Re: Template protection, template CSS and anonymous edits

Wikipedia (i.e., Wikimedia Foundation) doesn't seem to see any conflict 
between anonymity and attribution, since they allow anonymous edits and 
use CC-BY-SA. Anonymous edits on Wikipedia are logged in page history by 
IP address. Allowing anonymity lowers the barrier to participation to as 
low as possible.

However, raising the barrier to entry even slightly increases the sense 
of community; requiring contributors to claim an identity enables long 
term interactions and encourages responsibility for one's actions. I 
think the benefits of encouraging long-term identities (even if 
pseudonymous) outweigh the benefits of anonymity. This is also not a 
context where anonymity is needed for personal safety or confidentiality.

--Janet

On 10/16/12 11:41 AM, Scott Rowe wrote:
> The other issue Tomato raised was that of anonymous edits. Are there 
> implications for content imported from elsewhere under CC-By-SA? What 
> about under the CC-By license for the site generally?
>
> Frankly, I don't think anonymous editing serves to improve 
> collaboration or the quality of the documentation. As a curator and 
> contributor, I'd like to be able to correspond with other editors. I 
> also think that responsibility is the best policy, period.
>
> +Scott
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Alex Komoroske <komoroske@google.com 
> <mailto:komoroske@google.com>> wrote:
>
>     We temporarily protected the templates during the launch because
>     they were a high-impact place to spam. I think ultimately they
>     should be open for editing. My only worry is that we rely pretty
>     heavily on templates and someone mucking around in them could
>     inadvertently break some stuff.
>
>     One way to handle that might be to have a warning at the top of
>     template pages encouraging folks to ask on IRC or the mailing list
>     before making substantive changes to important templates.
>
>
>     On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 2:33 AM, Chris Mills <cmills@w3.org
>     <mailto:cmills@w3.org>> wrote:
>
>         Thanks for the comments Taylor. I can definitely see why you'd
>         want this stuff to be opened up; it would be nice to be able
>         to trust everyone to just make updates to pretty much
>         anything. It would sure make our job easier too ;-)
>
>         But I think we do need to exercise a bit of caution in these
>         situations; yes, we can roll back changes, but we would rather
>         limit the amount of changes that we have to keep rolling back.
>         It cna get confusing, mistakes can be made.
>
>         A better solution (for the short term anyway), which we are
>         looking into already, is putting everything on github, so
>         people can make changes and send us pull requests. This could
>         be applied to pretty much everything, even template pages and
>         stuff.
>
>         It certainly sounds worth checking out the Abuse Filter, and
>         considering anonymous edits, to normal pages at least.
>         Templates and stuff I wouldn't be so sure of.
>
>         Best,
>
>         Chris
>
>         On 15 Oct 2012, at 18:43, Taylor Costello
>         <nottaylorcostello@gmail.com
>         <mailto:nottaylorcostello@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         > Hi everyone!
>         >
>         > I am hoping to ask to stop protecting templates now that the
>         traffic has calmed down a little. I think anyone should have
>         the ability to edit or see them. I also think the template CSS
>         should be moved to the Common.css for admins to edit, here:
>         http://docs.webplatform.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css
>         >
>         > If anyone has any objections as to why the templates should
>         remain protected, please tell me! I'm curious to hear your
>         opinions of course, I would just like this project to be open
>         to everyone and it's very hard for anyone to understand the
>         wiki when they can't see the templates.
>         >
>         > I have also heard several ideas on how the CSS should be
>         handled, please note for this topic, I'm only talking about
>         template CSS because it should be something that can be
>         accessed easily.
>         >
>         > Last topic, I want to open up anonymous edits on the wiki.
>         Our Q&A has anonymous posting, but not our wiki! Let me just
>         throw out there that anonymous editing is very easy to watch,
>         any user can revert a bad edit. We also have AbuseFilters that
>         will protect from obvious spam and tag edits for admins to
>         look at. Any admin can add more AbuseFilters in the situation
>         where we need to adjust to new spam methods. There are a ton
>         of benefits to allowing anonymous wiki editing, and most of
>         the negative argument being "to prevent spam".
>         >
>         > You can check out the AbuseFilter here:
>         http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/Special:AbuseFilter
>
>
>
>