Wiki Vandalism Solutions

There have been some proposals for dealing with WikiVandals. Let's collect them here for comparison. See also http://ward.c2.fed.wiki.org/wiki-vandalism-solutions.html

We haven't yet come up with a list of requirements for a successful vandalism solution. Here is a first pass: (see WikiVandalismAnalysis for more)

Should address WikiTrolling. (see TrollDefinition)
Should address EditWars.
Should address OffTopic material (either embrace it or eliminate it--at a minimum, set clear guidelines as to what is OK and what is not).

Note that spam and vandalism have very different motivations, although they are similar in outcome. A well-crafted solution is needed for each problem, but discussion is likely to be more productive if we don't confuse the issues. WikiSpamSolutions should be addressed on that page, not here.

Most proposals either attempt to make trolls want to leave on their own, or to forcefully remove them.

Ideas to make trolls want to leave on their own:

AnonymizeRecentChanges. Take away trolls' ability to target specific individuals.
TolerateOffTopic. Learn to live with it. Maybe the trolls will go away on their own.
LetsSlowDownDeletions. Slowing down deletions will allow more cooling-off time, so there will be less spontaneous trolling.
SubscriptionFee. Make it a financial burden for the trolls to continue.
DelayAction. Create an impervious fence with time. Make it impossible for an attacker to get results right away.

Ideas to forcefully remove trolls:

HumanVerification. Prevents automated vandalism.
PoliceForce. Special users get some administrative authority.
AccessLevels/FunctionalAccess. Provide a hierarchy of privileges to different members of the community.
WeightedFranchise. Give more valued members of the community more weight when making decisions.
RandomPeerPrivilege. Allow ordinary users some administrative capabilities, when several of them act together.
GatedCommunity. Only let a select and invited group of people into the "club". (aka "by invitation only.")
WikiNeedsTrustMetrics/TrustMetric/WebOfTrust/CommunityWarning. Trust is earned when other users don't revert your edits.

Partial solutions and specific technologies:

DefensiveScriptIdea/OpenProxySelfBan. A mechanism for blocking open proxies.
LetsSpeedUpDeletions. Speeding up deletions will allow gnomes to revert changes faster.
KillFile/BanList. Bad users lose the ability to edit.
AutomaticSandbox (implies KillFile). A way of maintaing an open communication channel with those who have been banned (allows for appeals).
CitizenArrest. (implies LetsSpeedUpDeletions, KillFile). A ban feature that automatically reverts all edits by an individual.
PersonalIdentification. Create a login system by which you can track each member's identity.

Proposed solutions: (these are intended to meet all of the requirements.)

LetsWithdrawIntoSolipsism/FilteredRecentChanges. Users keep a personal list of pages they do not want to see.
PersonalWatchList. PersonalWatchList proposes to defuse vandalism by taking away RecentChanges as an attention-getter.
WikiChangeProposal. Editors or teams of editors create clean "views" of wiki, and vandalism is tolerated in the unclean wiki.
WikiSig. Allow off-topic material.
SplitWiki into a formal and less formal section

Note that the grouping above is pretty arbitrary and may not make any sense at all. We should come up with a better way to organize this page. Also, these proposals and ideas have lots of dependencies on each other. I've pointed out a couple using "(implies x)" syntax, but there are many more to add.

Direct any ThreadMode content to WikiVandalismDiscussion.

There are many other proposals discussed on MeatballWiki under HardSecurity.

CategoryWikiMaintenance