Well Known Sources

In the RealWorld (that is outside the Internet), we tend to get information from sources that we trust. By trust I mean not so much that we trust the source to be correct, but that we trust the source to make some effort to provide us with information that we are likely to find useful.

These are either WellKnownSources, or sources that we have a ReciprocalRelationship? with, i.e. our friends, family and colleague. What we don't do is readily accept communications from unknown sources, such as some person on the street who starts talking to us, or a door to door salesmane, or a junk telephone call. What we are doing is making our daily socialising and communication SpamProof. -- PhilipDorrell

Philip, I can see that you're partly defining some background concepts to explain the MiskiProject, which sounds pretty interesting. In doing so you've raised some relevant questions for Wiki as well. There have been and are WellKnownSources on Wiki, people we think we can trust, and there are, for all of us, others. One part of Wiki tradition has emphasized DocumentMode and anonymity and perhaps seemed to say "it doesn't and shouldn't matter about the source for anything". Another part (and both can be traced to the founder WardCunningham) has emphasized RealNamesPlease and accountability. This year anonymity became used more than before to criticise known individuals (whether directly or through devices like implicature). You've got me thinking whether such anonymous accusations aren't the true Wiki counterpart of Spam in the email or usenet setting. (The boring, unsolicited advertisements are easy to deal with here. I judge your efforts not to be that by the way.) See DeleteAnonymousAccusations. -- RichardDrake