.

I would suggest that two or three of you act as gatekeepers as to what gets published on the blog (I suggest Somey, Poetlister, Daniel Brandt), with invited contributors from WR who can create articles but cannot publish them without editorial approval.

I would suggest using Wordpress as the blogging platform.

That's all.

On second thoughts, a much simpler option would be to point wikiabuse.com to blog.wikipediareview.com in the DNS tables.

Our current thinking is to experiment with the blog for a while. If that works out, then in a month or so we'll consider taking on the wiki. Its probably a good idea to have something as bold as wikiabuse.com be shut down for a while, so that it makes a statement. That way we know what we are getting in to too.

Dare I say this, though? If folks here aren't willing to put themselves out there, should they be in any position to "out" anyone else?

"Privacy" is overrated, but a bunch of anonymous people making attempts to break the pseudo-anonymity of Wikipedia people is really inconsistent and, dare I say, vile.

Let's not forget - the WikiAbuse model was apparently working enough for someone to feel threatened enough to get it shut down. Growing pains aside, if it ain't broke...

There is a difference between the use of anonymity for dissent and authority.

• Anonymity for dissent: not vile.
  
• Anonymity to exercise hooded authority: vile.

People who don't know the former sometimes seek the latter.

Despite the fact that we've received no credit whatsoever in Wikiland for redacting the real names of most of the Wikipedians identified here on WR, I'm still against exposing people's identities except under extreme circumstances.

The only reasons that should ever be considered valid to "out" people - which is not something you can just do, by the way - is to expose a major conflict of interest, or serious ongoing fraud or criminality. And in neither case is it normally necessary to identify the person by name. Even in Essjay's case, his ongoing credentials fraud could have been exposed without actually naming him. (In the event he named himself, of course, so it's a moot point, but I'm just saying - if.)

The only time it should ever be legitimate to identify someone by name is if there's a real moral imperative to do it. I'd say Gary Weiss is just above the bar in that respect - barely - but SlimVirgin is not.

If people are identified just to embarrass them, get them in trouble with their schools or employers, or further prove to the world the already-obvious fact that most WP'ers are 18-25-year-old guys hanging out in basements, all that usually amounts to is using a public website for payback and revenge. If people have valid reasons for doing things like that, whether those reasons are personal, moral, or legal - Daniel Brandt being the obvious example of this - then hey, web hosting is cheap enough these days, right?

I forgot to comment on this before. I wonder if the restrictions were in place after they became popular or before. Because I don't understand why a thing would be popular (with no context), simply because it is hard to "get in". I just assume that these talkers were popular, and reached a critical mass, at which time restrictions were put in place. This is very sensible.

Another thing (unrelated to the quote above), regarding some of the more specific aspects of this poll: If taking up the whole "wikiabuse" thing, it needs to have very few rules as to content. I really feel that Root's accomplishment in this was setting up a model for something like this to get done. No outing: therefore it can be cited freely on Wiki. We have to play by their rules a little bit, and the kicker is, you can still make them look bad, even if it is more of a challenge.

There should be very little limits at the onset: Restrict content about users to being about administrators, but also allow disputed policies and perhaps disputed articles if it is well reasoned and written, and not just nonsense ramblings. There has to be some kind of bar. Write about the simple things that you take for granted, directed towards the person that has never used a wiki, such as what admins do, bureaucrats, checkusers, stewards, etc.

Controversial bans and such, when they show indications of an abuse, should be covered, but delicately. There is a fine line for content, but you don't want to get into micromanaging it or defining what it is before you start.

As for members, it should be open for anyone to edit, as long as they register an account. This is only a protection for people that forget to log in and may leave their IP exposed. This will cause a problem and probably a shit storm, just like they did with Root, but let's face it people get bored easy. As long as their is enough people to deal with that, it won't be a big problem at all.

And I agree with leaving WA as it is right now with the message on the frontpage. Really, you don't need to be in the mindset of taking up the WA domain, this model can be transferred anywhere and word will travel fast.

at this point though i'm very skeptical about any of this happening. some think this should be a vengeance site while it would be more useful as an evidence site.

