This vandal has really been giving me a lot of grief lately. It's gone from a handful of silly pictures and videos to full-out automated attacks that come from a seemingly endless supply of different IP addresses.

I think that this is part of the reason Wikipedia is so good at staying top dog. They have 1,000 losers sitting up all night just waiting to ban unruly IP addresses, where if I go away from the computer for two hours I come back to find 3000 articles that have to be deleted.

Has anyone here explored the idea of how vandalism places a disproportionate burden on smaller encyclopedias, helping Wikipedia to stay #1?

I don't think that it's a helpful comparison.

You had the choice of establishing user accountability, but you chose to follow the example of Wikipedia. There is the source of your problem. You have the power to correct it.

Wikipediot Grunt Control depends on a continuous supply of nuisance editors to justify the extraordinary measures that they use to control all content and all editors. Wikipediot Grunt Control desperately needs some excuse to maintain their Draconian Powers and this is the main reason that they steadfastly refuse to adopt any more sensible measures against simple nuisance vandalism.

Jon Awbrey

There are already plenty of online wiki encyclopedias with user accountability. People just don't register and use them in great enough numbers to make them competitive with Wikipedia. If I started another, what would make it unique?

There has to be some way to let anonymous editing continue and at the same time not become exactly like Wikipedia. I haven't exactly hit on it, but I think it's still out there.

I never thought of that, interesting.

Creat specific encyclopedia's. Say about cars, and request registrations. And then go on from that logic, to create new encyclopedia's about different things, like chimistry, physic etc. Specialised encyclopedias with registrations without having to provide real names will bring significant number of people specifically interested on specific subjects. You leave off subjects which will tend to attract parasits, leave thos to Wikipedia.

Start a specialized encyclopedia on vandalism. You already have an expert.

What makes your encyclopedia unique, Emperor?

The only reasonable way to deal with vandalism, unless you have a Wikipedia sized userbase already, is to require registration to edit.

Good point - Wikipedia is all about the free labour, the nickel-and-dime "SEOers" dream . Less an "encyclopedia", its more an attempt to create masses of yummy unique content with minimal outlay, all the better to eventually drive those elusive advertising bucks.

If you set up a straight HTML website, you would be unlikely to publish the FTP details and allow anyone to replace your files - there's a likely negative outcome you'd want to avoid. Calling your website "an encyclopedia" doesn't change the likely outcome of letting the world and his idiot edit for you.

When the world gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Your labor force is gifted at vandalism. Invite your labor force to demonstrate how the practice of vandalism works.

Rechristen your site Vandalpedia, to maintain Truthiness in Wikiality.

Very few rules, PmWiki software rather than MediaWiki, no user accounts, no images, no templates, easy to use, runs off of flat file system rather than database, to name a few. As far as editorial policy, I didn't start banning IP addresses until I saw that the vandal was using automated methods, which I could obviously never keep up with. Other than that I like to think that I am pretty tolerant, see the end of Reasons Not To Contribute To Wikipedia.

I'm not trying to criticize impolitely, but it doesn't sound much different than WannaSpell.com. Observe the goings on at that site for 10 minutes, and I think you'll find that it more resembles a gaggle of spray-paint graffiti hoodlums than a conference of encyclopedia editors.

Greg

If you build it, they will come...


... and trash it.

Every so-called open encyclopedia's which does not require registration to edit are specialised on vandalism. It's the consequence. Building an encyclopedia with the intention of it being specialized for vandalism is not possible. To vandalise there should be something to vandalise, you should obviously creat this something before. Wikipedia does have many of those created so many stuff to vandalise.

Wikinfo is now editable only by registered users.

Letting unregistered users make changes sounds insane, often it is insane, but yet somehow Wikipedia has done it for years and has become a top ten site. I don't mind if you or other people have private Wiki's, but letting non-members edit still seems like a great idea to me.



Well it's back open now. Have at it!

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall reading that one of the reasons they are so highly ranked by Google is their own internal links. Those do not get the same nofollow tags that the external links do, so they count as links to Wikipedia. The point is that their top-ten status isn't necessarily indicative of quality. But I might have the links thing completely garbled.

It's a top ten site because the Internet is primarily a venue for the expression of popular culture. Wikipedia is primarily a compendium of popular culture.

Google Scholar provides a search function for scholarly articles. To the best of my knowledge, Google Scholar does not link to Wikipedia, because Wikipedia articles are not peer-reviewed articles of a scholarly nature.

Yes Wikipedia cheats in the Google system. Yet, still, no one else cheats as well or wins so much. Let's also consider quality. It's not great, but it's still better than the wikis that require membership to post.

I have mixed fealings with google scholars, why, why why did they include the results of google book?

Agreed! Total lack of reviews. If you disagree with the wiki nobles you will get tons of benefits, you will be a blocked vandal.