Re: [MLUG] Re: Wikipedia on /.

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 6 Sep 2004, Michael wrote:

>> That's good, but the detritus has to be detected, the wiki owner has to 
>> be alerted, then he has to decide if he should act, how far back the 
>> damage occurred, then he can do the trivial fix.  Between the time of 
>> the vandalism and the time the page is fixed, the page may be read and 
>> the reader may be misled.  Of course, the vandal may return, every few 
>> days, to make sure the damage, if fixed, is repeated.  And the world's 
>> greatest expert might not wish to spend his time checking intermitently 
>> that his web page wasn't defaced, so he might not contribute to 
>> Wikipedia in the first place.
>
> The error of your argument is your assumption that a single person has 
> to monitor the whole wiki or even a single page by themselves.

I don't assume that one person has to monitor the wiki, but I was assuming 
that one person, or only a few people, would be able to use the CVS 
facility (or whatever it's called) to replace the latest version of a page 
with an earlier version of the page.  That isn't something that anyone can 
do, I hope.

Your argument that most people will not try to damage the wiki is true, of 
course.  Most people don't try to break into my server, but believe me, I 
spend plenty of time keeping out the few who will do it.


> So, from time to time, the barbarians might come crashing through the 
> gates but they'll always be driven back by the forces of order.

Sure, but with a wiki you have open gates.  That makes it pretty easy to 
get in.  After they've been driven out, if I understand how the system 
works, the gates remain open.  They don't have locks.  I'm impressed that 
wikis work as well as they do given the ease with which people could 
vandalize them.


> Also because this is all technology based.. for every new attack there 
> will arise a new defense mechanism. It won't happen overnight but it 
> will happen. Wiki defacement is similar to fighting spammers but it has 
> the benefit of a community working together whereas usually fighting 
> email spam is one person defending against many attackers.

I think they'll have to come up with some way to defend these things.  I 
hope not, but my view of human nature has become fairly realistic in the 
last couple of decades.  Registration and passwords might have to be added 
in some places.  Right now, at least some of these wikis are wide open to 
anyone.

Mike
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