I think what we're likely to see now, in the wake of Mr. Root's decision to discontinue the site due to legal threats, is an epidemic of "Aw shucksism" from the Faithful. Take this, for example:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/077650.html


Of course, with all due respect to Mr. Herbert, any honest and objective person would have told you that the level of discourse on Waikiabuse.com was no different than the level of discourse here, or for that matter, on Wikipedia itself. There are/were people of both stellar and questionable maturity and veracity on all three sites.

However, the "loss" of Wikiabuse.com now allows various pretend-handwringers on WP to feed their detractors more BS about how the site "could have been useful" and "it seemed to be much more worthy" than the site run by the "odious trolls" here at WR.

But this completely ignores the history behind the situation, doesn't it?

Let's back up a little bit. Last month, Rootology was kicked off of WikiEN-L for arguing with JayJG about the BADSITES (non-)policy. So was Blu Aardvark, of course, though he's been allowed past the moderation queue at least twice since.

After he was kicked off, what did Rootology do? He tried to post something to the JayJG thread, now deleted and/or tar-pitted, purporting to expose his real identity - as a guy in Toronto named "Jay"-something, who apparently is some sort of SEO consultant. I didn't buy it - it simply didn't add up, frankly - so I dumped it. No harm, no foul.

That was June 18th. One day later, Rootology posted this.

Now don't get me wrong - I like Mr. Root, I think he's one of the good guys. But look what happened afterward: Over on WikiEN-L, Fred Bauder and JzG started ramping up the rhetoric against us here at WR like there was no tomorrow. Meanwhile, both of them joined Wikiabuse.com as editors.

So, what do we learn from this? Nothing - it's what we already knew. The WP'ers - JzG in particular- don't care about privacy, "outing," or "stalking" - they couldn't possibly care less, in fact. We're probably more concerned about their privacy than they are, half the time. What they absolutely can't stand is scrutiny. And Wikiabuse, by limiting itself mostly to evidence found only on Foundation-run websites, was just the sort of thing they'd wanted all along: Someone with real street cred to set up a wiki that played by their own rules, but that they could point to and say "oooh, now this is valid outside criticism."

We are the valid outside criticism. Simple as that.

I think that's a bit over the top. I'd prefer a policy that says that any post done by a member that purports to expose the real name of a Wikipedian (or repeat or quote from a previous exposure), should expect to have that real name redacted from this message board unless that member shows his own real name in his profile. It's the same thing as saying that Wikipedia Review as a message board will not seek to encourage or discourage "outings," but also recognizes that there are those who feel that Wikipedia, as well as Wikipedia's critics, should all operate at a higher level of accountability.

Doesn't that make more sense than a blanket policy?

I'd agree, provided we can verify our own member's real name.

Then change "unless that member shows his own real name in his profile" to "unless that member shows his own real, verifiable name in his profile." That places the burden on the member to not pretend to be real if it's not verifiable. They can still post if it's not verifiable, but they cannot "out" anonymous Wikipedians.

Of course, many Wikipedians with screen names do give their real names on their user page, and this means everyone can use it whenever they wish.

(Poor Somey. I know his real name because he told me once, but I was unable to verify it.)

I think it went without saying that wikiabuse.com required mostly the same rules for validity and verifiability as wikipedia, with the exception that such sites as ED, wikitruth and wikipedia review weren't considered to be unreliable in all cases. They were used when appropriate only, but were used. And I think that that was working well enough.

Speaking only for myself, I'm actually against the idea of having a blanket policy of any kind - each situation is different and requires us to recognize a different set of moral precepts. I'm just saying the bar should be higher, possibly much higher... and if not higher in general, then at least raised in accordance with WP's own efforts to respect the wishes of biography subjects. Assuming the relevant policy changes remain in effect, at least.

Blanket policies aren't even all that meaningful in this environment. Nobody's posts require advance moderator approval, so in theory someone could post something truly terrible one day when there are no moderators around, and it could be on the board for quite some time before it's dealt with. In that period of time it could be picked up by Google, Yahoo, and all sorts of other crawlers... and even if the post is edited/deleted/moved, it might be several more days before the crawlers come around again and update the index entry.

