Re: Template protection, template CSS and anonymous edits

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Janet Swisher <jswisher@mozilla.com>wrote:

>  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.
>

+1 to this whole paragraph.

>
>
> --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>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> 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>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>