The same risk exists on Wikipedia, of course... They deal with it by having huge numbers of admins, we deal with it by requiring genuine e-mail addresses to register and trying to provide a reasonably non-contentious environment for member-interaction.

Both methods generally work, but it could still happen on either website, and no policy is really going to prevent it.

I like the idea of a poll on anything that there is significant disagreement about. I guess Wikipedia does the same thing really.

I do like to have rules, or at least foundations, though. At least ideals that you try to live up to.

Rootology was apparently a True Believer in the basic Wikipedia Policies — the Big Three and the Five Pillars. To some extent I used to be too, but only because they appeared — for a brief, shining moment — to echo the Way Of Inquiry (WOI) that I already knew. But Wikipedia is infected with something else entirely, something that overwhelms and undermines the norms that responsible people, reporters, and scholars live by. And WikiAbuse.Com inherited that terminal disease.

In a way Rootology did us the service of a initiating a very useful experiment, if only we know how to learn from it. He cloned the Wikipedia virus — in vitro — and thus afforded us a way to study its lifecycle in microcosm, in time-lapse speedup, and in relative, I say relative, safety.

The proper sort of post-mortem analysis could teach us a lot, if we have the scopes to pursue it.

Jonny

We need a list of abuses from the admin first...


Also, a blog is disorganized. We need a good old-fashioned webpage where there's a page about something and that's that. Just have people submit stuff to the site and then some people moderate it who would be good at judging abuses like WordBomb, Daniel Brandt, etc.

I think the name wikiabuse.com is kind of, well, harsh. I'm honestly surprised so many admins joined with a name like that because admins who don't "abuse" their powers could take offense to having an entry on a website called wikiabuse.com. Maybe wikiadminlogs.com or something like that. Wikiabuse.com just sounds too aggressive for the title of a web site.

Actually, what's needed is something even fancier than that - a fully custom-designed relational database, in which each subject has a main table entry and a group of child-table entries, like so:

Topic Areas
Incidents
Allies
Enemies

...And then meta-tables for diffs, non-wiki links, and general commentary. Each of the main child tables would have keywords associated with them, so if everything is properly encoded, you could select a word like "Mormons" or "Scientologists" and get back a list of every admin or high-profile editor associated with those subjects, and the associated diffs, etc.

Admittedly, this will never actually happen, nor should it, but that would be the ideal setup, FWIW.


I think it should be "badwikis.com," but now that I've suggested it, someone will probably grab it.

"Wikiholes.com" and "wikitrocities.com" are also still available... Or if you prefer, "wikicircles.com" and "wikisalad.com," which I suppose have potential as non-connotative names.

Just a couple of thoughts:

• I think if WR takes on WA's mission it is only fitting and proper that we keep the name the the same, as a tribute or at least attribution to Root's work.
  
• I never liked the idea of basing the decision of which admins to collect IRL identifying information ( i.e, outing) on the conduct of the individual admin. This seems to smack of at least punishment and maybe even extortion. I still believe the correct path is to collect IRL identifying information on all admins based on their status as such. I discuss the types of controls and conditions I think this would take here.

We think alike. I was considering the merits of something like that the other day. Of course, MediaWiki wouldn't work for it, and the time invested in actually setting up a software package that could manage something like this would be best devoted to doing something else.

I can see where you're coming from with that. I think if that's the case, WR should also keep it a Wiki if WR takes over WA, as that what it began was, and that's what allowed such a wide-range of abuses to be reported because anybody with an account could submit information.

A wiki doesn't need to be open.

Think about one element - we (whoever hosts it) doesn't want it to have 1 billion articles like Wikipedia has, with a $25,000 per month service fee. If we have just 10 or 15 users, then we can keep the overheads small. Less disruption. We can each invite people in. Or sort things out as we go along.

Its better to make it hard to get in, then don't ban people etc, than to have it open and then ban lots. I'd rather not have bans to begin with.